Shorter History of Ireland (1)
Published in History, Religion and MythologyPart 1: pre-history to 1600
Ireland’s location and proximity to Britain has in large measure shaped her history. From the earliest of times, migration and assimilation impacted the development of Ireland for millennia.
As an island to the west of continental Europe, Ireland, which has been inhabited for about 7,000 years, experienced a number of incursions and invasions, resulting in a rich mixture of ancestry and traditions. The first settlers, mostly hunters from Britain, brought with them a Mesolithic culture. Farmers who raised animals and cultivated the soil followed them around 3,000BC. Prospectors and Metalworkers followed about 2,000BC.
By the sixth century B.C. waves of Celtic invaders from Europe began to reach the country. While Ireland was never unified politically by the Celts, they did generate a cultural and linguistic unity.
The introduction of Christianity in the fifth century is traditionally credited to Saint Patrick, though there is evidence that there were Christians on the island before his arrival. Ireland never experienced the barbarian invasions of the early medieval period and, partly as a result, the sixth and seventh centuries saw a flowering of Irish art, learning and culture centring on the Irish monasteries. Irish monks established centres of learning and Christianity in many parts of Europe in the period before 800 A.D.
During the ninth and tenth centuries, the Vikings regularly raided Ireland. They were also traders and they did much to develop town life at Dublin, Cork and Waterford. Following the defeat of the Vikings by Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, at Clontarf in 1014, Viking influence in Ireland faded.
In the twelfth century, such progress as had been made towards the creation of a centralised State under a single High King was shattered by the arrival of the Normans, who had earlier settled in England and Wales. The Normans quickly came to control large parts of Ireland, which then came under the political authority of the King of England.
For the next four hundred years the Normans were an influential presence in Ireland. However, many areas of the country remained in Irish hands and, by the early sixteenth century, there were widespread fears in England that English influence was in danger of collapse, both as a result of Gaelic incursions and of the progressive Gaelicisation of the Norman settlers. Religious change in England at this time had a major impact in Ireland.
The descendants of the Norman settlers in Ireland, who came to be called the Old English, were, by and large, hostile to the Protestant reformation that led to the establishment of the Church of Ireland. In addition, the central strategic importance of Ireland, as an island close to both Britain and continental Europe, and hence a possible base for English malcontents or foreign enemies, gave Irish affairs a relevance in England that they had not had for centuries.
