Was Ireland poor in the 1800's because of the way the British ruled them?

Answer 1

Mostly yes, but also no. British rule in Ireland was oppressive, and discriminated against Catholics. There were a lot of poor people in England too, but many Irish were poorer still and what wealth there was in the country was in the hands of rich landlords (both Irish and English) . Pretty much as it was in mainland Britain to be honest, but industrialisation helped spread the wealth around a bit over there.
Ireland at the time had a very high population (double what it is now) which was highly dependent on potatoes. When a blight decimated the potato crop in the late 1840s it, along with laws that discriminated against Irish Catholics, led to a famine, the effects of which lasted several years and resulted in up to one million deaths and another couple of million emigrating to North America and Britain.

Answer 2

Yes. England took over much of Ireland, taking land from Catholics and other Irish people who opposed the invasion. This land was then owned by English or English-allied landlords, who allowed the Irish to live there as long as they worked the fields to raise crops sold by the landlords in other countries.

This left the Irish with mostly potatoes to eat. When a blight struck the potato crop in the mid 1800s, vast numbers (about 12% of the populatoion) of Irish people starved and many left their country to survive.

Answer 3

Might have something to do with 12% of the population dying due to famine, and twice that many fleeing to other countries.

It was not caused by the British. The best argument you can make is they didn't respond fast enough or well enough, but they did try to help.

Answer 4

Yes! When potato famine occurred, the reason it was so devastating & so many died is because potatoes were the only thing the Irish common people were ALLOWED to grow by the British - it was law. So when their only allowed crop went bad, they had nothing else to fall back on.

Answer 5

yes because in 1847 the British stole the Irishshopping good like food that,s why they had to live on potato.s.the ships would go to liverpool and the british was going to send it to irland but they didn,t.

Answer 6

yes and alot of them joined the spanish (from spain) army and some of the irish stayed in puerto rico when it was discovered by they spanish people ... i only know this cause im puerto rican and my cousins have the last name sullivan and we traced their family back to ireland

Answer 7

Ireland was mostly ice-covered and joined by land to Britain and continental Europe during the last ice age. It has been inhabited for about 9,000 years. Mesolithic stone age inhabitants arrived some time after 8000 BC. Agriculture arrived with the Neolithic circa 4000 BC. The Bronze Age, which began around 2500 BC, saw the production of elaborate gold and bronze ornaments and weapons. The Iron Age in Ireland is associated with people now known as Celts. They are traditionally thought to have colonised Ireland in a series of waves between the 8th and 1st centuries BC, with the Gael, the last wave of Celts, conquering the island and dividing it into five or more kingdoms. Many scholars, however, now favour a view that emphasises possible cultural diffusion from overseas over significant colonisation. The Romans referred to Ireland as Hibernia[15] and/or Scotia[16]. Ptolemy in AD 100 records Ireland's geography and tribes.[17] Native accounts are confined to Irish poetry, myth, and archaeology. The exact relationship between Rome and the tribes of Hibernia is unclear; the only references are a few Roman writings.

According to early medieval chronicles, in 431, Bishop Palladius arrived in Ireland on a mission from Pope Celestine to minister to the Irish "already believing in Christ." The same chronicles record that Saint Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, arrived in 432. There is continued debate over the missions of Palladius and Patrick, but the general consensus is that they both existed and that 7th century annalists may have mis-attributed some of their activities to each other. Palladius most likely went to Leinster, while Patrick is believed to have gone to Ulster, where he probably spent time in captivity as a young man.

The druid tradition collapsed in the face of the spread of the new religion. Irish Christian scholars excelled in the study of Latin and Greek learning and Christian theology in the monasteries that flourished, preserving Latin and Greek learning during the Early Middle Ages. The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking, and sculpture flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells, ornate jewellery, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island. This era was interrupted in the 9th century by 200 years of intermittent warfare with waves of Viking raiders who plundered monasteries and towns. Eventually they settled in Ireland and established many towns, including the modern day cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.

In 1171, King Henry II of England invaded Ireland, using the 1155 Bull Laudabiliter issued to him by then English Pope Adrian IV to claim sovereignty over the island, and forced the Cambro-Norman warlords and some of the Gaelic Irish kings to accept him as their overlord. From the 13th century, English law began to be introduced. By the late thirteenth century the Norman-Irish had established the feudal system throughout most of lowland Ireland. Their settlement was characterised by the establishment of baronies, manors, towns and large land-owning monastic communities. The towns of Dublin, Cork, Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, New Ross, Kilkenny, Carlingford, Drogheda, Sligo, Athenry, Arklow, Buttevant, Carlow, Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel, Clonmel, Dundalk, Enniscorthy, Kildare, Kinsale, Mullingar, Naas, Navan, Nenagh, Thurles, Wicklow, Trim and Youghal were all under Norman-Irish control. In the fourteenth century the English settlement went into a period of decline and large areas, for example Sligo, were re-occupied by Gaelic septs. From the late fifteenth century English rule was once again expanded, first through the efforts of the Earls of Kildare and Ormond then through the activities of the Tudor State under Henry VIII and Mary and Elizabeth. This resulted in the complete conquest of Ireland by 1603 and the final collapse of the Gaelic social and political superstructure at the end of the 17th century, as a result of English and Scottish Protestant colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, and the disastrous Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War in Ireland. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Irish Catholics were barred from voting or attending the Irish Parliament. The new English Protestant ruling class was known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Towards the end of the 18th century the entirely Protestant Irish Parliament attained a greater degree of independence from the British Parliament than it had previously held. Under the Penal Laws no Irish Catholic could sit in the Parliament of Ireland, even though some 90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. This ban was followed by others in 1703 and 1709 as part of a comprehensive apartheid system against the community, and to a lesser extent against Protestant dissenters.[18] In 1798 many members of this dissenter tradition made common cause with Catholics in a rebellion inspired and led by the Society of United Irishmen. It was staged with the aim of creating a fully independent Ireland as a state with a republican constitution. Despite assistance from France the Irish Rebellion of 1798 was put down by British forces.

