Irish history (1)

Irish History
Tallinn 2009
Ireland is the third-largest island in Europe , and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north - west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain . Politically, the state Ireland ( described as the Republic of Ireland) covers five -sixths of the island, with Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, covering the remainder in the north-east.
The first settlements in Ireland date from 8000 BC. By 200 BC Celtic migration and influence had come to dominate the island. Relatively small scale settlement by both the Vikings and Normans in the Middle Ages gave way to complete English domination by the 1600s. Protestant English rule resulted in the marginalisation of the Catholic majority , although in the north-east, Protestants were in the majority. A famine in the mid-1800s caused deaths and emigration . Following a war of independence, Ireland was split into: the independent Irish Free State and Northern Ireland, which remains a part of the United Kingdom. The Free State left the Commonwealth to become a Republic in 1949. In 1973 both parts of Ireland joined the European Economic Community. The Troubles in Northern Ireland led to much unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s , which subsided following a peace deal in 1998.
The population of the island is slightly under 6 million (2006), with 4.2 million in the Republic of Ireland and an estimated almost 1.75 million in Northern Ireland. This is a significant increase from a modern historical low in the 1960s, but still much lower than the peak population of over 8 million in the early 19th century , prior to the Great Famine.
The name Ireland derives from the name of the Celtic goddess Ériu (in modern Irish, Éire) with the addition of the Germanic word land . Most other western European names for Ireland, such as French Irlande, derive from the same source.
A satellite picture of Ireland
The history of Ireland began with the first known settlement in Ireland around 8000 BC, when hunter-gatherers arrived from Great Britain and continental Europe, probably via a land bridge. Few archaeological traces remain of this group, but their descendants and later Neolithic arrivals , particularly from the Iberian Peninsula, were responsible for major Neolithic sites such as Newgrange. Following the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the early to mid-5th century A.D., Christianity subsumed the indigenous pagan religion by the year 600.
From around 800 A.D., more than a century of Viking invasions brought havoc upon the monastic culture and on the island's various regional dynasties, yet both of these institutions proved strong enough to survive and assimilate the invaders. The coming of Cambro-Norman mercenaries under Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, nicknamed Strongbow, in 1169 marked the beginning of more than 700 years of direct Norman and, later, English involvement in Ireland. The English crown did not begin asserting full control of the island until after the English Reformation , when questions over the loyalty of Irish vassals provided the initial impetus for a series of military campaigns between 1534 and 1691. This period was also marked by an English policy of plantation which led to the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers . As the military and political defeat of Gaelic Ireland became more clear in the early seventeenth century, the role of religion as a new division in Ireland became more pronounced. From this period on, sectarian conflict became a recurrent theme in Irish history.
The overthrow, in 1613, of the Catholic majority in the Irish parliament was realised principally through the creation of numerous new boroughs, all of which were Protestant-dominated. By the end of the seventeenth century all Catholics, representing some 85% of Ireland's population then, were banned from the Irish parliament. Political power rested entirely in the hands of a British settler-colonial, and more specifically Anglican, minority while the Catholic population suffered severe political and economic privations. In 1801, this colonial parliament was abolished and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. Catholics were still banned from sitting in that new parliament until Catholic Emancipation was attained in 1829, the principal condition of which was the removal of the poorer, and thus more radical, Irish freeholders from the franchise .
The Irish Parliamentary Party strove from the 1880s to attain Home Rule self- government through the parliamentary constitutional movement eventually winning the Home Rule Act 1914, though suspended on the outbreak of World War I. In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence, the southern twenty-six counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom (UK) to become the independent Irish Free State — and after 1948, the Republic of Ireland. The remaining six north eastern counties, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the UK.
The Irish tricolour
I chose the Irish history, because I have always loved history and reading /writing about it.
Used literature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland