Ireland Flashcards
- Since when has Ireland been inhabited? What do we base the estimate on?
Old burial mounds, stone structures show that Ireland was inhabited around 12.500 years ago.
- What is one of the main languages in Ireland?
Gaelic
- Who were druids?
Druids made up the higher-educated tier of Celtic society, including poets, doctors, and spiritual leaders. The legacy of this last group is the most enduring and the most mysterious.
True or false: St. Patrick was born in Ireland.
False: he was born in England.
What day is St. Patric’s day? And what does this date commemorate?
St. Patrick’s day is March 17. This day commemorates his death.
Why did Patrick go to Ireland?
He was taken by pirates (When he was 15, Irish pirates raided near his home, and he was captured, taken back to Ireland and sold as a slave).
What is an example of a manuscript copied by Irish monks called?
The book of Kells.
List the reasons for the importance of Christianity through the history of Ireland.
It provided a system of learning, beliefs and identity.
The Statute of Kilkenny (1367) contained 35 acts. What was the purpose of these laws?
The statutes aimed to prevent English colonists living in Ireland from adopting Irish culture and mandated that the Irish conform to English customs before they could obtain certain social, legal, and religious rights.
In particular, the statutes prohibited marriage between English and Irish; ordered the English to reject Irish names, customs, and law; prohibited the Irish from holding positions in English churches; and limited the mobility of peasant laborers. The statutes also sought to prevent the colonists from waging war without the consent of the English Crown.
Penalties for noncompliance were severe and included death, loss of property, and excommunication. Although they were not ultimately successful, the Statutes of Kilkenny foreshadowed the continuously troubled relationship between England and Ireland in the following centuries.
Why was the statue written in French?
French was a language of court and administration.
“The Irish policies of Henry’s reign were genuinely novel and reflected a real effort to establish lasting principles of government for the island.”
(M D Palmer). What are the lasting principles M D Palmer has mentioned here?
Henry VIII wanted a more modern approach to land ownership in Ireland and he wanted the Irish lords to adopt the English model of land ownership. Henry wanted the Irish lords to surrender their land on the condition that it would be returned to them and confirmed under the conditions of English law.
“A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell
You who raped our Motherland
I hope you’re rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent…”
These lyrics leave little to the imagination, so how exactly did Cromwell conduct his military campaign in Ireland?
Cromwell – who thought Catholic beliefs were wrong – went to do a great work against the barbarous and blood thirsty Irish. Many historians accuse Cromwell of:
Slaughtering civilians as well as soldiers
Transporting many Irish Catholics as slaves to the West Indies
Giving Catholics’ land to Protestant settlers and exiling the Irish to poor land in Connacht in the west of Ireland
From Reverend Theobald Mathew writing to Mr Trevelyan, 7 August 1846, quoted in Correspondence Relating to Measures for Relief of Distress in Ireland (Commissariat Series), July 1846–January 1847, HMSO, 1847, p.
“On the 27th of last month I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3rd [of August], I beheld, with sorrow, one wide waste of putrefying vegetation. In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands, and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.”
In what way does this note help us understand the plight caused by the potato blight?
The potato plant was hardy, nutritious, calorie-dense, and easy to grow in Irish soil. By the time of the famine, nearly half of Ireland’s population relied almost exclusively on potatoes for their diet, and the other half ate potatoes frequently.
Based on the map think of long term consequences of the Potato Famine:
It shows the long term consequences: As a direct consequence of the famine, Ireland’s population fell from almost 8.4 million in 1844 to 6.6 million by 1851. About 1 million people died and perhaps 2 million more eventually emigrated from the country. Many who survived suffered from malnutrition. Additionally, because the financial burden for weathering the crisis was placed largely on Irish landowners, hundreds of thousands of tenant farmers and laborers unable to pay their rents were evicted by landlords unable to support them. Continuing emigration and low birth rates meant that by the 1920s Ireland’s population was barely half of what it had been before the famine.
What is Home Rule?
The term “Home Rule” meant an Irish legislature with responsibility for domestic affairs.
Think of a reason why Unionists opposed Home Rule for Ireland.
They believed that Protestants would suffer at the hands of Catholics, leaving them out of power, which would mean 1. religious discrimination and economic failure because they relied on Britain, and 2. a worse quality of life because they would not have the freedom they originally had.
Imagine you are a Catholic unskilled worker living in Belfast in 1914. How would you feel about the prospect of Home Rule?
You would be hoping to either get the better wages, or to join the army that provided one of the few sources of a steady income for the city’s vast army of unskilled workers. It also provided the possibility of learning a trade.
This is Dublin during the Easter Rising. What response do you think Irish people had to it?
The emerging middle class were not pleased, to put it mildly, fearing a loss of jobs, British retaliation and lowering of a living standard. However, it was, again, the execution of the leaders that caused a change of heart.
How many people were killed during the Troubles?
More than 3.600.
Explain how the English established and consolidated their control over Ireland during 16th and 17th century:
In the early years of the 17th century, it looked possible for a time that, because of immigration of English and Scottish settlers, Ireland could be peacefully integrated into British society. However, this was prevented by the continued discrimination by the English authorities against Irish Catholics on religious grounds. The fifty years from 1641 to 1691 saw two catastrophic periods of civil war in Ireland 1641–53 and 1689–91, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and left others in permanent exile. The wars, which pitted Irish Catholics against British forces and Protestant settlers, ended in the almost complete dispossession of the Catholic landed elite. Penal Laws were introduced, which put restrictions on Catholics inheriting property
How did English policies impact the lives of the Irish, particularly Catholic farmers?
Catholic landownership fell from around 14% in 1691 to around 5% in the course of the next century.
