CHRONOLOGY OF IRISH HISTORY

The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia and/or

Scotia. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography
and tribes. Native accounts are confined to Irish poetry,
myth, and archaeology. The exact relationship between
Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear; the only
references are a few Roman writings.

In medieval times, a monarch (also known as the High

King) presided over the (then five) provinces of Ireland.
These provinces too had their own kings, who were at
least nominally subject to the monarch, who resided at
Tara. The written judicial system was the Brehon Law,
and it was administered by professional learned jurists
who were known as the Brehons.

According to early medieval chronicles, in 431,

Bishop Palladius arrived in Ireland on a mission from
Pope Celestine I to minister to the Irish "already
believing in Christ." The same chronicles record that
Saint Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, arrived in 432.
There is continued debate over the missions of
Palladius and Patrick, but the general consensus is
that they both existed and that 7th century annalists
may have mis-attributed some of their activities to
each other. Palladius most likely went to Leinster,
while Patrick is believed to have gone to Ulster, where
he probably spent time in captivity as a young man.
The druid tradition collapsed in the face of the spread of
the new religion. Irish Christian scholars excelled in the
study of Latin and Greek learning and Christian theology
in the monasteries that flourished, preserving Latin and
Greek learning during the Early Middle Ages. The arts of
manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture
flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of
Kells, ornate jewellery, and the many carved stone
crosses that dot the island. From the 9th century, waves
of Viking raiders plundered monasteries and towns,
adding to a pattern of endemic raiding and warfare.
Eventually Vikings settled in Ireland, and established
many towns, including the modern day cities of Dublin,
Cork, Limerick and Waterford.

From 1169, Ireland was entered by Cambro-Norman

warlords, led by Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke
(Strongbow), on an invitation from the then King of
Leinster. In 1171, King Henry II of England came to
Ireland, using the 1155 Bull Laudabiliter issued to him
by then Pope Adrian IV, an Englishman, to claim
sovereignty over the island, and forced the Cambro-
Norman warlords and some of the Gaelic Irish kings to
accept him as their overlord. From the 13th century,
English law began to be introduced. By the late thirteenth
century the Norman-Irish had established the feudal
system throughout most of lowland Ireland. Their
settlement was characterised by the establishment of
baronies, manors, towns and large land-owning monastic
communities, and the county system. The towns of
Dublin, Cork, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Galway,
New Ross, Kilkenny, Carlingford, Drogheda, Sligo,
Athenry, Arklow, Buttevant, Carlow, Carrick-on-Suir,
Cashel, Clonmel, Dundalk, Enniscorthy, Kildare,
Kinsale, Mullingar, Naas, Navan, Nenagh, Thurles,
Wicklow, Trim and Youghal were all under Norman-
Irish control.

In the 14th century the English settlement went into a

period of decline and large areas, for example Sligo, were
re-occupied by Gaelic septs (families, clans). The
medieval English presence in Ireland was deeply shaken
by Black Death, which arrived in Ireland in 1348.

1394 - Richard II leads expedition to subdue Ireland;

returns to England in 1395

From the late 15th century English rule was once again
expanded, first through the efforts of the Earls of Kildare
and Ormond then through the activities of the Tudor State
under Henry VIII and Mary and Elizabeth. This resulted
in the complete conquest of Ireland by 1603 and the
final collapse of the Gaelic social and political
superstructure at the end of the 17th century, as a
result of English and Scottish Protestant colonisation
in the Plantations of Ireland, and the disastrous Wars
of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War in
Ireland. Approximately 600,000 people, nearly half
the Irish population, died during the Cromwellian
conquest of Ireland.

1641 - Triennial Act requires Parliament to be

summoned every three years; Star Chamber and High
Commission abolished by Parliament; Catholics in
Ireland revolt; some 30,000 Protestants massacred;
Grand Remonstrance of Parliament to Charles I

After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Catholics were

barred from voting or attending the Irish Parliament. The
new English Protestant ruling class was known as the
Protestant Ascendancy.

1649 - Charles I is tried and executed; The

Commonwealth, in which ; England is governed as a
republic, is established and lasts until 1660; Cromwell
harshly suppresses Catholic rebellions in Ireland

1689 - Parliament draws up the Declaration of Right

detailing the unconstitutional acts of King James II.
James' daughter and her husband, his nephew, become
joint sovereigns of Britain as King William III and
Queen Mary II. Parliament passes the Bill of Rights.
Toleration Act grants rights to Trinitarian Protestant
dissenters. Catholic forces loyal to James II land in
Ireland from France and lay siege to Londonderry

1690 - King William defeats the Irish and French armies

of his father-in-law at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland

1691 - The Treaty of Limerick allows Catholics in

Ireland to exercise their religion freely, but severe penal
laws soon follow. The French War begins

Towards the end of the 18th century the entirely

Protestant Irish Parliament attained a greater degree of
independence from the British Parliament than it had
previously held. Under the Penal Laws no Irish Catholic
could sit in the Parliament of Ireland, even though some
90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic
when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. This
ban was followed by others in 1703 and 1709 as part of a
comprehensive system disadvantaging the Catholic
community, and to a lesser extent Protestant dissenters.
In 1798, many members of this dissenter tradition made
common cause with Catholics in a rebellion inspired and
led by the Society of United Irishmen. It was staged with
the aim of creating a fully independent Ireland as a state
with a republican constitution. Despite assistance from
France the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was put down by
British forces.

In 1800, the British and subsequently the

unrepresentative Irish Parliament passed the Act of
Union which, in 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland
and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The
passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was achieved
with substantial majorities, in part (according to
contemporary documents) through bribery, namely the
awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their
votes. Thus, Ireland became part of an extended United
Kingdom, ruled directly by the UK Parliament in
London.

