IRELAND (EIRE)
Population: 3,924,140
Area: 70,280 sq. km.
Economy: In 2002, Ireland ranked 17th in the UN's Human Development Index survey and 53rd in total GDP, with a per capita GDP of $28,622. In 1997, 10% of its population lived in poverty. Foreign debt statistics unavailable.
Main Language: English, Irish
Monkey's Name: The Monkey, Ap (Ah-p)
Fun Fact: Ireland's 1845-1850 potato famine is an infamous historical tragedy that resulted in some one million deaths and mass emigration. But it is also a travesty. While a blight did wipe out potato crops, a staple food of the Irish peasant, Ireland's farms still produced sufficient food to feed the population. Unfortunately, much of that food was exported to Britain by colonial landlords. Thus the suffering caused by a natural disaster was augmented by profit-oriented human decisions—an unfortunate trend that continues around the world today.
As an island at the edge of Europe, Ireland's history is characterized by periods of insular isolation as well as intense incursion by outside forces. Though settled during the mesolithic period, the people thought of as creating the first Irish civilization were the Celts, who arrived from the European mainland around the 6th Century BCE, bringing their system of clans to bear throughout the island, and establishing unity through their language and religion (druidism). They were fleeing Roman persecution, and in Ireland they were beyond the reach of the Empire. Around 432, a Roman citizen living in Britain was nabbed by Irish pirates and brought there as a slave; he ended up being the force that Christianized the island, St. Patrick.
From the 8th to 11th Centuries, Danish Vikings raided and settled on Ireland. They founded Dublin, but eventually succumbed to assaults from the native Irish kingdoms. The same would not be true of the next wave of invaders. Having conquered Britain in 1066, the Normans set their sights on Ireland from the late 12th Century onward. They introduced their system of feudalism, which gradually undid the clan-based ties of Celtic culture. Still, the Normans mostly became assimilated with the native population, while retaining some links with the English crown.
In the 16th Century, Henry VIII introduced the Anglican Church and direct rule via his Viceroy. Under Elizabeth I, the mission to convert the Catholic population of Ireland to Protestantism was an excuse for massive expulsions of native Irish from their lands in the country's north, to be replaced by mostly Scottish Presbyterians loyal to the Crown—a process called plantation. Later, the colonization was even more direct, as Cromwell brought the English Civil War to Ireland's shores, slaughtering thousands of Irish Catholics and displacing the survivors by confiscating their lands. By 1801, the Crown-promulgated Act of Union brought Ireland fully into the British Kingdom. The potato famine and displacement by landlords caused massive emigration in the mid 19th Century, with 2 million Irish leaving home for the United States and Canada.
Throughout the period of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Irish nationalist agitation brewed alongside demands for Irish Home Rule. The debate over these two strands continued into the early 20th Century. When World War I diverted British attention from the Home Rule debate, a small armed contingent of nationalists launched the 1916 Easter Rebellion and proclaimed the republic. The rising was a failure in military terms, but the British decision to execute its organizers won the nationalist cause much sympathy and support. By 1922, Britain, weary from continuous guerrilla warfare in Ireland, agreed to a treaty creating an Irish Free State, with one important condition: that the six majority Protestant counties of the north remain in union with Britain. This caveat led to the Irish Civil War between pro-treaty forces who saw the partition as a necessary step (though not a permanent one, per se) and anti-treaty forces, including the Irish Republican Army (IRA), unwilling to accept what they regarded as expediency that had cut the country in two. The pro-treaty forces won out in the end, but the debate over partition was far from over.
In 1949, the Free State proclaimed itself the Republic of Ireland and severed ties to the British Crown and Commonwealth. While the old pro-treaty forces could applaud the creation of an independent Republic, many of the anti-treaty forces maintained that it was an incomplete one: the outlawed IRA, in particular, continued to wage a guerrilla campaign in the north and throughout Britain in an attempt to force the reunion of all Ireland's counties (the 26 of the south and the six of the north). From the 1960s, "the troubles" (as they came to be known) would claim at least 3,000 lives as Loyalist and Republican forces confronted each other with bombs and bullets. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement established a basis for power-sharing in Northern Ireland between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority, Loyalists and Republicans, and London and Dublin. Though tensions are still high and there is much consensus yet to be built, progress toward peace in Ireland seems to be steady. The European Union's semi-erasure of member-state borders and relaxation of visa regimes, as well as the Republic's economic boom in the past decade, seem to be smoothing over some of the sources of friction.
It is the Monkey's hope that a fair resolution to these age-old troubles can be arrived at in the short-term future that is acceptable to as many inhabitants as possible of Ireland—both north and south.
Dublin
Inishmore
Latenight by the River Liffey in Dublin's center: the Monkey feels fuzzy after a whisky while taking in the graceful arch of the Ha'penny Bridge.
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