THE REVOLUTION IN IRELAND

INTRODUCTION

The eighteenth century the make up and wealth distribution in Ireland had changed considerably. The population of Ireland was made up of three distinct groups:

1.Catholics: made up 75% of the population, yet owned only 15% of the land and had no political power

2.Anglican (Church of Ireland) owned the vast majority of the land and had huge political and financial power.

3.Presbyterians: were banned – like the catholics – from being elected to parliament.

* Both Catholics and Presbyterians had to pay ‘tithes’ (religious tax) to the official church of Ireland (Anglican church).

To protect the interests of the protestant ruling classes, a number of harsh laws called the Penal Laws were introduced. These included:

•No Catholic could build or attend schools or churches.

•No Catholic priests, bishops or religious orders were allowed to remain in Ireland.

•No Catholic could buy land from a Protestant and any land that was inherited had to be ‘subdivided’ between the sons, keeping the Catholic farms small and unviable.

•No Catholic could become a solicitor, barrister or judge

•No catholic could live in a town.

The result of these laws was to keep millions of Catholics poor and uneducated with little chance of making any progress in life. It also caused huge bitterness among the population. Many Catholics – as well as the Ulster Presbyterians – were impressed by the equal, just and fair societies that the Americans and French were trying to create following their revolutions. They also felt that with the help of the French army they could achieve the break from Britain that they felt was needed to create an equal and tolerant society. They eventually set up a group to help them achieve their aims through violence if necessary called the United Irishmen.

THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1798

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 , was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in Ireland. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organising force behind the rebellion.

In the eighteenth century, many people in Ireland were not happy with how Ireland was ruled by the king in England. Ireland had a parliament in Dublin, but most of the time it could only pass laws that the king of England agreed with.

When the American colonies broke free from England, some people hoped that Ireland would be able to become free from English rule also. People liked the ideas of liberty and equality, which they heard about during the French Revolution

The United Irishmen formed in 1791. The members wanted everyone in Ireland to be treated equally. At first the United Irishmen looked for changes in Parliament. Later they demanded that a separate republic should be set up in Ireland.

One of the leaders of the United Irishmen was a man named Wolfe Tone. He was a Church of Ireland lawyer from Dublin. Wolfe Tone was impressed by the French Revolution and looked for help from France and America to start a similar revolution in Ireland. However in 1793, a war broke out between England and France. This meant that anybody looking for help from France was seen as a traitor by the British government. In 1793, the United Irishmen was banned by the government and it was against the law to have anything to do with the United Irishmen. In 1794, many of the members of the United Irishmen were arrested.

In 1795, Wolfe Tone left Ireland for America to escape arrest. He next went to France to ask for soldiers to help with a revolution in Ireland. In 1796, Wolfe Tone sailed from France to Ireland with a French general called General Hoche and a fleet of thirty-five ships and about 15,000 soldiers. However, the ships got caught in terrible storms. Some ships sank and the sailors were lost. Many French ships waited off Bantry Bay for calmer weather but in the end they returned to France. The ships had to return to France without a fight.

Yeomanry and Militia

The British army heard about the ships and they knew that the United Irishmen were planning a big fight. They decided to destroy the United Irishmen. They imprisoned many of the leaders of the movement and warned people to tell them about any United Irishmen that they knew.

The government tried to stamp out rebellion. They got information from many spies and posted notices warning people to hand over any weapons they had. Houses were searched, especially the homes of blacksmiths because they were known to make a weapon called a pike. Leaders of the rising were arrested.

The government needed more soldiers in Ireland to put down any fighting. In 1796, a group of soldiers called Yeomanry were set up. These were civilians who were put into groups as soldiers. There were also other soldiers who were forced to join a group called the militia. There were also paid soldiers from Germany who were known as Hessians.

The army inflicted terror on the countryside. Many ordinary people were flogged and tortured to punish them for supporting a rebellion against the king or to try to get information from them. Houses were   burned and property was stolen or destroyed.  Anyone suspected of being a rebel was shot. This cruel treatment by the army made many people join the fight against the government troops.

The rebellion began in May 1798 in Kildare, however it soon spread to Meath, Wicklow and Wexford. In March 1798, sixteen of the leaders of the United Irishmen were arrested in Dublin . In May 1798, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one of the leaders, was wounded and died. Many of the other important leaders of the United Irishmen were also captured.

The main weapon of the rebels of 1798 was a long stick with a metal top called the pike. It was sharp and could cut the reins of horses. The pike was quite useful against cavalry but it was not as good against firearms.

