nation draft Ireland
A small island with a long memory, a huge scattered family, and a habit of talking its way through hard things, now one of the most open societies in Europe.
Rock of Cashel · David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Understanding an Irish person in 5 minutes
-
A long memory of conquest
Many Irish people grow up with a story of resistance to English, then British, rule that runs from the Norman landing of 1169 through Cromwell, the plantations and the Penal Laws to the 1916 Rising. "Eight hundred years" is the popular shorthand. Historians complicate it: Normans became "more Irish than the Irish", many Irish served the Crown, and the story was not one long war. But the sense that the past is unfinished business still runs deep.
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
-
The Famine and the scattering
The Great Famine of 1845–52 killed about a million people and drove more than a million abroad. Ireland's population fell from about 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million ten years later, and kept falling for a century as emigration became a normal part of life. Today about 31.5 million Americans claim Irish ancestry. Almost every Irish family has a story of someone who left, and the diaspora feels like part of the nation, not an afterthought.
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan (1994)
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press (2012)
- Irish-American Heritage Month and St. Patrick's Day: March 2021 — U.S. Census Bureau (2021)
- The American Irish: A History — Kevin Kenny, Longman (2000)
-
Faith, and its fall
Under the Penal Laws, being Catholic became bound up with being Irish, and after independence the Catholic Church shaped schools, hospitals and law. From the 1990s revelations of abuse in parishes, industrial schools, Magdalen laundries and mother-and-baby homes broke that authority. In 2022, 69% of people in the Republic still called themselves Catholic, but weekly Mass and deference to bishops are far less common, and many feel anger alongside lingering attachment.
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2009)
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland (2009)
- Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes — Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, Government of Ireland (2021)
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 5: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion — Central Statistics Office (2023)
-
Two traditions on one island
Since 1921 the island has been divided. The Republic of Ireland covers 26 counties; Northern Ireland, six counties of Ulster, is part of the United Kingdom. In the North, most unionists, largely from Protestant backgrounds, see themselves as British; most nationalists, largely from Catholic backgrounds, as Irish. Their conflict, the Troubles, cost about 3,500 lives between 1969 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which lets people be Irish, British or both.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
- Census 2021: Main Statistics for Northern Ireland (religion and national identity) — Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2022)
- Northern Ireland — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
-
Talk, music and the craic
For a small country Ireland punches far above its weight in words: four Nobel laureates in literature (Yeats, Shaw, Beckett and Heaney) and a living tradition of song, storytelling and traditional music. Many Irish people prize humour, especially the gentle mockery called "slagging", along with modesty and conversation. Gaelic games, run by the volunteer-based GAA founded in 1884, tie parish and county identity together in a way few things do.
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The GAA: A People's History — Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The Collins Press (2009)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
-
A country that changed fast
In living memory Ireland went from a poor, emigrant, church-dominated society to a wealthy, diverse and liberal one. It joined the EEC in 1973, boomed as the "Celtic Tiger" from the mid-1990s, crashed in 2008 and recovered. In 2015 it became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote, and in 2018 two-thirds voted to repeal the constitutional ban on abortion. Older and younger Irish people can feel they grew up in different countries.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- The Irish Banking Crisis: Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003–2008 — Patrick Honohan, Central Bank of Ireland (2010)
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
- Ireland: History — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The story
Early Christian & Gaelic Ireland
400 – 1168 Saint Patrick and the coming of Christianity
A Romano-British former slave returns to Ireland as a missionary, and Christianity takes root on an island Rome never conquered.
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Read more
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press (2000)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Patrick is the patron saint and 17 March is the national day, celebrated worldwide. The monastic Christianity that followed made Ireland famous as an "island of saints and scholars", and religion became bound up with Irish identity for the next fifteen centuries.
Almost everything reliable we know about Patrick comes from two short Latin texts he wrote himself, the Confessio and a letter to the soldiers of a British chieftain called Coroticus.
Norman lordship & Gaelic revival
1169 – 1540 The Anglo-Norman invasion
Anglo-Norman knights invited by an exiled Irish king land in Wexford, and Henry II of England claims lordship over Ireland.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
Read more
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
1169 is the traditional starting point of "eight hundred years" of English rule in popular memory. It is also a reminder that history is messy: the invaders were invited in by an Irish king, and within a few generations many of them had become thoroughly Irish.
In 1166 Diarmait Mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurrough), king of Leinster, was driven out by rival Irish kings. He went to Henry II of England for help and recruited Anglo-Norman knights from Wales.
The beginning of English conquest and of the long struggle for Irish freedom, with Diarmait Mac Murchada remembered as the traitor who "brought in the foreigner".
Less a single conquest than the start of a partial, uneven lordship.
Conquest & plantation
1541 – 1690 The Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster
After the last great Gaelic lords flee Ireland, the Crown confiscates their lands in Ulster and settles them with English and Scottish Protestants.
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Read more
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The Plantation laid the foundations of Northern Ireland's two communities: largely Protestant descendants of settlers, many identifying as British, and largely Catholic descendants of the native Irish. Today's map of loyalties in the North still echoes it.
