The Irish people are mainly of Celtic origin. The country's only significant minority descends from the Anglo-Normans. English is the common language, but Irish (Gaelic) also is an official language and is taught in the schools. A national literature in Irish is reemerging. Anglo-Irish writers--including Swift, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Burke, Wilde, Joyce, Yeats, Shaw, and Beckett--have made a contribution to world literature in the past 300 years disproportionate to the island's population, influence, and wealth.
What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archeology. The earliest inhabitant--people of a mid-stone age culture--arrived about 6000 B.C., when the climate had become hospitable following the retreat of the polar icecaps. About 4,000 years later, tribes from southern Europe arrived and established a high Neolithic culture in which gold ornaments and huge stone monuments figured prominently. This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. The bronze age people, who arrived during the next 1,000 years, produced elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons.
The iron age arrived abruptly in the fourth century B.C. with the invasion of the Celts, a tall, energetic people who had spread across Europe and Great Britain in the preceding centuries. The Celts, or Gaels, and their more numerous predecessors divided into five kingdoms in which, despite constant strife, a rich culture flourished. This society was dominated by druids--priests who served as educators, physicians, poets, diviners, and keepers of the laws and histories.
Tradition maintains that in A.D. 432, St. Patrick and his followers arrived on the island and, in the years that followed, worked to convert the people to Christianity. Probably a Celt himself, St. Patrick preserved the tribal and social patterns of the Celts, codifying their laws and only changing those that conflicted with Christian practices. He also introduced the Roman alphabet, which enabled Irish monks to preserve parts of the extensive Celtic oral literature.
Druidism collapsed in the face of the tireless presentation of the new faith by St. Patrick and his successors, and Celtic scholars soon excelled in the study of Latin learning and Christian theology in the monasteries St. Patrick established. Missionaries from Ireland spread news of this flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations came to Irish monasteries to escape the strife then ravaging the rest of Europe. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Dark Ages. The arts of illumination, metalwork, and sculpture flourished under the new system and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewelry, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island.
This golden age of culture was interrupted by 200 years of intermittent warfare with waves of Viking raiders who plundered monasteries and towns even as they made their own contribution by establishing Dublin and other seacoast towns. The Vikings were defeated eventually, but even though the Irish were free from invasion for 150 years, petty clan warfare continued to drain their energies and resources.
In the 12th century, Pope Adrian IV granted overlordship of the island to Henry II of England, who began a struggle between the Irish and the English that was to continue for more than 800 years and that has had effects lasting to the present day. The Reformation exacerbated the oppression of the Roman Catholic Irish, and, in the early 17th century, Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the north of Ireland and around Dublin.
From 1800 to 1921, Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom. Religious freedom was restored in 1829. Severe economic depression and mass famine occurred when the potato crop failed in the period 1846-48. In 1858 the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB-also known as the Fenians) was founded as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion against the British. A constitutional force for independence, the Home Rule Movement, was created in 1874. Under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, this party was able to force British governments after 1885 to introduce several Home Rule bills, although these were never adopted by Parliament. The turn of the century witnessed a surge of interest in Irish nationalism, including the founding of Sinn Fein as a political wing of the IRB.
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 put Home Rule efforts into cold storage for the United Kingdom, and in reaction, Padraic Pearse and James Connolly led the unsuccessful Easter Rising of 1916. The decision to execute several leaders of the rebellion alienated public opinion and produced massive support for Sinn Fein in the 1918 general election. Under the leadership of Eamon De Valera, Sinn Fein constituted itself as the first Dail. British attempts to smash Sinn Fein produced the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21, which ended in a truce.
The Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 established the Irish Free State of 26 counties within the British Commonwealth and recognized the partition Ireland as a temporary measure. The six predominantly Protestant counties of northeast Ulster chose to remain a part of the United Kingdom with limited self-government. A significant Irish minority repudiated the treaty settlement because of its opposition to partition. Furthermore, they advanced the concept of "external association" with the Commonwealth as an alternative to dominion status. This opposition led to a civil war (1922-23), won by the pro-treaty forces.
In 1937, the forces initially opposed to the treaty had gained control of the government, and a new Irish constitution was enacted. The last British military bases were withdrawn, and the ports were returned to Irish control. Ireland was neutral in World War II. The government formally declared Ireland a republic on Easter Monday 1948. However, it does not normally use the term "Republic of Ireland," which tacitly acknowledges the partition, but refers to the country simply as "Ireland."
Current Political Conditions
In the last general election on February 17, 1987, no single party won enough seats to form a majority government. However, on March 10, 1987, a minority government composed of the single largest party, Fianna Fail, took office, headed by Charles J. Haughey as prime minister, or Taoiseach (pronounced "TEE-shuck"). The two next largest parties in the Dail have so far supported the minority government in its economic austerity program. The next general election must be held by March 1992. President Hillery is now in his second (and final) term of office, with an election for a replacement scheduled for 1990.
The Northern Ireland problem remains a key concern. The six counties of Northern Ireland, an integral part of the United Kingdom, comprise about 900,000 Protestants and 600,000 Catholics. Since 1968, when conflict again erupted between the two groups, the status of Northern Ireland often has been the dominant factor in Ireland's relations with its closest neighbor.
In May 1983, the Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labor Party joined the three major southern parties in a "New Ireland Forum" to make recommendations aimed at a final peaceful resolution of the "Irish question." In May 1984, the Forum published an agreed nationalist position, reaffirming the aim of a united Ireland to be pursued only by democratic means and on the basis of agreement.
Intense negotiations beginning in 1984 culminated in the signature by Prime Ministers FitzGerald and Thatcher of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on November 15, 1985, at Hillsborough, Northern Ireland. In the landmark accord, the Irish Government gained a formal voice in the governing of Northern Ireland on behalf of the Catholic Nationalist community. The accord provides for change in the status of Northern Ireland only with the consent of a majority there but pledges support by both governments if unity is desired by a majority in the future.
The Anglo-Irish Agreement has provided a framework for dialogue and a common approach to the issue by neighbors often at odds in the past. The accord and the presence of Irish Government representatives in the North are powerful symbols for both nationalists and unionists. (The latter wishes to remain part of the United Kingdom.) Reforms designed to lessen the alienation of the nationalist minority community have been introduced. The U.S. Congress authorized a 3-year, $120-million contribution to the International Fund for Ireland in support of the new process aimed at ultimate peace and reconciliation.
Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, September 1988.