By May 1798 the rebels had taken over the towns of Enniscorthy and Wexford. A republic was declared but it did not last as the rebels were soon beaten back by British forces.

REBELLION OF 1803 AND ROBERT EMMET

Many people in Ireland did not want a union with Britain in 1801. Some people looked for support from France for another rebellion after 1798 but they failed to get this support. In 1803, another rebellion started in Ireland. This time it was centred around Dublin but it did not receive enough support at the time. The rebellion failed and the leader Robert Emmet was executed after he was found guilty of high treason. On the 20th September 1803, Robert Emmet was taken from Kilmainham Jail to a place opposite St Catherine's Church in Thomas Street and was hanged.

IRELAND IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Ireland in the early 1800s was made up of many small farms. Most of the lands were rented to tenants by landlords. The landlords owned a large amount of land but often they did not live on their property. Some families, who had no land themselves, made their living by doing some small amounts of work as labourers. In the early nineteenth century, many Irish families depended almost totally on the potato to feed themselves and their families.

The Great Famine

Ireland had its worst famine in 1845 when a famine called the Great Famine occured. It lasted until about 1850 but the worst years were between 1845 and 1849. It is estimated that almost one million people died and another million Irish people emigrated by the end of the famine. Ireland’s population was over 8 million in 1841 but by 1851 it was reduced to about 6 .5 million.

One of the causes of the Great Irish Famine was a disease called blight which destroyed the potato crop. The potato was the only food available to the majority of the people in Ireland at the time. The poorer people were cottiers and labourers who did not own their own land. They grew potatoes on small plots of ground and had no money to buy any other foods.

What did the government do to help people during the famine?

Ireland was under English rule at the time of the famine and the parliament was in London. When the potato blight ruined the first potato crop in 1845, Sir Robert Peel was the prime minister. He knew that most Irish people would have nothing to eat. In 1846, he shipped some Indian corn to Ireland and arranged for it to be sold in different parts of the country for a cheap price. This helped some families, however the poorest people had no money to buy it. The corn was also difficult to get to some of the most remote places where the famine was worst and where the roads were bad. Another problem was that people had to cook the corn, however they often did not know how to cook it as they had never eaten it before.

Second failure of crops in 1846

In 1846, the second crop of potatoes failed in July and August. People who had managed to survive the first crop failure of 1845 were now in terrible conditions. A new prime minister called Lord John Russell took charge of   the government in England. He reduced the sale of cheap food and thought instead that giving employment was the best thing to do. Public works began again in October 1846. The government thought that this employment would help the poor to buy food. However, poor people were often too weak from lack of food to be able to work very hard and wages were often not paid on time.

By February 1847, there was huge snowdrifts and the poor had no warm clothes to work outdoors in cold and wet weather. When the father of a family became sick or died after working on the public works, the women or children in the family tried to take over the work but it was very hard and involved carrying heavy loads or digging. This type of work was not useful in helping the people who were starving.

Evictions and Famine Emigration

When tenants could not pay their rent, they were usually evicted. Some landlords tried their best to help their tenants and did not charge them rent. A number of these landlords went broke because of this. However, huge numbers of people were also evicted from their homes by their landlords during the famine.

Large numbers of Irish people emigrated to countries such as England, America, Canada and Australia because of the famine. From 1845 to 1850, about one and a half million people left Ireland.

Results of the Great Famine

·         People have estimated that about a million people died during the worst famine years between 1845 and 1849.

·         About a million people emigrated to America , Canada , Australia or Britain . People continued to leave Ireland in large numbers for many years after the famine.

·         The Irish language began to die out. Many of those who died or emigrated.

·         Some people were very angry that the English government had not done more to prevent the famine. This caused a lot of anger against Britain and lasted for a long time.

·         A group called the Young Ireland party, or Young Irelanders, wanted Ireland to have its own government. They began a small rebellion in 1848. However, this rising failed because it happened in the middle of the Great Famine.

In 1914, a world war one began. Britain took part in this war and many Irish men fought in the British army in the trenches of France. At that time, all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and was ruled from the parliament in London. During the world War one, the militant members of  two armies nationality in the south of Ireland began to plan a rising. They sent Roger Casement to Germany to buy arms, however he was captured with the arms and hanged for treason

THE EASTER RISING OF 1916

On the 24th of April, Easter Monday 1916, about 2,000 Irish Volunteers and 200 from the Irish Citizen Army occupied the General Post Office (GPO) as well as other important buildings in Dublin city. One group of rebels took over the Four Courts and another group took over the South Dublin Union, which is now James’s hospital. They proclaimed the Irish Republic, read the Proclamation and raised the Irish flag for the first time.