The 19th century saw the 1821-23 Famine in Ireland

and the
Great Famine of the 1840s, during which one million
Irish people died and over a million emigrated.

By the 1840s as a result of the famine fully half of all

immigrants to the United States originated from
Ireland. A total of 35 million Americans (12% of total
population) reported Irish ancestry in the 2005
American Community Survey. Mass emigration
became entrenched as a result of the famine and the
population continued to decline until late in the 20th
century. The pre-famine peak was over 8 million
recorded in the 1841 census. The population has never
returned to this level.

The 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of Irish
Nationalism especially among the Catholic population.
Daniel O'Connell led a successful unarmed campaign for
Catholic Emancipation. A subsequent campaign for
Repeal of the Act of Union failed. Later in the century
Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for self
government within the Union or "Home Rule".

An armed rebellion took place with the Easter Rising of

1916, and the subsequent Irish War of Independence. In
1921, a treaty was concluded between the British
Government and the leaders of the Irish Republic. The
Treaty recognised the two-state solution created in the
Government of Ireland Act 1920. Northern Ireland was
presumed to form a home rule state within the new Irish
Free State unless it opted out. Northern Ireland had a
majority Protestant population and opted out as expected,
its in-built majority choosing to remain part of the United
Kingdom, incorporating within its border a significant
Catholic/Nationalist minority. A Boundary Commission
was set up to decide on the boundaries between the two
Irish states, though it was subsequently abandoned after
it recommended only minor adjustments to the border.
Disagreements over some provisions of the treaty led to
a split in the Nationalist movement and subsequently to
the Civil War. The civil war ended in 1923 with the
defeat of the Anti-treaty forces.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified by the Dáil (lower

House of Representatives in the Irish Parliament) in
December 1921 by a vote of 64 - 57. The minority
refused to accept the result and this resulted in the
beginning of the Irish Civil War, which lasted until 1923.
In 1922, in the middle of this civil war, the Irish Free
State came into being. During its early years the new
state was governed by the victors of the Civil War.
However, in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of the
opponents of the treaty, were elected into government.
The party proposed and the electorate accepted in a
referendum in 1937 a new constitution which renamed
the state "Éire or in the English language, Ireland"
(article 4 of the Constitution).
The state was neutral during World War II, which was
known internally as The Emergency. It offered some
assistance to the Allies, especially in Northern Ireland. It
is estimated that around 50,000 volunteers from
Éire/Ireland joined the British armed forces during the
second World War. In 1949, Ireland declared itself to be
a republic and that henceforth it should be described
additionally as the Republic of Ireland.
The Republic experienced large-scale emigration in the
1950s and again in the 1980s.
From 1987 the economy recovered and the 1990s saw the
beginning of unprecedented economic success, in a
phenomenon known as the "Celtic Tiger". By the early
2000s it had become one of the richest countries (in terms
of GDP per capita) in the European Union, moving from
being a net recipient of the budget to becoming a net
contributor during the next Budget round (2007-13), and
from a country of net emigration to one of net
immigration. In October 2006, there were talks between
Ireland and the U.S. to negotiate a new immigration
policy between the two countries, in response to the
growth of the Irish economy and desire of many U.S.
citizens who sought to move to Ireland for work.

Then, the financial crisis hit.

The 2008–2011 Irish financial crisis is a major

economic crisis in Ireland that is partly responsible for
the country falling into recession for the first time since
the 1980s. The Irish government officially announced it
was in recession in September 2008, with a sharp rise in
unemployment occurring in the following months.
Ireland was the first state in the Eurozone to enter
recession as declared by the Central Statistics Office.

Following are some of the key events of the financial

crisis in Ireland:
30 September 2010: Ireland's central bank reveals that
the cost of rescuing the banks, and in particular Anglo
Irish, following the financial crisis will push the public
deficit to 32 percent of gross domestic product in 2010,
from 11.6 percent currently.
- Prime Minister Brian Cowen's government promises a
four-year austerity plan to bring the deficit back under
three percent by 2014.
Early November: Investor unease at Ireland's public
finances sends the rate at which it can borrow money on
the financial markets soaring to record highs.
12 November 2010: The Irish government denies
rumours that it has asked the European Union for
financial help, saying it is well funded until mid-2011.
15 November 2010: Dublin admits it is in contact with
"international colleagues" over its economic difficulties
but denies making any bailout request.
16 November 2010: Finance ministers from the 16
Eurozone countries say they are ready to help support
the Irish banking sector if necessary as they seek to
ensure the stability of shared European currency.
18 November 2010: Experts from the European Union
and the International Monetary Fund arrive in Ireland to
assess the situation.
21 November 2010: European finance ministers and the
IMF agree to a massive loan for Ireland, estimated at
between 80 and 90 billion euros.
23 November 2010: Prime Minister Brian Cowen is
forced to call an election early in 2011 after the Green
Party, the junior partners in his coalition government,
demand that a vote take place after the austerity plan
and a December budget is passed.
24 November 2010: Dublin unveils a four-year plan
detailing plans to cut spending by 10 billion euros and
raise taxes by five billion euros as it seeks to slash its
budget deficit. But it rejects pressure from Berlin and
Paris to raise its low rate of corporation tax from 12.5
percent.
25 November 2010: Cowen's government sees its
majority in parliament fall to just two after the
opposition Sinn Fein party win a by-election in
Donegal.
27 November 2010: Tens of thousands of Irish
protesters take to the streets to denounce the austerity
measures and the bailout.
28 November 2010: International negotiators reach a
deal with Ireland on a bailout worth about 85 billion
euros.
2011 – 2019: Ireland recovers economically.