Under the Tudors, England set out to complete the conquest of Ireland. The Nine Years' War (1594–1603), led by Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, was the last great Gaelic resistance; it was broken after the defeat of O'Neill and his Spanish allies at Kinsale in 1601.
A colonial land-grab that dispossessed the native Irish and planted a hostile population, the root of partition and the Troubles.
The founding of a hard-working Protestant community that turned Ulster into Ireland's most prosperous province, with roots now more than four hundred years deep.
The 1641 Rising and Cromwell's conquest
A Catholic rising in Ulster begins a decade of war that ends with Oliver Cromwell's brutal reconquest and the transfer of most Catholic-owned land to Protestants.
- God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland — Micheál Ó Siochrú, Faber and Faber (2008)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
Read more
- God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland — Micheál Ó Siochrú, Faber and Faber (2008)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
Cromwell is perhaps the most hated figure in Irish popular memory, and "the curse of Cromwell on you" survived as an insult. Meanwhile the 1641 massacres of Protestant settlers became a foundation story of Ulster Protestant fear. Both sides remember different victims of the same decade.
In October 1641 Catholic Irish in Ulster rose against the settlers. Thousands of Protestants were killed or died as refugees, and English pamphlets inflated the numbers into the hundreds of thousands, which fed lasting fear and anger in Britain.
Cromwell's massacres at Drogheda and Wexford and the confiscations that followed were a near-genocidal assault that turned the Catholic Irish into a dispossessed people.
The 1641 rising, with its killings of settlers at places like Portadown, showed the danger Protestants faced, and remained a powerful memory for centuries.
Historians now put the settlers killed in 1641 in the low thousands, far below contemporary propaganda claims, while debating how far Cromwell's atrocities exceeded the norms of the day; Micheál Ó Siochrú argues they were exceptional in their ruthlessness.
The Battle of the Boyne and the Penal Laws
William of Orange defeats the Catholic James II at the Boyne, and the victors pass laws that shut Catholics out of power for more than a century.
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
Read more
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
The Boyne is still celebrated by Orange Order parades every "Twelfth" of July in Northern Ireland, and those parades can still raise tensions. For Catholics, the Penal Laws are remembered through "Mass rocks" and "hedge schools", and they welded Catholicism to Irish identity.
After the Catholic James II lost the English throne in 1688, he tried to win it back through Ireland, where most of the population, and his viceroy's army, were Catholic. On 1 July 1690 (in the old calendar, 11 July in today's) William III defeated him at the River Boyne near Drogheda.
The Boyne secured Protestant liberty and constitutional monarchy against Catholic absolutism, a victory for "civil and religious liberty" worth celebrating every year.
The defeat that sealed Catholic dispossession, followed by laws meant to keep the majority poor and powerless; the parades are often felt as triumphalism.
The Protestant Ascendancy
1691 – 1800 The 1798 Rebellion of the United Irishmen
Inspired by the French Revolution, the United Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, rise for an Irish republic and are crushed.
- The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 — Thomas Pakenham, Hodder and Stoughton (1969)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Read more
- The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 — Thomas Pakenham, Hodder and Stoughton (1969)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Wolfe Tone's dream of uniting "Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter" under "the common name of Irishman" is the founding idea of Irish republicanism, quoted by every tradition from Sinn Féin to peace-process moderates. The rebellion's songs, like "Boolavogue", are still sung.
The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast in 1791 by mainly Protestant radicals, among them the Dublin lawyer Theobald Wolfe Tone. Inspired by the American and French revolutions, they first sought parliamentary reform and Catholic rights, then, once suppressed, an independent republic with French help.
The Union: famine, land & Home Rule
1801 – 1915 The Act of Union
The Irish parliament is abolished and Ireland becomes part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
Read more
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
The Union defined the next 120 years of Irish politics, which turned on repealing or defending it. The words "unionist" and "union flag" in Northern Ireland come directly from it, and the Union still exists for the six counties of the North.
After 1798, Prime Minister William Pitt decided the separate Irish parliament in Dublin, controlled by the Protestant Ascendancy, could not be trusted to keep Ireland stable. In 1800 the Irish parliament voted itself out of existence, after a first defeat and a campaign that used titles, offices and compensation to win votes.
Ireland's parliament was bought out of existence through bribery and patronage, and the promised Catholic Emancipation was then broken.
The Union made Ireland an equal partner in the world's greatest empire and protected the Protestant minority; industrial Ulster prospered under it.
Catholic Emancipation
Daniel O'Connell's mass movement forces Westminster to let Catholics sit in parliament and hold high office.
- O'Connell, Daniel — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Read more
- O'Connell, Daniel — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
O'Connell showed that a mobilised, peaceful mass of ordinary people could win against the state. That model of constitutional nationalism runs through Parnell to John Hume.
In the 1820s Daniel O'Connell built the Catholic Association, funded by a "Catholic rent" of a penny a month that brought poor tenants and priests into politics on a scale never seen before. In 1828 he won a by-election in County Clare though, as a Catholic, he could not take his seat.
