History

Minha Viagem e meu estudo na Europa, claro começam pela Irlanda.
Então antes de qualquer país Europeu, charmoso e extremamente esperado de ser conhecido quero apresentar a todos:

Irlanda, o que conheci e porque a cada dia esse país, Celtico tende a me surpreender.

Essa introdução foi em português mas tentarei colocar a maioria das minhas notas em inglês.

A litle about the History:

Celtic warriors reached Ireland around 300 BC. Christian monks, including St Patrick, arrived in Ireland around the 5^th century AD. From the end of the century the rich monasteries were targets of raids Vikings, who were followed by Anglo-Norman forces in 1169 Catholic oppression got serious in the 1500s when Elizabeth I, gave loads of Irish land to Protestant settlers, sowing the seeds of today’s divided Ireland.

By the 18^th century, Ireland’s Catholics held less than 15% of the land and suffered brutal civil restrictions. Irish movements for civil rights alarmed the Protestant gentry and in 1800 the Act of Union joined Ireland with Britain.

Successive failures of potato crops between 1845 and 1851 brought about mass starvation, while British and Irish ruling classes profited from inflated food prices. About one million people died from disease or starvation, and another million emigrated. This tragedy was called the Great Famine.

The bungled 1916 Easter Rising was heavy with rhetoric and light on planning while the response of the British was a just as poor; a series of trials and executions transformed the ringleaders into martyrs, rousing international support for Irish independence.

In the 118 election, Irish republicans stood under the banner of Sinn Féin (‘We Ourselves’ or ‘Ourselves Alone’) and won a majority of the Irish seats. Ignoring London’s Parliament, the newly elected, declared Ireland independent and formed the first Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly), led by Eamon de Valera. The resulting Anglo-Irish War (1919-21) pitted Sinn Féin and its military wing, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), against the British. During this period Michael Collins master-minded the IRA’s campaign of violence (while serving as finance minister in the new Dáil).
After months of negotiations, he and Arthur Griffith led the delegation that signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, giving 26 counties of Ireland independence, while allowing six largely Protestant counties in the North (Ulster) the choice to opt out.

Under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the British monarch remained the (nominal) head of new Irish Free State. To de Valera and many Irish Catholics, the compromise was a betrayal of republican principles and brief civil war ensued. A new 1937 constitution abolished fealty to Britain and claimed sovereignty over six counties of Ulster. In 1948 the Irish government declared the country a republic.

In Ulster, the Protestant majority had systematically excluded Catholics from power. In January 1969 civil rights marchers walking from Belfast to Derry were attacked by a Protestant mob outside Derry. British troops were sent to Derry and Belfast in August to maintain law and order. The peaceful civil rights movement foundered and an armed independence struggle under the IRA took flight.

Thus the so-called Troubles rolled through-out the 1970s and 1980s. Passions exploded in 1972 when 13 unarmed Catholics were shot dead by British troops in Derry on ‘Bloody Sunday’ (30 January), then again in 1981 when 10 IRA prisoners fasted to death

In august 1994 a ‘permanent cessation of violence’ by IRA was announced by Sinn Féin, to be matched by a Protestant cease-fire two months later. After setbacks, the peace process regained momentum with the May 1997 victory of Britain’s Labour Party, and in July 1997, the IRA declared another cease-fire.

In April 1998 all-party talks produced the Good Friday Agreement, which allows the people of Northern Ireland to decide their future by majority vote; in May 1998 the agreement was approved by 71% of voters in the North and 94% in the South, After the Good Friday Agreement, though, the peace process often stopped and started, largely over acts of violence, and wrangles about how and when the IRA should ‘decommission’ its weapons.

Positive steps were made in 2003 when the IRA destroyed some of its weapons, but these steps were derailed by the 2004 26m Northern Bank robbery and murder of Robert McCartney, both of which were pinned on the IRA. Then suddenly on 28 July 2005 the IRA had big news; the announced the official end to the armed campaign. Two months later the independent arms decommissioning body verified that the IRA had destroyed all its weapons.

Today, optimism prevails and although it often seems bickering of one sort or another will continue forever, most agree that the ‘war’ is finally over.