The history of Ireland is the history of constant conquest by the British and the escape from the realization of independence. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Irish Sea to the east, Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle Nation. The Celts defeated many enemies with advanced weapons, occupied what is now France and Belgium, crossed the English Channel, and flourished on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 43 AD, the Romans who rose up on the Italian peninsula began to fight with iron hooves and spears, and the Celts were defeated and retreated from the European continent to the British Isles. Where would the Romans have directly killed the English Channel, and finally had no choice, the Celts arrived north of the island and moved west to the island of Ireland. In remote areas, the Celts still retained their own kingdoms.
In the 5th century, an old man named Saint Patrick, armed with a clover, stepped into Ireland and went around lecturing on the wonders of Christianity (referring to Catholicism). The Irish soon embraced Catholicism, which lasted for millennia and became faithful adherents of the Catholic Church.
The Roman Empire was struggling internally and externally in its later periods and had to withdraw from the British Isles. There was a power gap in the south-central part of the British Isles, once occupied by the Romans. At this time, the Anglo-Saxons in northern Europe gradually developed and expanded, all the way south, hit the British Island, and finally occupied the southern part of the British Island, establishing the English regime, which is the prototype of Britain. The Anglo-Saxons were not satisfied with a place in England, and the pace of foreign expansion has not stopped, and in 1169 and 1171, they invaded Ireland twice, basically incorporating most of the land in Ireland into the rule of the Norman nobility, and England began to dominate the culture and politics of Ireland.
Ireland was conquered
In terms of religious beliefs, England and Ireland were originally devoutly Roman Catholic. At that time, the theocracy was far higher than the imperial power, so the king was always three points shorter than the pope. During the Tudor dynasty, Henry VIII applied to the Holy See for divorce from his original wife in order to be with his mistress, but the Pope rejected his request. Enraged, Henry VIII declared his secession from the Roman Catholic Church and began the Reformation. Henry VIII promulgated the Act of Supremacy, and the Church of England was separated from the Church of Rome. Britain moved towards the path of independent education, and Protestantism has since become the state religion of Britain.
The conquest of the Anglo-Saxons made them in line with the indigenous Celts, and the Reformation played a role in adding fuel to the fire. In the eyes of the Irish, England was only the pope's appointed lord, and the pope was the real supreme leader of Ireland. In 1542, Henry VIII ordered Ireland to be placed directly under the rule of the King of England, that all church property on the island be nationalized, and that Ireland randomly launched a continuous rebellion. Henry VIII and his successor Edward VI suppressed one rebellion after another and began to be heavily emigrated by England like Ireland, during which time three large revolts and a dozen small revolts spread throughout the island broke out in Ireland, and it was not until 1609 that England declared Ireland fully under its rule. Britain's religious policy made the contradictions between Britain and Ireland acute. Under the dual concepts of "defending the Catholic faith" and "rebelling against British colonial rule", the Irish people's sense of national identity was gradually strengthened.
The Catholic masses were temporarily unable to shake Protestant rule, so they quietly formed an underground party organization, the Society of United Irishmen. Influenced by the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution, the group advocated ending the British monarchy's rule over Ireland and establishing an independent Irish Republic.
On 1 January 1801, the Anglo-Irish Union Act was passed, and the two kingdoms were formally merged and renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was not very good under British rule, and the great achievements of the British Industrial Revolution did not affect the island of Ireland, but on the contrary had a huge impact on local agricultural production.
Beginning with the British colonization of Ireland, the British continued to annex the lands of the natives through political means. The Protestant aristocracy occupied large tracts of fertile land, while the Irish Catholics had less and less land, and most of the land was very poor. In the 17th century, potatoes were grown on the island of Ireland. For the Irish, who had long been oppressed by British colonialism, the high yield of potatoes was undoubtedly a blessing. With the large area of potatoes grown, the population of the island of Ireland exploded. In 1760, Ireland had a population of only about 3.5 million, and by 1841, the population had soared to nearly 8 million. In Ireland at this time, potatoes were almost the only food that could be relied upon.
But that all changed in 1845. In the summer of that year, potatoes on the island were infected with "late blight bacteria", resulting in poor potato harvests. The repeated contagion lasted for several years, which was undoubtedly fatal to the Irish, whose staple food was the potato, and the Great Famine followed.
As the ruling class, if England releases grain to relieve the disaster and tides over the difficulties together, I believe that it can not only solve the dilemma and win the hearts and minds of the people, but also save the irish independence behind. But the English ruling class now did the opposite, not only did not distribute a single grain from the Americas to Ireland, but exclusively to the English nobility. Grain was also collected from hard-hit Ireland and large quantities of wheat and dairy products were exported. Even the Ottoman Sultan could not bear it and wanted to donate money to Ireland, but Queen Victoria refused.
