HISTORY OF IRELAND

 The first known settlement in Ireland began around 8000 BC, when hunter-gatherers arrived from 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. On the arrival of Saint Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the early to mid-5th century AD, Christianity began to subsume the indigenous Celtic religion, a process that was completed by the year 600.

From around AD 800, 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-Normanmercenaries under Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, nicknamed Strongbow, in 1169 marked the beginning of more than 700 years of direct English, and, later, British involvement in Ireland. In 1177, prince John Lackland was made Lord of Ireland by his father Henry II of England at the Council of Oxford. The Crown did not begin an attempt to assert full control of the island until after Henry VIII's repudiation of papal authority over the Church in England and subsequent English Reformation, which failed in Ireland. Questions over the loyalty of Irishvassals provided the initial impetus for a series of Irish military campaigns between 1534 and 1691. This period was also marked by a Crown policy of plantation which led to the arrival of thousands of English and Scottish Protestant settlers, and the consequent displacement of the pre-plantation Catholic landholders. As the military and political defeat of Gaelic Irelandbecame more pronounced in the early seventeenth century, the role of religion as a new divisive element 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 dominated by the new settlers. By the end of the seventeenth century, recusant Roman Catholics, as adherents to the old religion were now termed, representing some 85% of Ireland's population, were then banned from the Irish parliament. Political power rested entirely in the hands of an Anglicanminority, while Catholics and members of dissenting Protestant denominations suffered severe political and economic privations at the hands of the Penal Laws. The Irish Parliament was abolished in 1801 in the wake of the republican United Irishmen Rebellion and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. Although promised a repeal of the Test Act, Catholics were not granted full rights until Catholic Emancipation was attained in throughout the new UK in 1829. This was followed by the first Reform Bill in 1832, a principal condition of which was the removal of the poorer British and 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 it was suspended on the outbreak of World War I. The Easter Rising staged by Irish republicans two years later brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics.

In 1922, after the Irish War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the larger part of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom to become the independent Irish Free State; and after the 1937 constitution, Ireland. The six north eastern counties, known as Northern Ireland, remained within the United Kingdom. The Irish Civil War followed soon after the War of Independence. The history of Northern Ireland has since been dominated by sporadic sectarian conflict between (mainly Catholic)Nationalists and (mainly Protestant) Unionists. This conflict erupted into the Troubles in the late 1960s, until an uneasy peace thirty years later.

 What little is known of pre-Christian Ireland comes from a few references in Roman writings, Irish poetry and myth, and archaeology. The earliest inhabitants of Ireland, people of a mid-Stone Age, or Mesolithic, culture, arrived sometime after 10,000 BC, when the climate had become more hospitable following the retreat of the polar icecaps. About 4000 BC agriculture was introduced from the South West continent, leading to the establishment of a high Neolithicculture, characterized by the appearance of pottery, polished stone tools, rectangular wooden houses and communal megalithic tombs, some of which are huge stone monuments like thePassage Tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, many of them astronomically aligned (most notably, Newgrange). Four main types of megalithic tomb have been identified: Portal Tombs,Court Tombs, Passage Tombs and Wedge Tombs. In Leinster and Munster individual adult males were buried in small stone structures, called cists, under earthen mounds and were accompanied by distinctive decorated pottery. This culture apparently prospered, and the island became more densely populated. Towards the end of the Neolithic new types of monuments developed, such as circular embanked enclosures and timber, stone and post and pit circles.

The Bronze Age properly began once copper was alloyed with tin to produce true bronze artifacts; this took place around 2000 BC, when some Ballybeg flat axes and associated metalwork was produced. The period preceding this, in which Lough Ravel and most Ballybeg axes were produced, is known as the Copper Age or Chalcolithic, and commenced about 2500 BC. This period also saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments, weapons and tools. There was a movement away from the construction of communal megalithic tombs to the burial of the dead in small stone cists or simple pits, which could be situated in cemeteries or in circular earth or stone built burial mounds known respectively as barrows and cairns. As the period progressed inhumation burial gave way to cremation and by the Middle Bronze Age cremations were often placed beneath large burial urns.

The Iron Age in Ireland began about 600 BC. The period between the start of the Iron Age and the historic period (AD 431) saw the gradual infiltration of small groups of Celtic speaking people into Ireland, with items of the continental Celtic La Tene style being found in at least the northern part of the island by about 300 BC. ISBN 0717128296 The result of a gradual blending of Celtic and indigenous cultures would result in the emergence of Gaelic culture by the fifth century. It is also during the fifth century that the main over-kingdoms of In Tuisceart, Airgialla, Ulaid, Mide, Laigin, Mumhain, Cóiced Ol nEchmacht began to emerge (see Kingdoms of ancient Ireland). Within these kingdoms a rich culture flourished. The society of these kingdoms was dominated by an upper class consisting of aristocratic warriors and learned people, which possibly included Druids.

Linguists realised from the 17th century onwards that the language spoken by these people, the Goidelic languages, was a branch of the Celtic languages. This is usually explained as a result of invasions by Celts from the continent. However, other research has postulated that the culture developed gradually and continuously, and that the introduction of Celtic language and elements of Celtic culture may have been a result of cultural exchange with Celtic groups in South West continental Europe from the neolithic to the Bronze Age.

The hypothesis that the native Late Bronze Age inhabitants gradually absorbed Celtic influences has since been supported by some recent genetic research.

The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography and tribes. Ireland was never formally a part of the Roman Empire but Roman influence was often projected well beyond formal borders. Tacitus writes that an exiled Irish prince was with Agricola in Britain and would return to seize power in Ireland. Juvenal tells us that Roman "arms had been taken beyond the shores of Ireland". In recent years, some experts have hypothesized that Roman-sponsored Gaelic forces (or perhaps even Roman regulars) mounted some kind of invasion around 100, but the exact relationship between Rome and the dynasties and peoples of Hibernia remains unclear.

Irish confederations (the Scoti) attacked and some settled in Britain during the Great Conspiracy of 367. In particular, the Dál Riatasettled in western Scotland and the Western Isles.