The Great Famine (An Gorta Mór)
Potato blight and a failed government response kill about a million people and drive more than a million to emigrate.
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan (1994)
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press (2012)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Read more
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan (1994)
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press (2012)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
The Famine is the hinge of modern Irish history. It emptied the countryside, made emigration a way of life, created the global Irish diaspora and hardened nationalist anger at British rule. Treating it as a mere natural disaster, or joking about it, deeply offends many Irish people.
2 million people in 1841. Around a third of them, mostly labourers and small tenants in the west and south, depended almost entirely on the potato, which grew well on tiny plots of poor land. Many rented from landlords, often absentee, who had little stake in their welfare.
A catastrophe made by British policy: food was exported while people starved, and some, following the nineteenth-century nationalist John Mitchel, have called it genocide.
Blight caused the crop failure, but government choices turned it into mass death: relief was inadequate, shaped by free-market dogma, providentialism and prejudice, and cut back too soon.
Officials such as Charles Trevelyan saw the Famine as a chance to reform Irish society and insisted Irish property must pay for Irish poverty.
The Land War
Tenant farmers organised in the Land League fight evictions and high rents, and a series of acts eventually turns them into owners.
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Read more
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The Land War gave the English language the word "boycott" and turned Ireland into a nation of small farm-owners. The intense attachment many rural Irish families still have to land, and the sense that it was hard won, go back to it.
A run of bad harvests in the late 1870s raised the threat of another famine and mass evictions. In October 1879 Michael Davitt, a Mayo-born former Fenian prisoner whose family had been evicted when he was a child, founded the Irish National Land League, with Charles Stewart Parnell as its president.
Home Rule and the Ulster crisis
Irish nationalists come close to winning self-government within the UK, while Ulster unionists arm to resist it.
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
Read more
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
The Home Rule crisis set the shape of partition. Unionists' readiness to defy parliament by force, and nationalists' answer in kind, introduced the gun into modern Irish politics. The Ulster Covenant remains a founding text for unionists.
Parnell's Irish Parliamentary Party won 85 of Ireland's 103 seats in 1885, and Gladstone's Liberals adopted Home Rule, a Dublin parliament for domestic affairs within the UK. The first bill was defeated in the Commons in 1886 and the second in the Lords in 1893.
A modest, democratic demand backed by most Irish voters was blocked by a minority's threat of force, with the support of the British Conservative party.
"Home Rule is Rome Rule": a Dublin parliament would be dominated by the Catholic Church and would wreck Ulster's industrial economy and British identity.
Revolution & partition
1916 – 1923 The Easter Rising
A few thousand rebels seize central Dublin and proclaim an Irish Republic; the rising fails, but the executions that follow transform Irish opinion.
- Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane (2005)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- 1916 Necrology: the people killed in the Easter Rising — Glasnevin Trust (2016)
Read more
- Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane (2005)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- 1916 Necrology: the people killed in the Easter Rising — Glasnevin Trust (2016)
The Rising is the founding moment of the independent Irish state. Its Proclamation is read at commemorations, hung in schools and quoted in debates about what the Republic owes its citizens. Its legacy is also argued over: whether a minority's use of force without a mandate set a pattern later claimed by the IRA in the Troubles.
By 1916 Home Rule was on the statute book but suspended, and many feared it would never come, or would come without Ulster. Inside the Irish Volunteers, a secret group, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, planned a rising while Britain was at war, hoping for German help.
A noble "blood sacrifice" that reawakened the nation and led directly to independence; the leaders are national heroes.
A rebellion by a small, unelected minority during a world war, which killed more civilians than combatants and arguably undermined a peaceful route to Home Rule.
A stab in the back while Ulster's men were dying at the Somme two months later; it confirmed unionists' determination to stay out of an Irish state.
The War of Independence, partition and the Treaty
Sinn Féin declares independence and the IRA fights a guerrilla war; Ireland is partitioned, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty creates the Irish Free State.
- The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918–1923 — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane (2013)
- The Irish War of Independence — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan (2002)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Dead of the Irish Revolution — Eunan O'Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin, Yale University Press (2020)
Read more
- The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918–1923 — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane (2013)
- The Irish War of Independence — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan (2002)
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Dead of the Irish Revolution — Eunan O'Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin, Yale University Press (2020)
These three years created both of today's jurisdictions on the island: Northern Ireland, which stayed in the UK, and the state that became the Republic of Ireland. The split over the Treaty shaped the two main parties of the Republic, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, for a century.
On 21 January 1919, the Sinn Féin MPs elected in 1918 refused to go to Westminster and met in Dublin's Mansion House as Dáil Éireann, the parliament of a declared Irish Republic. The same day, Volunteers at Soloheadbeg in Tipperary shot dead two policemen guarding explosives, an act often taken as the start of the war.
A democratic mandate, the 1918 election, was met with repression, and a people's guerrilla war forced the world's largest empire to negotiate.
Northern Ireland was the only way to protect a British, Protestant community from rule by a Catholic, nationalist Dublin, and its creation was a legitimate act of self-determination.