In 1800 the British and subsequently the Irish Parliament passed the Act of Union which, in 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. According to contemporary documents the necessary majority in the unrepresentative Irish Parliament was achieved by means of bribery. Thus Ireland became part of an extended United Kingdom, ruled directly by the UK Parliament in London. The 19th century saw the Great Famine of the 1840s, during which one million Irish people died and over a million emigrated. Mass emigration became entrenched as a result of the famine and the population continued to decline until late in the 20th century. The pre-famine peak was over 8 million recorded in the 1841 census. The population has never returned to this level.

The 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of Irish Nationalism especially among the poorer Catholic population. Daniel O'Connell led a successful non-violent campaign for Catholic Emancipation. A subsequent campaign for Repeal of the Act of Union failed. Later in the century Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for self government within the Union or "Home Rule". This was also unsuccessful. These failures resulted in the eclipse of moderate nationalism by militant separatism. In 1921, following the Easter Rising of 1916, and the subsequent Irish War of Independence, a treaty was concluded between the British Government and the leaders of the Irish Republic. The Treaty recognised the two-state solution created in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Northern Ireland was presumed to form a home rule state within the new Irish Free State unless it opted out. Northern Ireland had a majority Protestant population which feared becoming a minority in a majority Catholic state. Not unexpectedly it opted out of the new state and chose instead to remain part of the United Kingdom. A Boundary Commission was set up to decide on the boundaries between the two Irish states, though it was subsequently abandoned after it recommended only minor adjustments to the border. Disagreements over some provisions of the treaty led to a split in the Nationalist movement and subsequently to the Civil War. The civil war ended in 1923 with the defeat of the Anti-treaty forces.

Irish Independence: The Irish Free State, Éire, Ireland
Main article: History of the Republic of Ireland
The Anglo-Irish Treaty was narrowly ratified by the Dáil in December 1921 but was rejected by a large minority, resulting in the Irish Civil War which lasted until 1923. In 1922, in the middle of this civil war, the Irish Free State came into being. For its first years the new state was governed by the victors of the Civil War. However, in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of the opponents of the treaty, were elected into government. The party introduced a new constitution in 1937 which renamed the state "Éire or in the English language, Ireland" (article 4 of the Constitution).

The state was neutral during World War II which was known internally as The Emergency, but offered some assistance to the Allies, especially in Northern Ireland. However it is estimated that around 50,000 volunteers from the Republic fought in the British armed forces during the second World War. In 1949, the Irish state declared itself to be a republic and that henceforth it should be described as the Republic of Ireland. The Republic was plagued by poverty and emigration until the mid-1970s. The 1990s saw the beginning of unprecedented economic success, in a phenomenon known as the "Celtic Tiger". By the early 2000s it had become one of the richest countries (in terms of GDP per capita) in the European Union, moving from being a net recipient of the budget to becoming a net contributor during the next Budget round (2007-13), and from a country of net emigration to one of net immigration. In October 2006, there were talks between Ireland and the U.S. to negotiate a new immigration policy between the two countries, in response to the growth of the Irish economy and desire of many U.S. citizens who sought to move to Ireland for work.


Northern Ireland
Main article: History of Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland was created as an administrative division of the United Kingdom by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. From 1921 until 1972, Northern Ireland was granted limited self-government within the United Kingdom, with its own parliament and prime minister.

In the first half of the 20th Century, Northern Ireland was largely spared the strife of the Civil War in the south, but there were sporadic episodes of inter-communal violence between Catholics and Protestants during the decades that followed partition. Although the Irish Free State was neutral during World War II, Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom was not, and became deeply involved in the British war effort (albeit without military conscription as it was introduced in Great Britain). Belfast suffered a bombing raid from the German Luftwaffe in 1941 causing one of the greatest losses of life in a single incident of the Battle of Britain.

In elections to the 1921-1972 regional government, the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland each voted almost entirely along sectarian lines, meaning that the government of Northern Ireland (elected by "first past the post" from 1929) was always controlled by the Ulster Unionist Party. Over time, the minority Catholic community felt increasingly alienated by the regional government in Northern Ireland, with further disaffection fuelled by incidents such as gerrymandering of the local council in Londonderry in 1967, and the discrimination of Catholics in housing and employment.

In the 1960s Nationalist grievances at unionist discrimination within the state eventually led to large civil rights protests, which the government suppressed heavy-handedly, most notably on "Bloody Sunday". It was during this period of civil unrest that the paramilitary Provisional IRA, who favoured the creation of a united Ireland, began its campaign against what it called the "British occupation of the six counties". Other groups, legal and illegal on the unionist side, and illegal on the nationalist side, began to participate in the violence and the period known as the "Troubles" began, resulting in approximately 3000 deaths over the subsequent three decades. Owing to the civil unrest as "The Troubles" erupted, the British government suspended home rule in 1972 and imposed direct rule from Westminster.

Attempts were made to end "The Troubles", such as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974 and Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, but ultimately were failures mainly due to the continuing level of violence. More recently in 1998, following a Provisional IRA cease fire and multi-party talks, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded and ratified by referendum in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This agreement attempts to restore self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of power sharing between the two communities. Violence has greatly decreased since the signing of the accord. The power-sharing assembly has only operated for brief periods and is currently suspended.

In 2001 the police force in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was replaced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

On 28 July 2005, the Provisional IRA announced the end of its armed campaign and on 25 September 2005 international weapons inspectors supervised what they currently regard as the full decommissioning of the Provisional IRA's weapons.