The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People (50 page)
Read The Story of Ireland: A History of the Irish People Online
Authors: Neil Hegarty
Tags: #Non-Fiction
1859 | Fenian Brotherhood established in New York |
1864 | Establishment of National Gallery of Ireland |
1867 | Fenian Rebellion; execution of ‘Manchester Martyrs’; Clerkenwell bombing |
1868 | William Gladstone becomes prime minister for first time |
1869 | Disestablishment of Church of Ireland; foundation of Irish Tenant League |
1870 | Isaac Butt establishes Home Government Association |
1875 | Charles Stewart Parnell takes his seat in House of Commons |
1877 | Irish obstructionism in parliament; passing of South African Confederation bill is delayed |
1878 | Standish O’Grady’s |
1879 | National Land League founded; Loonmore eviction halted |
1880 | Michael Davitt’s ostracism campaign targets Charles Boycott; Parnell begins relationship with Katharine O’Shea |
1880–1 | First Boer War |
1881–2 | Gladstone’s land reform bills become law; Parnell imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol; Phoenix Park assassinations |
1884 | Foundation of Gaelic Athletic Association |
1886 | First Home Rule bill; Ulster Unionists rally in opposition; bill thrown out by parliament |
1890 | Majority of Parnell’s party withdraws support from him; party splits |
1891 | Death of Parnell in Brighton |
1893 | Foundation of Gaelic League |
1895 | Oscar Wilde’s |
1899 | Outbreak of Second Boer War and formation of Irish Brigade in support of Boers; foundation of Irish Literary Theatre; first publication of |
1900 | Victoria’s visit to Ireland sparks protests |
1901 | Death of Victoria and accession of Edward VII |
1902 | W. B. Yeats and Augusta Gregory’s |
1904 | Irish Literary Theatre becomes Abbey Theatre |
1907 | Formation of Sinn Féin; J. M. Synge’s |
1912 | Third Home Rule bill; Ulster Covenant signed |
1913 | ‘Dublin Lock-out’; formation of Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers |
1914 | Ulster and Irish Volunteers execute gun-running operations; Curragh ‘mutiny’; Buckingham Palace Conference; Home Rule passed by parliament and suspended; outbreak of World War I; James Joyce’s |
1916 | Easter Rising at Dublin; its leaders executed; battle of the Somme |
1917 | Éamon de Valera wins Clare by-election for Sinn Féin |
1918 | End of World War I; global influenza epidemic kills millions; Sinn Féin victory in general election |
1919 | Meeting of first Dáil; Soloheadbeg ambush |
1920 | Proposed partition of Ireland; sectarian violence in Ulster; Croke Park killings in Dublin; burning of central Cork |
1921 | Burning of Dublin’s Custom House; first elections in post-partition Ireland – inaugural meeting of Northern Ireland parliament; Anglo–Irish Treaty |
1922 | Treaty ratified by Dáil; Michael Collins heads new provisional government; civil war; destruction of Four Courts and Irish national archives; death of Collins; special powers in operation in Northern Ireland; Joyce’s |
1923 | Civil war ends; formation of Cumann na nGaedheal government; Yeats awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; Censorship of Films Act passed |
1925 | George Bernard Shaw awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; works begin at Ardnacrusha hydroelectric works |
1926 | Seán O’Casey’s |
1927 | Fianna Fáil, led by de Valera, enters Dáil |
1929 | Elizabeth Bowen’s |
1932 | Fianna Fáil forms its first government |
1933 | Formation of Fine Gael |
1935 | Sale and importation of contraceptives banned in Free State |
1937 | Constitution ratified by referendum |
1938 | Treaty Ports returned to Irish control |
1939 | World War II begins; de Valera declares Irish neutrality |
1941 | Belfast extensively bombed by German aircraft; air attacks on Dublin |
1942 | Patrick Kavanagh’s |
1943 | Sea mine explosion in Donegal kills 19 men and boys |
1945 | De Valera visits German legation at Dublin to commiserate on death of Hitler |
1947 | Education Act enables free secondary education in Northern Ireland |
1948 | Establishment of National Health Service in Northern Ireland |
1949 | Declaration of Irish Republic; Government of Ireland Act cements Northern Ireland’s position in United Kingdom |
1951 | ‘Mother and Child’ scheme fails to be enacted |
1955 | Republic enters United Nations |
1957 | The Rose Tattoo |
1960 | Edna O’Brien’s |
1961 | Republic applies to join EEC; its application rejected |
1967 | Formation of Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA); second EEC application rejected; free secondary education introduced in republic |
1968 | Civil rights march in Derry ends in violence |
1969 | Burntollet attack; British troops sent to Northern Ireland |
1970 | Arms trial in Republic – Charles Haughey sacked from cabinet; formation of SDLP |
1971 | Ian Paisley establishes DUP; ‘contraceptive train’ travels between Belfast and Dublin |
1972 | Bloody Sunday in Derry |
1973 | Republic and UK join EEC; Sunningdale Agreement |
1974 | Sunningdale collapses; Dublin and Monaghan bombings; Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings |
1976 | Seamus Heaney’s |
1979 | Charles Haughey becomes taoiseach for first time |
1980 | Brian Friel’s |
1981 | Hunger strikes at Maze prison |
1984 | Report of New Ireland Forum |
1985 | Anglo–Irish Agreement |
1988 | John Hume and Gerry Adams begin secret talks; Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen |
1990 | Mary Robinson elected president of Ireland |
1993 | Homosexuality decriminalized in Republic |
1995 | Divorce laws passed in Republic; Heaney wins Nobel Prize for Literature |
1998 | Bloody Sunday Inquiry established; Omagh bombing; Hume and David Trimble awarded Nobel Peace Prize |
2001 | Dissolution of RUC; formation of Police Service of Northern Ireland |
2008 | Bank guarantee scheme in Republic |
2009 | Publication of Ryan Report into child abuse in Republic |
2010 | Bloody Sunday Inquiry report published; international financial 'bailout' of Irish economy |
Acknowledgements
A great many people have helped in the research and writing of
Story of Ireland
– through discussion, the sharing of ideas and the reading of various drafts. I should like to thank (again) Albert DePetrillo, my editor at BBC Books, for guiding the project sensitively from its inception; project editor Caroline McArthur; and Stephen Douds, Sean McGuire and Linda Sands at BBC Northern Ireland. I am especially grateful to Catherine Toal for vital and generous assistance.