A campaign of "murder" by a minority that had to be suppressed, until the cost and international criticism led Lloyd George to seek a settlement that kept Ireland in the Empire.
The Irish Civil War
Former comrades fight over the Treaty; the pro-Treaty Free State wins, but the bitterness lasts generations.
- Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan (1988)
- Irish Civil War Fatalities Project: Research Findings — Andy Bielenberg and John Dorney, University College Cork
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
Read more
- Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan (1988)
- Irish Civil War Fatalities Project: Research Findings — Andy Bielenberg and John Dorney, University College Cork
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
"Civil War politics" shaped the Republic for most of a century: Fine Gael descends from the pro-Treaty side and Fianna Fáil from the anti-Treaty side. Many families still know which side their grandparents took, and for decades the war was rarely talked about.
After anti-Treaty IRA men occupied the Four Courts in Dublin, the Provisional Government under Collins, under British pressure, shelled them on 28 June 1922. The better-armed National Army soon took the cities and towns, and the war became a guerrilla struggle, worst in Munster.
The Treaty was approved by the Dáil and by voters in the June 1922 election; the government had to defend democracy against armed men who would not accept it.
The Treaty was signed under threat of "immediate and terrible war" and betrayed the Republic declared in 1916 and 1919; the Free State's executions of prisoners were a crime.
From Free State to Republic
The Free State consolidates democracy, de Valera's 1937 Constitution creates "Éire", Ireland stays neutral in the Second World War, and in 1949 it becomes a republic outside the Commonwealth.
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- de Valera, Éamon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
Read more
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- de Valera, Éamon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
The 1937 Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, is still in force, and many of the referendums that have remade modern Ireland have been fights over its Catholic-era wording. Wartime neutrality remains a cherished, and debated, part of Irish identity.
Despite being born in civil war, the Irish Free State became a stable parliamentary democracy. In 1932 the defeated anti-Treaty side, now de Valera's Fianna Fáil, won power and the outgoing government handed it over peacefully, a significant moment in interwar Europe.
Two states, the Troubles
1924 – 1997 The Troubles
Civil rights protests in Northern Ireland spiral into three decades of violence between republican and loyalist paramilitaries and the British state, killing about 3,500 people.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing (1999)
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA — Richard English, Macmillan (2003)
Read more
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing (1999)
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA — Richard English, Macmillan (2003)
The Troubles are within living memory, and almost every family in Northern Ireland has a story. Questions of truth, justice and who deserves to be called a victim are still raw, Belfast's "peace walls" still stand, and the language people use about the conflict often reveals where they come from.
Northern Ireland was built to have a permanent unionist majority, and for fifty years the Ulster Unionist Party governed it from Stormont. Catholics, about a third of the population, faced discrimination in housing, jobs and local voting, where gerrymandered wards such as those in Derry gave unionists control of a Catholic-majority city.
The conflict grew out of a sectarian state that discriminated against Catholics and met peaceful protest with batons and bullets.
A terrorist campaign, waged mainly by the IRA, to force a British people into a united Ireland against their will.
Britain presented itself as a neutral peacekeeper holding the ring between two warring communities.
For many ordinary people the Troubles were less a war than a background of fear: security checks, bomb scares, sectarian murders and the careful avoidance of the wrong street or the wrong question.
Celtic Tiger, crash and a changed society
EU membership, a boom, a crash and the collapse of Church authority turn Ireland into one of Europe's most liberal societies, sealed by the 2015 and 2018 referendums.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- The Irish Banking Crisis: Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003–2008 — Patrick Honohan, Central Bank of Ireland (2010)
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland (2009)
Read more
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- The Irish Banking Crisis: Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003–2008 — Patrick Honohan, Central Bank of Ireland (2010)
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland (2009)
Older and younger Irish people can feel they grew up in different countries. The referendums on marriage and abortion are remembered as moments when the country redefined itself, and the 2008 crash and its austerity still shape attitudes to banks, housing and the EU.
Ireland joined the European Economic Community with the UK in 1973. EU funds, free education (introduced from 1967), a young workforce and a low corporate tax rate that drew American tech and pharmaceutical firms fuelled a boom from the mid-1990s, the "Celtic Tiger".
A long-overdue escape from a narrow, Church-dominated past toward a fairer, more open Ireland.
A minority, about a third in 2015 and 2018, see a loss of the country's moral and Christian foundations, and especially oppose the abortion law.
Peace & a changed Ireland
1998 – today The Good Friday Agreement
After paramilitary ceasefires and two years of talks, the British and Irish governments and most Northern Ireland parties sign a peace agreement, endorsed by referendums North and South.
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
- The 1998 Referendums — ARK Northern Ireland Elections, ARK (Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Read more
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
- The 1998 Referendums — ARK Northern Ireland Elections, ARK (Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
The Agreement is the foundation of today's peace. It is why there is no visible border on the island, why people in Northern Ireland can be Irish, British or both, and why any change to the North's status depends on a vote. Defending it shaped Ireland's whole approach to Brexit.
