Андрей Тихомиров
History and culture of Ireland

From the history of Ireland

In Irish sources , information about Dublin dates back to the 3rd century . At the end of the 8th century the city was captured by the Normans. In 1014, near Dublin, the Normans were completely defeated by the Irish king Brian Boroime. The Norman population of the city mixed with the Irish. In 1169 Dublin was captured by English feudal lords. In the early 13th century, the citadel of the city was built as a support base for the conquerors – the Dublin Castle, which became a symbol of oppression, disenfranchisement and violence for the Irish people. From the 17th century . Dublin is one of the centers of the Irish liberation movement. In 1916 (April 24-30), the Dublin Uprising of 1916 broke out against English rule. Guerrilla actions against the British authorities unfolded in the country. The ground for the uprising was prepared by the growth of the revolutionary sentiments of the Irish masses, the indignation of the broad strata of the Irish people by the colonizing policy of the English government, which postponed the implementation of the law on limited self—government of Ireland within the British Empire – home rule until the end of the war and actually imposed a state of siege in Ireland. In Ireland, discontent with the extremely limited nature of home rule and the conciliatory tactics of the Irish bourgeois nationalists was growing more and more. The main role in the uprising was played by the Civil Army, a working—class military organization created in 1913, and detachments of Irish volunteers led by left-wing Shinfeiners – petty-bourgeois Republicans. One of the leaders of the uprising was the Irish proletarian revolutionary Connolly, who commanded the rebel forces. The rebels seized the main post office in Dublin, the railway station and a number of administrative buildings. They proclaimed the Republic of Ireland and formed a provisional Government. In addition to Dublin, the uprising took place in other cities, as well as in a number of other places. After fierce street fighting that lasted until April 30, the uprising was suppressed by the British imperialists with exceptional brutality.

The Illustrated London News, May 6, 1865. The Dublin International Exhibition: Delivery of goods at the foreign and fine-arts' entrance

The Illustrated London News, May 13, 1865. The Dublin International Exhibition: West entrance to the building

Dublin. One of the central streets of the city. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, volume 18, 1953, p. 451

Dublin. In downtown. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Moscow, volume 15, 1952, p. 256

Ireland in ancient times was inhabited by Iberian (Ibero-Caucasian peoples) and Celtic (Indo-Europeans) tribes. The main occupation of these tribes was cattle breeding and agriculture. The Roman conquest of Britain (1st century. the name "Britain" from the Britons – Celts, Indo–Europeans, in ancient times all the islands north of Gaul (Gauls are also Celts) were called Britain, and the largest – Albion, "white", numerous mineral cement substances for construction were mined on the island in ancient times, having a white light color) did not affect Ireland, as well as the invasion of a neighboring island in the 5th century. Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic tribes. For many centuries, the primitive communal system was preserved on the island, but by the 3rd-4th centuries, signs of its decomposition had already appeared. The process of class differentiation led to the formation of several early feudal states in Ireland. The heads of clans (large clans divided into separate tribal groups) and tribes – riages, or "kings", acquired territorial power. In the 5th century, Christianity began to spread in Ireland. With the foundation of monasteries, church-feudal land ownership appeared. The spread of Christianity contributed to the process of feudalization. However, this process developed rather slowly. Among the Celtic tribes, the remnants of ancestral relations were still strong. The monastic Celtic-Latin culture reached a high level of development at that time.

Starting in 795, Ireland began to be raided by the Normans. A long struggle with the Normans ended with their defeat in 1014 at Clontarf by the squads of ard-riag ("high king") Brian Boroime, who had recently managed to temporarily unite the whole country.

In 1169 and 1170, detachments of Anglo-Norman barons invaded Ireland. In 1171, the army of the English king Henry II landed, whom the defeated Irish riages were forced to recognize as the "supreme ruler", thus Ireland became the first English colony. However, the conquerors managed to gain a foothold only in the southeastern coastal strip. In the occupied territory, which later became known as "Pel" (literally fence), free members of the Irish clans were turned into serfs; the conquerors treated the Irish as an "inferior" race. The Kilkenny Statute of 1366 forbade the English from all communication with the locals. Western Ireland, which still retained its independence, was subjected to systematic devastating raids by English feudal lords. Having forced the indigenous inhabitants into swamps and forests, damaging their agriculture and culture, the conquerors caused a delay in the process of decomposition of backward patriarchal-tribal relations among the Irish. Refuting the false version of the English bourgeois historiography about the civilizing mission of the British on the "pearl island", F. Engels wrote that "the English invasion deprived Ireland of any possibility of development and threw it back centuries, and moreover immediately, starting from the XII century" (Marx K. and Engels F., Essays, vol. 24, p. 280).