In order to survive, a large number of Irish people had to flee their homeland, and some fled to the Scottish region across the strait, and the locals called these people "wanderers". The two giants in the Scottish Football League are the "Celtics" and the "Glasgow Rangers". Many more, unable to bear the religious discrimination of the British, had to leave Europe and flee to the New World, where more than 3 million Irish emigrants within half a century. At that time, most of the North American colonists were Protestant Puritans, and Irish immigrants had to continue to migrate to the deserted southern and Midwest regions of the United States.
The constant suppression of the central government, coupled with the fierceness of the Celtic people, allowed Irish immigrants to develop a tradition of regional self-government. As irish immigrants increased, Irish ethnicity became one of the largest political forces in the United States. At least 14 presidents in U.S. history are descendants of Irish immigrants, including Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.
Ireland seeks statehood
Natural disasters and man-made disasters completely annoyed the Irish people, and various independence movements were "ignited". In 1905, the Sinn Fin Party, which believed in socialism and sought Irish independence, was established, and "Sinn Finn" means "ourselves".
The blood of independence has always flowed in the body of the Irish, and in the First World War, the old imperialist countries were generally hit hard, the wave of national independence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East was higher than the wave, and the sphere of influence of the empire that never set was greatly impacted. So the Irish took advantage of his illness to kill him, and on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a large-scale "Easter Uprising" broke out. 1,500 volunteer soldiers revolted in an attempt to overthrow British rule in Ireland by force. Although the uprising was suppressed by the British and fifteen Sinn Féin leaders were killed, this was the beginning of the struggle, the first step in awakening, the first shot of independence.
In 1919, Sinn Fein formed the Irish National Assembly in Dublin, proclaiming the Republic of Ireland and forming the "IRA". In response, the British government made concessions by enacting amendments to the Home Rule Act, declaring self-government throughout Ireland. However, the British government separated southern Ireland, which was predominantly Catholic, and Northern Ireland, where Protestant predominantly protestant, and established two self-governing governments and two parliaments in Dublin and Belfast, respectively. Over the next three years, in an effort to fight for independence, the Irish Republican Army waged guerrilla warfare throughout the country, violently opposing the British government's rule in Ireland, with a death toll of more than 1,400, including 363 police officers and 261 British regulars.
The British Empire, which had experienced four years of bloody world wars, finally sadly found itself powerless to suppress the burgeoning Irish independence movement. A delegation led by Collins finally sat down with the British cabinet to discuss peaceful independence. On 6 December 1921, the British and the Irish, represented by Collins, signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which recognized that the 26 counties of southern Ireland could form a free state for self-government, but the regime of the 6 cantons with a large Protestant population in the northeast of the island still belonged to the United Kingdom. At this time, Ireland was still a state of England and nominally part of Britain.
The artificial division of north and south cannot bring about permanent peace. The IRA, which supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, changed its name to the Irish Defence Force, while those opposing the treaty blamed Collins for compromise and continued to resist in the name of the IRA. In the second year of the anglo-Irish Treaty, Collins died in an assassination by the IRA's opposition to the treaty.
For the Irish, this was only the first step towards national independence. On 1 April 1949, Ireland passed the Republic of Ireland Act, from which Ireland declared the abolition of the monarchy, secession from the Commonwealth and the establishment of a republic. On 18 April 1949, the United Kingdom recognized The Independence of Ireland but refused to return the 6 Northern Counties (Northern Ireland).
In the 1960s, under the influence of the Cold War, the IRA split again. It split into a "formal faction" that believed in Marxism and a "provisional faction" that continued to believe in Catholicism. Despite the separation, the big goal of both sides is the same: to return Northern Ireland to its homeland. Military strength can not drive out the British, then there is no other way. The two groups continue to carry out terrorist attacks. The official faction assassinated Irish Secretary-General Ari Neave in a parking lot outside the British Parliament, and the temporary faction targeted the war hero of World War II, Prince Charles's uncle, and the last British governor of India, Duke Mountbatten.
Between 1968 and July 2002, 3,600 people were killed in violent clashes in Northern Ireland and within the Republic of Ireland, and the IRA and other organisations were responsible for at least 2,000 of them. Mountbatten's life came to an end, but the story of Ireland and England continues.
Ireland counterattack
Before independence, the southern part of the island of Ireland was dominated by agriculture, while the northern part was an important industrial center in Britain. After independence, the Republic of Ireland completed the transition from a predominantly agricultural and pastoral economic structure to a knowledge-based economy, and now in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, the official language is English, which gives its business environment a first-mover advantage; a good education system has trained a high-quality employment workforce for Ireland; and a low tax system (corporate income tax of 12.5%) is a huge attraction for businesses. A large number of high-tech companies have set up European branches or manufacturing centers in Ireland, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline, Accenture, etc., covering information technology, biopharmaceuticals, Internet and other industries.
The per capita GDP of the entire Republic of Ireland has reached the top in the world, even higher than that of the United Kingdom, small countries are self-reliant, and the European green pearl has bloomed its own dazzling light after being reborn.