In AD 1171, King Henry II of England landed in Ireland and claimed it “de jure” territory of the English crown. Thus began nearly 850 years of Irish subjugation. In AD 1366, the Statutes of Kilkenny were introduced to try to stop English born in Ireland from “adopting the Gaelic way of life”. This marked the beginning of a sort of cultural and religious apartheid and hierarchy with the Gaels being the lower class. (Interestingly these laws were not repealed until 1983.) In AD 1541, English parliament “recognized” King Henry VIII Tudor to be the King of Ireland, upgrading the island from lordship to kingdom. Through the rest of the 16th century, the Tudor dynasty would consolidate holdings in Ireland for the Crown. King Henry VIII also founded the Anglican (that is, protestant) Church of England, to which the kingdom and nobility would convert. The Irish peasants and petty nobility remained Catholic, however, which added to the already-brewing hostilities. In the early 17th century, English and Scottish (protestant) settlers founded the Ulster Plantation (a formal colony, under control of the Crown and comprising nearly half a million acres) in the north of the island. The English Civil War and Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland saw much land taken from the natives and given to Parliamentarian supporters. The Penal Laws outlawed the Catholic clergy and forbade Irish Catholics from owning or leasing land above a certain value. These laws were later eased, but by 1778 Catholics owned only 5% of land in Ireland. The first rebellion by the United Irishmen in 1798 failed, and two years later the Act of Union de facto and de jure united the British Isles into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Great Famine of 1845 - 1852 was caused by a potato blight that afflicted nearly the entire harvest year after year. It should be noted that the English landlords of the Irish farming peasants still required their yearly rents be paid through the growth and export of corn back to Britain. There was plenty of food for the Irish to eat, but the English wouldn't break their dogmas of mercantile economic theory to allow for famine relief. This famine caused millions of Irish to starve or emigrate to elsewhere. (Most notably for our purposes, to the United States.)
The rest of the story begins with The Irish Home Rule Bill, introduced to Parliament in 1912. This bill was later shelved due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The famous Easter Rising of 1916 had failed to break the British chains of rule, and many of their leaders were executed, but this moment can be seen as the beginning of the modern struggle for Irish independence. Elections were held in 1918, and a clear majority of seats in the newly created Irish Parliament were won by the nationalist Sinn Féin party. The following year, upon taking their positions, the Irish Parliament declared independence from the Crown and proclaimed the Irish Republic. This marked the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The war raged from this independence declaration until the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921. By the war's end, nearly 2,500 people lay dead, and countless others displaced. MPs from the primarily Protestant North opted to remain united to the Crown and formed Northern Ireland. The Free State was officially recognized by the international community by the time of the founding of the United Nations after World War II. Despite the official disbanding of the Irish Republican Army following the War of Independence, several factions refused to lay down their arms until Ireland was fully united. These groups initiated several years of Civil War, which ultimately ended with the formal adoption of the Anglo-Irish treaty by the Free State government. The IRA remained active as a paramilitary force parallel to the Free State Army—which did not recognize the governing legitimacy of either the Free State or Northern Ireland and sought to overthrow them—until internal conflicts led to a schism in 1969. The “Official IRA” and the “Provisional IRA” were both very anti-colonial, anti-monarchical, and anti-capitalist, but had fundamental disagreements over revolutionary tactics. Starting with republican protests in Northern Ireland, the majority protestant government of Northern Ireland attempted to suppress the protesters with the use of police and paramilitary groups which marked the beginning of the period known as The Troubles. Groups like the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and Ulster Defense Association (UDA) were among the many sent down. The various Republican armies took up arms, and the British government sent regular Army troops to occupy and pacify Ireland in August of 1969. In 1972, what’s now nicknamed as Bloody Sunday saw British soldiers take the lives of 26 unarmed Republican protestors which caused support for the IRA and the Republican cause to rise. Open clashes in the streets and terror bombings became daily occurrences throughout 1972 until The Troubles were supposedly ended by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. To this day the so-called “Peace Walls” (read: “apartheid walls”) still stand dividing Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Northern Ireland. Annually, there are loyalist marches where so-called “Houses of Orange” play their bagpipes and wave their Union Jacks.