Fought between 1919 and 1921, this was a guerrilla and sectarian conflict involving Irish republicans, Ulster loyalists and British government forces.
The Troubles is a term used to describe a period of conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years, from the late 1960s until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. However, the origins of the Troubles can be traced back hundreds of years.
Coinciding largely with the Eleven Years' War, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland was led by Oliver Cromwell between 1649 and 1651, resulting in the confiscation of land from many native landowners and regranting to Parliamentarian supporters.
Over 200,000 men from Ireland fought in the war, in several theatres. About 30,000 died serving in Irish regiments of the British forces, and as many as 49,400 may have died altogether.
The United Irishmen launched a full-fledged revolt against British rule in May 1798, but their fight was short-lived. The British and loyal Irish forces swiftly crushed the Irish Revolution. In just five months, the fighting left over 30,000 Irish men, women, and children dead, regardless of their loyalties.
The history of Ireland from 1169–1536 covers the period from the arrival of the Cambro-Normans to the reign of Henry VIII of England, who made himself King of Ireland. After the Norman invasion of 1169–1171, Ireland was under an alternating level of control from Norman lords and the King of England.
Q: When did the English first invade Ireland? In the 12th century, England invaded Ireland, and English rule in Ireland followed shortly after. Q: Which English king invaded Ireland? King Henry II invaded Ireland in 1171 to establish control and English rule in Ireland.
Resistance to British rule in Ireland had existed for hundreds of years. Irish nationalists, the majority of them Catholic, resisted this rule in a number of peaceful or violent ways up until the start of the First World War. Irish nationalists wanted Ireland to be independent from British control.
The Irish would remain neutral throughout the war but were universally viewed as far more sympathetic and helpful to the Allies than the Axis. Despite their formal neutrality, the Irish experienced a number of aerial bomb attacks from German planes in 1940 and 1941.
A few decades later, the military defeat of Irish Catholic forces in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne allowed Britain to impose the Penal Laws on Ireland. They banned Catholics from public office and the legal profession, limited their opportunities for education and for practicing their religion.
Since England first invaded the country more than eight centuries ago, Ireland has suffered from war, religious conflict, and political division, and the encounter between the English and the Irish has also left a profound legacy on Irish culture and even in the landscape itself.
They are the Sidhe (pronounced “shee”) – mystical fairy-like people who supposedly inhabited Ireland prior to the arrival of the Celts (the Milesians). The Tuatha de Dannan are credited with naming Ireland.
Several splinter groups have been formed as a result of splits within the IRA, including the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, both of which are still active in the dissident Irish republican campaign.
It began because of the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) men fought the British soldiers because they wanted Ireland to be its own country and wanted Britain to move its army out of Ireland.
The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the term "Black Irish" referred to Irish people with black hair and dark features who were considered to be descended from Spanish sailors as depicted in Black Irish (folklore).
To date, Ireland has not sought to join as a full NATO member due to its traditional policy of military neutrality, although there is an ongoing debate on whether they will join in the future after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Ports and Trade
At the outbreak of the war, Ireland was isolated. Shipping had been neglected since independence. Foreign ships, on which Ireland had hitherto depended, were less available. Neutral American ships refused to enter the "war zone".
In the December 1918 election, republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in Ireland. On 21 January 1919 they formed a breakaway government (Dáil Éireann) and declared Irish independence.
In 1919 an Irish republic was proclaimed by Sinn Féin, an Irish nationalist party. Facing civil war in Ireland, Britain partitioned the island in 1920, with separate parliaments in the predominantly Protestant northeast and predominantly Catholic south and northwest.
The Troubles
From the late 1960s a civil rights movement broke out in Ulster to promote the political and social rights of the Irish Catholic minority there. This led to violence with the involvement of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on the Catholic side and the Ulster Defence Force (UDF) on the Protestant side.
Into the 21st century
In 2000, an estimated 1000 Irish citizens served in the British armed forces, 232 of whom were in the army. As of 2011, recruits from the Republic of Ireland together with Commonwealth recruits made up roughly 5% of annual recruitment to the British armed forces.
With the end of the Civil War, the National Army had grown too big for a peacetime role and was too expensive for the new Irish state to maintain. In addition, many of the civil war recruits were badly trained and undisciplined, making them unsuitable material for a full-time professional army.
In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence most of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom to become the independent Irish Free State but under the Anglo-Irish Treaty the six northeastern counties, known as Northern Ireland, remained within the United Kingdom, creating the partition of Ireland.