My thanks also to Laurence Browne, Lucy Collins, Gillian Cope, Marie Gethins, Anne Mary Luttrell, Ruth McDonnell, Eina McHugh, John Murphy, Molly O’Duffy, Jane O’Halloran, Caitríona O’Reilly, Ursula Peier, Ann Russell and Maria Scott. I am grateful to the librarians at the National Library of Ireland and the Irish Collection at Dublin City Libraries; and particularly to John McManus at Trinity College Library, Dublin.
Most of all, my thanks to my family: in particular to Charles and Maureen Hegarty and Claire Hegarty; and to John Lovett.
Lines from ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’, from
Collected Poems
(1999) by Derek Mahon, are reproduced by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press.
Neil Hegarty, 2011
BBC Books and Ebury Publishing would like to thank Mike Connolly and Fergal Keane, as well as Ailsa Orr, Morag Keating, Darran Marshall, Tom Coulson, Jonathan and Deniece Baker for their help in completing this book.
Notes
Introduction
1.
Louis MacNeice,
Autumn Journal
, Faber and Faber, 1940.
Prologue
1.
Seamus Heaney, ‘The Biretta’, in
Seeing Things
(London: Faber, 1991), 27.
2.
Tacitus,
Agricola
and
Germania
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 74–5.
3.
Ibid., 75.
Part 1
Chapter 1 – Children of God
1.
Patrick,
Confession
, in Philip Freeman,
St Patrick of Ireland: A Biography
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 188.
2.
Cited in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín,
Early Medieval Ireland, 400–1200
(London and New York: Longman, 1995), 14.
3.
Patrick,
Confession
, 176.
4.
bid., 180.
5.
Austin Clarke, ‘Pilgrimage’, in W. J. McCormack (ed.),
Selected Poems
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992), 38.
6.
Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, “The most adaptable of saints: the cult of St Patrick in the seventeenth century’, in
Archivum Hibernicum
, Vol. 49 (1995), 82–104.
7.
Quoted in Thomas Cahill,
How the Irish Saved Civilization
(London: Sceptre, 1995), 183.
8.
Acta SS
, Feb. I, 141 (viii, 39), quoted by Donnchadh Ó’Corráin, ‘Ireland
c
.800: aspects of society’, in Dáibhí Ó’Cróinín (ed.),
New History of Ireland I: Prehistoric and Early Ireland
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 598.
9.
Paul Durcan, ‘Fat Molly’, in
A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems
(London: Harvill, 1993), 38.
10.
1 Samuel 2: 10.
11.
Adamnán,
Vita Columbae
in Seamus Deane (ed.),
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing
, Vol. I (Derry: Field Day, 1991), 83.
12.
Genesis 12:1.
13.
Bede,
A History of the English Church and People
, trans. and ed. Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955), 195.
14.
Sermons of Columbanus
, Sermon VII: 2, in
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
, University College, Cork (ucc.ie/celt).
15.
Bede,
A History of the English Church and People
, 199.
16.
Letters of Columbanus
, Letter II: 1, in
CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
, University College, Cork (ucc.ie/celt).
17.
Ibid,, Letter II, 7.
18.
Quoted in T. M. Charles-Edwards,
Early Christian Ireland
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 357.
Chapter 2 – Landfall
1.
G. N. Garmonsway (trans. and ed.),
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
(London: J. M. Dent, 1953), 55–6.
2.
Seán MacAirt and Gearoid MacNiocaill (eds),
Annals of Ulster
(Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1983), 251.
