Renowned for its beauty, friendly people, Guinness and a fun atmosphere, Ireland has long since been a favorite for the tourist. Its long and rich history has left behind everything from passage graves to coastal castles, from Viking ruins to Paladian houses. We will visit many of these places and learn the story behind them and the fascination that they still hold.
Ireland's history can be traced all the way back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples of the fifth millennium. These people left behind some of Ireland's greatest monuments - the passage graves dating back to c. 4000 - 2000, BC. These people lived relatively quietly until the long history of Ireland's battle with invaders began with the invasion of the Celts from tribes in Europe. These pagan Celts settled in Ireland and were eventually converted to Christianity in AD 300s, mainly thanks to St. Patrick.
The next invaders were the Vikings, beginning around AD 700. Three centuries later, the Irish got their first taste of British involvement when English warriors intervened in a dispute between two rival Irish Kings. It was to begin a long relationship with the British, which resulted in many bitter battles between the predominately Catholic Irish and the Protestant British rulers. One of the worst times in Irish history occurred in the 1600s when Oliver Cromwell plundered and burned Irish Catholic cathedrals and shed a lot of Irish blood to take over the land and begin the domination of British landlords.
But a more horrific time was to come. The potato famine of the mid 1840s killed a million Irish people and caused a million more to emigrate. Hatred against the English intensified, as many believed they could have done much to save the lives of the starving Irish. There followed a long and bloody struggle for independence, leading to the ill-fated Easter Rising in 1916 and the Anglo-Irish war that ended in 1921. The result was an agreement that the British Parliament would hand over twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, to create a Free State that would be known as Eire. The remaining six counties in the North of Ireland remained under British rule, mainly because if the Protestant majority living there. The situation remains the same today.
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