Since 1295, a parliament of English barons and prelates began to gather in Eastern Ireland. Great influence was acquired by English feudal lords, who, despite the ban, intermarried with the heads of Irish clans and inherited their lands. In the 15th century, representatives of the Anglo-Irish Geraldine family – Desmonds and Kildares – almost monopolistically used the post of governor of the island. With the accession of the Tudors in 1485 and the establishment of absolutism in England, the English government began to strengthen its power in the country.

During the entire period of the 12th-15th centuries, the Irish clans waged a liberation struggle against the English conquerors (uprisings of 1315-1318, 1394, 1399, etc.).

The spread of the English Reformation to Ireland in 1536-1537 gave rise to the confiscation of the lands of the leaders and ordinary members of the Irish clans under the pretext of their deviation from the "true" faith. Ireland became the object of colonial plunder both for the ruined English feudal nobility, and for the "new nobility" and the bourgeoisie – classes that arose in the process of initial accumulation, which prepared the establishment of the bourgeois system in England.

The response of the Irish people to the policy of expropriation was to strengthen the liberation struggle. Only during the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) there were 4 major uprisings on the island: in 1565-1567 in Ulster (Northern Ireland), in 1570-1573 and 1579-1583 in Munster (Southern Ireland), in 1595-1603 in Ulster and Munster. Against the Irish rebels, the British used the most brutal methods of colonial wars.

The period of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century played a decisive role in the colonial enslavement of the island. The colonization policy of England caused a powerful uprising of the Irish masses, which broke out in 1641. In August 1649, the leader of the English bourgeoisie and the "new nobility" O. Cromwell landed in Ireland with an army, who caused a massacre of the Irish garrisons and the population in Drogheda and Wexford. The uprising was finally suppressed in 1652. The Irish people were subjected to severe repression. The "Acts on the Establishment of Ireland" of August 12, 1652 and September 26, 1653 authorized the mass seizure of land by English officers, creditors of parliament, speculators, the conquest of Ireland, the transformation of the island into a citadel of landlords Cromwell prepared the ground for the restoration of the Stuarts (in 1660). Issued in 1662 by the government of Charles II, the new "Act on the Establishment of Ireland" secured the colonizers the lands they had seized. In 1688-1691, a new uprising took place in Ireland, brutally suppressed by the colonizers.

Since the suppression of the uprising of 1688-1691, a period of undivided colonial rule of the British in the country began. The so-called punitive laws issued from the end of the 17th to the middle of the 18th centuries deprived the Irish, under the pretext of their belonging to Catholicism, of all political and civil rights. The growth of capitalist relations led to the process of the formation of the Irish nation. While in the rest of Western Europe, the process of nation-building was associated with the formation of nation-states, the emerging Irish nation, in its desire to form a nation-state, met with the strongest opposition from the English exploitative elite. On this basis, the Irish national liberation movement arose and developed. In the 60s of the 18th century, peasant insurgent organizations arose – "White Guys", "Hearts of Steel", etc. In 1761, the "White Guys" revolted in a number of southwestern counties. In 1762-1764, major peasant unrest took place in Munster and Ulster. The rise of the national liberation struggle was promoted by the War of Independence in North America (1775-1783) and, to an even greater extent, the French bourgeois revolution of the late 18th century. In 1791, the United Irishmen society was founded in Belfast by radicals, led by the Irish bourgeois revolutionary Wolf Tone, Arthur O'Connor, etc. In 1793-1794, Irish peasants offered armed resistance to the authorities in response to recruitment for the war with France. The French expeditions organized to help the Irish patriots (1796 and 1797) were defeated. In May—June 1798, the "United Irishmen" raised an uprising, which was brutally suppressed. The French landing failed (August 1798). Having dealt with the rebels, the British colonialists deprived Ireland of the last remnants of autonomy. According to the "Act of Union" (entered into force on January 1, 1801), the Irish Parliament was abolished through "unification" with the English Parliament. The top of the Catholic clergy treacherously approved the "union", which strengthened the colonial enslavement of the Irish.