The peace process grew out of quiet contacts in the late 1980s and early 1990s: between John Hume of the SDLP and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, between Sinn Féin and the British government through back channels, and between the British and Irish governments, whose 1993 Downing Street Declaration said Britain had "no selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland.
A historic compromise that ended the violence, secured equality and an Irish dimension, and opened a peaceful, democratic path to a united Ireland through a future referendum.
Divided.
A landmark settlement, built on Britain's earlier statements that it had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland, committing it to respect the wishes of the people there.
Brexit and the Irish border
The UK votes to leave the EU, turning the open Irish border into the hardest problem of the negotiations.
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- The Windsor Framework — UK Government and European Commission (2023)
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
Read more
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- The Windsor Framework — UK Government and European Commission (2023)
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
Brexit put the island's only land border back at the centre of politics, revived talk of Irish unity, and unsettled unionists who felt the solution separated them from Britain. Many people in the Republic saw it as a test of whether Europe would stand by a small member state, and it did.
8% to remain. Since the Good Friday Agreement and the EU single market, the 500-kilometre border had become almost invisible, crossed daily by commuters, farmers and goods. Leaving the EU's customs union and single market meant checks had to happen somewhere.
Any border infrastructure would threaten the peace and the all-island economy built since 1998; the Protocol and Windsor Framework are the price of protecting the Good Friday Agreement.
The "Irish Sea border" for goods treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK and weakens the Union; the DUP's opposition led it to boycott Stormont from 2022 to 2024.
Many in the cross-community centre, and many businesses, argue the Windsor Framework has given Northern Ireland a unique advantage, access to both the UK and EU markets, and that the priority should be making it work rather than reopening the fight.
Core values & worldview
If you want to understand an Irish person, start with the fact that the past is never quite past. Ireland’s modern story was shaped by conquest: the Norman arrival in 1169, the Tudor and Stuart plantations, Cromwell’s campaign, and laws that for much of the eighteenth century barred the Catholic majority from power and much of property.
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan (1997)
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press (2001)
- God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland — Micheál Ó Siochrú, Faber and Faber (2008)
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
That history helps explain a few things you will often notice.
Fairness and the underdog. A people who lost their land, their language and, in the Famine, a quarter of their population tend to notice injustice. Ireland has a long record of UN peacekeeping and of sympathy for small nations and the colonised, and many Irish people instinctively side with the underdog.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
Community and place. Who your people are and where you’re from matters. The parish and the county still carry real weight, nowhere more than on a GAA pitch, where you play for the place you were born.
- The GAA: A People's History — Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The Collins Press (2009)
Talk and humour. Conversation is a pleasure, not a transaction. Many Irish people use humour, including affectionate mockery (“slagging”), to keep everyone level; boasting is frowned on and self-deprecation is a social skill. The old saying “Whatever you say, say nothing”, which Seamus Heaney used as a poem title, captures another side of this: a learned caution, especially in the North, about saying too much about where you stand.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Family and faith, renegotiated. The Catholic Church was once the backbone of Irish social life. It is now a contested presence: 69% of people in the Republic named themselves Catholic in the 2022 census, down from 79% in 2016, while 14% said they had no religion. The census office warns the question wording changed, so the drop is partly a measurement effect.
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 5: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion — Central Statistics Office (2023)
- Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2009)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Daily life & customs
Much social life still happens in the pub, though it is as much about company as drink, and the Irish pub has been changing fast as rural pubs close. A “session” of traditional music, with fiddles, flutes, bodhrán and whoever turns up, is one of the great informal institutions.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Sport is a kind of civic religion. The Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884 to revive native games, runs hurling, camogie and Gaelic football on an amateur, volunteer basis through clubs in almost every parish on the island, North and South.
- The GAA: A People's History — Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The Collins Press (2009)
Death is handled in a distinctive way. The wake, with the body at home or in a funeral home, neighbours calling in, tea, sandwiches and stories, and large funerals are still common, and turning up “to sympathise” matters a great deal.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
The Irish language, Gaeilge, is the first official language of the Republic and compulsory in schools. In the 2022 census about 1.87 million people, 40% of those aged three and over, said they could speak it, but only about 72,000 said they speak it daily outside the education system, many of them in the Gaeltacht areas of the west coast.
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 8: The Irish Language and the Gaeltacht — Central Statistics Office (2023)
The calendar has its own shape: St Patrick’s Day on 17 March, St Brigid’s Day on 1 February (a public holiday since 2023), Easter, and Christmas, when emigrants come home and the airports fill up.
Wounds & sensitivities
The Famine. An Gorta Mór, “the great hunger”, is the deepest wound in modern Irish memory. About a million people died and more than a million emigrated in 1845–52.
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan (1994)
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan (1994)
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press (2012)
Emigration. Generations left because they had to: after the Famine, in the 1950s, when hundreds of thousands went to Britain, in the 1980s and again after the 2008 crash. Many families feel that loss.