The British army were taken by surprise and suffered heavy casualties. Reinforcements arrived from England. The British army shelled the GPO and other buildings. After a week’s fighting, the leaders of the rising surrendered. Many civilians died in the cross-fire. The guns and fires had destroyed much of the city and the GPO was in ruins.

What happened the G.P.O. after the Rising?

During the Easter Rising of 1916, the General Post Office (GPO) was the headquarters of the Irish Volunteers. On Easter Monday of 1916, armed groups of the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army, commanded by Padraig Pearse and James Connolly, took over the GPO where they proclaimed the Irish Republic.

End of the 1916 Rising

On Saturday the 29th of April 1916, Patrick Pearse surrendered to the British commander General Lowe to save the lives of rebels and civilians. The rebels were taken as prisoners to Richmond Barracks.   Fifteen of the leaders were executed and many others were sent to prisons, mainly in England or Wales.

The 1916 Rising had failed to get independence for Ireland. However the Rising had made the cause of independence more popular as many Irish people were so outraged by the executions that they also began to call for independence from Britain. Outside of Dublin, the other main place where the Easter Rising took place was in Ashbourne, County Meath.

Dublin city centre was almost completely destroyed after the Easter Rising. There was a total of five hundred people killed during the fighting. Three hundred of the dead were civilians who were not involved in the fighting. There were a total of 2,500 wounded, of which 2,000 were ordinary civilians.

Fifteen executions took place after the Rising, and 1,841 suspected rebels were sent to prison in England.

After the 1916 Rising

The First World War ended in November 1918 and a general election was called in London. Huge numbers of Irish people voted for a party called Sinn Féin and elected their members as Members of Parliament (MPs). People knew that any Sinn Féin candidate who won a seat in the election would not go to the parliament in London. They knew that they would try to set up a parliament in Ireland instead. On the 21st of January 1919 the newly elected Sinn Féin MPs called a meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin and set up a new parliament called Dáil Éireann. This was the first meeting of the Irish Dáil and the new parliament declared that Ireland was now independent. They later chose Éamon de Valera as the first president of the Dáil.

Ireland then had two governments; one was the new Dáil Éireann in Dublin and the other was the British parliament in London. Both had courts and both collected taxes, which resulted in a lot of disorder. Violence soon broke out in Ireland and the army of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), began to attack people who supported British law.

In 1919, a war began against the British forces in Ireland. This war was called the War of Independence. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) wanted to force the British out of Ireland. They began to attack the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland, because they were seen as supporting British rule and British law. The IRA burned their barracks and captured their arms. Many members of the police force were killed, and others resigned. 

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

The IRA also fought British soldiers using guerrilla tactics. This meant that they attacked the British soldiers by surprise and then escaped quickly before they could be caught. The British government sent more forces to Ireland. One group was known as the Black and Tans because of their uniforms. The Black and Tans often punished the local population and because of this they were feared and hated by ordinary civilians. The IRA fought against them.

In 1921, a truce was called and treaty talks took place in London to try to find a way of ending the war. Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith were among the Irish representatives at the talks. In December 1921, a treaty was signed which soon brought about a new country called the Irish Free State. It was decided that the new state would be made up of twenty-six of the thirty-two Irish counties.

Ireland was divided into two parts with a border in between. A group called the Boundary Commission was set up to investigate whether any more of the northern counties should join the Irish Free State. Six counties remained under the rule of England. This area became known as Northern Ireland and today it is still part of the United Kingdom.

Most Irish people supported the new arrangement however there were also many people who didn’t agree with the division of Ireland into two parts. A civil war broke out between the people who were in favour of the treaty and those who were against it. In the end, the people who fought in favour of the treaty won the civil war.

In 1948, the Irish Free State broke its remaining ties with Britain and became a Republic.

THE IRISH CONSTITUTION

The Irish people voted in the Constitution of Ireland in 1937. The constitution is still used today. It sets out the rights of Irish citizens. It also states that Irish people have the right to govern themselves and to make their own laws. The constitution can be changed but only if a referendum is held and if a majority of people agree to make these changes.

On the 1st of January 1973, the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community, now known as the European Union (EU). Membership of the EU helped Ireland to grow and develop. In the 1970s and 1980s, farmers were able to establish their own markets and set prices for their products. Roads and communication technology were also improved through funding received from the EU.

CELTIC TIGER

During the 1990s, many American technology companies set up in the Republic of Ireland. Many new jobs were created as a result of these new companies. For the first time in Irish history, thousands of people came to Ireland from other countries to look for employment.