- The Irish in Post-War Britain — Enda Delaney, Oxford University Press (2007)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Church and state abuse. The reports of the last three decades are a raw wound. The Ryan Report (2009) documented abuse in industrial schools run by religious orders. The Mother and Baby Homes commission (2021) found that about 9,000 children died in the 18 institutions it investigated. The State apologised to women held in Magdalen laundries in 2013.
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland (2009)
- Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes — Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, Government of Ireland (2021)
- Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries — Inter-Departmental Committee chaired by Martin McAleese, Government of Ireland (2013)
The Troubles. About 3,500 people were killed in the Northern Ireland conflict between 1969 and 2001, most of them civilians. Almost every family in the North was touched by it, and many questions, about who killed whom and who knew, remain unanswered.
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing (1999)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Being lumped in with Britain. Calling Ireland part of the UK, or calling Irish people “British”, touches a nerve in the Republic. Calling the islands “the British Isles” can too. (In Northern Ireland identity is more complicated, see below.)
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties (1998)
- Census 2021: Main Statistics for Northern Ireland (religion and national identity) — Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2022)
Modern attitudes
Liberal on social questions. The Republic decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 and legalised divorce by a narrow referendum in 1995. In 2015, 62% voted for same-sex marriage, and in 2018, 66.4% voted to remove the constitutional ban on abortion.
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
- Referendum results on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland (data.gov.ie) (2018)
- Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2009)
Pro-European. EU membership since 1973 is widely seen as having helped Ireland step out of Britain’s shadow, and Brexit, which threatened a hard border, strengthened that feeling.
- Ireland: History — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Windsor Framework — UK Government and European Commission (2023)
A country of immigration. The Republic’s population passed five million in 2022 for the first time since before the Famine, driven partly by immigration.
- Census of Population 2022 – Summary Results — Central Statistics Office (2023)
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press (2012)
Unity: a hope, not a priority for most. Surveys show strong in-principle support for a united Ireland in the Republic, about two-thirds in a 2022 ARINS/Irish Times survey, but in Northern Ireland a 2023 survey found 30% for unity and 51% against.
- ARINS/Irish Times North and South Surveys — ARINS (Royal Irish Academy and University of Notre Dame) and The Irish Times, Royal Irish Academy (2023)
Not all Irish people are the same
North and South. The Republic and Northern Ireland have been separate jurisdictions for over a century, with different schools, health systems, currencies and political parties. People in the North often call the Republic “the South”; unionists may call it “the Free State” or simply “Éire”.
- Northern Ireland — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and unionist. In Northern Ireland’s 2021 census, 45.7% were Catholic or brought up Catholic and 43.5% Protestant or other Christian, the first time Catholics outnumbered Protestants. Asked about national identity, 31.9% said British only, 29.1% Irish only and 19.8% Northern Irish only.
- Census 2021: Main Statistics for Northern Ireland (religion and national identity) — Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2022)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Urban and rural. Dublin is a fast-paced, expensive European capital, and more than a quarter of the Republic’s people live in County Dublin. Rural Ireland, especially in the west, has its own pace, its own politics and a sharp sense of being left behind on jobs, broadband, post offices and pubs.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Generations. Those who grew up before the 1990s remember a poor, emigrant and devout Ireland, with the Church at the centre of life. Those born after it grew up in prosperity, the internet and the referendums of 2015 and 2018, but many now face a housing crisis that keeps them living with their parents or sends them to Australia and Canada.
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
Travellers. Irish Travellers, a nomadic ethnic minority with their own customs and language (Cant or Gammon), were recognised as an ethnic group by the State in 2017 and still face heavy discrimination.
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 5: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion — Central Statistics Office (2023)
The diaspora. Some 31.5 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, and there are large Irish-descended communities in Britain, Australia, Canada and Argentina.
- Irish-American Heritage Month and St. Patrick's Day: March 2021 — U.S. Census Bureau (2021)
- The American Irish: A History — Kevin Kenny, Longman (2000)
- The Irish in Post-War Britain — Enda Delaney, Oxford University Press (2007)
- The Irish in Australia — Patrick O'Farrell, New South Wales University Press (1986)
- Becoming irlandés: Private Narratives of the Irish Emigration to Argentina, 1844–1912 — Edmundo Murray (2006)
Meeting someone
Conversation starters
- Where they’re from. Ask about their county and you will often get a story. If they play or follow GAA, ask about the local team; the All-Ireland is a big deal.
- The GAA: A People's History — Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The Collins Press (2009)
- Music, writing and telly. Heaney, Joyce, Normal People, Derry Girls, the Pogues or a local trad session are all good openings.
- Family abroad. Almost everyone has relatives in America, England or Australia, and they’re happy to talk about them.
- The Irish in Post-War Britain — Enda Delaney, Oxford University Press (2007)
- The American Irish: A History — Kevin Kenny, Longman (2000)
- Banter. Expect to be slagged a little; take it in good part and give a bit back. It is usually a sign you’re being accepted.
Topics to approach carefully
- The North. Don’t assume everyone from Northern Ireland is Irish, or British. Listen for how they describe themselves. Even the name of a city (Derry or Londonderry) can signal a side.
- Census 2021: Main Statistics for Northern Ireland (religion and national identity) — Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2022)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- The IRA and the Troubles. People from all communities lost family. Don’t romanticise the IRA, joke about bombs, or assume the British state was a neutral referee.
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing (1999)
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office (2010)
- The Church. Someone may be devout, angry, or both. Avoid assuming either.
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland (2009)
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 5: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion — Central Statistics Office (2023)
- The Famine. Never joke about it or treat it as just bad luck.
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press (1999)
- Brexit. In Ireland it is seen less as a British domestic matter and more as something done to the island without its consent.
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK) (2016)
- The Windsor Framework — UK Government and European Commission (2023)
Common misconceptions
- “Ireland is part of the UK.” The Republic of Ireland has been independent since 1922 and a republic since 1949. Only Northern Ireland is part of the UK.
- Ireland: History — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- “The Irish are all big drinkers.” Ireland drinks a lot by global standards, but the stereotype grates, and a sizeable minority of Irish people do not drink at all.
- “It’s all about religion.” The Troubles were about national identity, power and civil rights. Catholic and Protestant were labels for two communities, not a theological dispute.
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA — Richard English, Macmillan (2003)
- “St Patrick’s Day is the Irish Fourth of July.” Much of the green-beer spectacle was built in America. In Ireland it is a national holiday, parade and party, but also a religious feast day.
- The American Irish: A History — Kevin Kenny, Longman (2000)
- “Irish is a dead language.” It is spoken daily by a small minority, but it is very much alive in the Gaeltacht, Irish-medium schools, TG4, music and a new generation of speakers, North and South.
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 8: The Irish Language and the Gaeltacht — Central Statistics Office (2023)
People everyone knows
Daniel O'Connell
"The Liberator". A Kerry Catholic lawyer who turned Ireland's Catholic majority into a mass, peaceful political movement and won Catholic Emancipation in 1829. His later campaign to repeal the Act of Union failed, but he set the pattern of non-violent, mass constitutional nationalism that Parnell and later John Hume followed. He rejected political violence throughout his career.
- O'Connell, Daniel — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Charles Stewart Parnell
A Protestant landlord from Wicklow who became "the uncrowned king of Ireland". He led the Irish Parliamentary Party and, with Michael Davitt, the Land League, and persuaded Gladstone to back Home Rule in 1886. His fall in 1890, after his relationship with the married Katharine O'Shea became public, split Irish nationalism bitterly, a split remembered in Joyce's Christmas dinner scene in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
- Parnell, Charles Stewart — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
Edward Carson
A Dublin-born barrister who led Ulster unionism's resistance to Home Rule, first to sign the Ulster Covenant in 1912 and figurehead of the armed Ulster Volunteer Force. He hoped to keep all of Ireland in the Union and was dismayed by partition, but he is remembered as a founding figure of Northern Ireland; his statue stands outside Stormont.
- Carson, Edward Henry — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2003)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Michael Collins
A west Cork man who fought in the 1916 Rising and became the IRA's organiser of intelligence and guerrilla war in 1919–21, while also running the underground republic's finances. He signed the 1921 Treaty, arguing it gave "the freedom to achieve freedom", led the pro-Treaty side in the Civil War and was killed in an ambush at Béal na Bláth in August 1922, aged 31. Still a hero to many, and the subject of Neil Jordan's 1996 film.
- Collins, Michael — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- The Irish War of Independence — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan (2002)
- The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918–1923 — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane (2013)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Éamon de Valera
New York-born, raised in Limerick, the senior surviving commandant of 1916. He led the anti-Treaty side in 1922, founded Fianna Fáil in 1926, and dominated independent Ireland for four decades as head of government and then president (1959–73). His 1937 Constitution and wartime neutrality defined the state's independence; his Catholic, rural, inward-looking vision is now debated as much as admired.
- de Valera, Éamon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press (1989)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
John Hume
A Derry teacher who came out of the civil rights movement, co-founded the SDLP and argued for decades that Northern Ireland's divisions could only be healed by agreement between its peoples, not by force. His secret talks with Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams helped open the road to the 1994 ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement. He shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with unionist leader David Trimble.
- Hume, John — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- John Hume – Nobel Lecture — John Hume, Nobel Foundation (1998)
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press (2000)
Mary Robinson
A constitutional lawyer from Mayo who campaigned for contraception, women's and gay rights when they were unpopular causes, then in 1990 became Ireland's first woman president. She thanked "mná na hÉireann" for electing her, kept a light in her window for the emigrant diaspora, and became a symbol of a more open, outward-looking Ireland. She was later UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002).
- Mary Robinson — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- President Robinson's Acceptance Speech, 9 November 1990 — Mary Robinson, Office of the President of Ireland (1990)
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books (2004)
Try it yourself
The quickest way into a culture: a song, a film, a book and a dish.
“We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”
“No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.”
“Difference is of the essence of humanity.”
Listen
Watch
Read
Taste
- Soda bread and the fry Brown soda bread with butter, and the full Irish (or Ulster fry, with potato and soda farls) of rashers, sausages and black and white pudding.Recipe
See & do
- The Book of Kells An illuminated gospel book made by monks around 800, now at Trinity College Dublin; the high point of early Irish Christian art.Look it up
- Derry Girls Lisa McGee's sitcom about teenagers in 1990s Derry, loved on both sides of the border for finding the comedy in growing up during the Troubles.Look it up
- Hurling and Gaelic football Amateur, fast and fiercely local; the GAA's All-Ireland finals at Croke Park are national events.Look it up
Where
Homeland Diaspora Significant place
Related
Sources & further reading
- Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 — Alvin Jackson, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003
- Irish Civil War Fatalities Project: Research Findings — Andy Bielenberg and John Dorney, University College Cork
- ARINS/Irish Times North and South Surveys — ARINS (Royal Irish Academy and University of Notre Dame) and The Irish Times, Royal Irish Academy, 2023
- Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey — ARK (Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University)
- The 1998 Referendums — ARK Northern Ireland Elections, ARK (Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University)
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 5: Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion — Central Statistics Office, 2023
- Census of Population 2022 – Profile 8: The Irish Language and the Gaeltacht — Central Statistics Office, 2023
- Census of Population 2022 – Summary Results — Central Statistics Office, 2023
- Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane, 2005
- The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918–1923 — Charles Townshend, Allen Lane, 2013
- This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845–52 — Christine Kinealy, Gill and Macmillan, 1994
- Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes — Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, Government of Ireland, 2021
- Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) — Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Government of Ireland, 2009
- Black '47 and Beyond: The Great Irish Famine in History, Economy, and Memory — Cormac Ó Gráda, Princeton University Press, 1999
- Making Sense of the Troubles — David McKittrick and David McVea, Blackstaff Press, 2000
- Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles — David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton, Mainstream Publishing, 1999
- Referendum Results 1937–2019 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland
- Referendum results on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018 — Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Government of Ireland (data.gov.ie), 2018
- Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books, 2009
- The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 — Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile Books, 2004
- Parnell, Charles Stewart — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Patrick (Pádraig) — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- O'Connell, Daniel — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Carson, Edward Henry — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Collins, Michael — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- de Valera, Éamon — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Hume, John — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Becoming irlandés: Private Narratives of the Irish Emigration to Argentina, 1844–1912 — Edmundo Murray, 2006
- Northern Ireland — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Ireland: History — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Mary Robinson — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Irish in Post-War Britain — Enda Delaney, Oxford University Press, 2007
- The Dead of the Irish Revolution — Eunan O'Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin, Yale University Press, 2020
- 1916 Necrology: the people killed in the Easter Rising — Glasnevin Trust, 2016
- The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) — Governments of the United Kingdom and Ireland, with Northern Ireland parties, 1998
- Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to establish the facts of State involvement with the Magdalen Laundries — Inter-Departmental Committee chaired by Martin McAleese, Government of Ireland, 2013
- Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society — J. J. Lee, Cambridge University Press, 1989
- Atlas of the Great Irish Famine — John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy (eds), Cork University Press, 2012
- John Hume – Nobel Lecture — John Hume, Nobel Foundation, 1998
- The American Irish: A History — Kevin Kenny, Longman, 2000
- Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry — Lord Saville of Newdigate (chair), The Stationery Office, 2010
- An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland — Malcolm Sutton, CAIN, Ulster University
- Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction — Marc Mulholland, Oxford University Press, 2002
- President Robinson's Acceptance Speech, 9 November 1990 — Mary Robinson, Office of the President of Ireland, 1990
- The Irish War of Independence — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan, 2002
- Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War — Michael Hopkinson, Gill and Macmillan, 1988
- God's Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland — Micheál Ó Siochrú, Faber and Faber, 2008
- The GAA: A People's History — Mike Cronin, Mark Duncan and Paul Rouse, The Collins Press, 2009
- Making Ireland British, 1580–1650 — Nicholas Canny, Oxford University Press, 2001
- Census 2021: Main Statistics for Northern Ireland (religion and national identity) — Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, 2022
- The Irish Banking Crisis: Regulatory and Financial Stability Policy 2003–2008 — Patrick Honohan, Central Bank of Ireland, 2010
- The Irish in Australia — Patrick O'Farrell, New South Wales University Press, 1986
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan, 1978
- Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Poblacht na hÉireann) — Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, National Library of Ireland (copy), 1916
- The Ulster Covenant — Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, nidirect
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane, 1988
- Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA — Richard English, Macmillan, 2003
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2002
- Ireland in the Middle Ages — Seán Duffy, Macmillan, 1997
- Early Christian Ireland — T. M. Charles-Edwards, Cambridge University Press, 2000
- Results and turnout at the EU referendum — The Electoral Commission (UK), 2016
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press, 2010
- The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan, 1992
- The Year of Liberty: The Great Irish Rebellion of 1798 — Thomas Pakenham, Hodder and Stoughton, 1969
- Irish-American Heritage Month and St. Patrick's Day: March 2021 — U.S. Census Bureau, 2021
- The Windsor Framework — UK Government and European Commission, 2023