During the 19th century, the tide began to turn against anti-Catholic oppression. Daniel ‘the Liberator’ O’Connell was elected to the Westminster parliament in 1828 as the member for County Clare but, initially, the Catholic Kerry-born barrister was not allowed to take his seat. The law was changed, not least because of fears of a Catholic uprising, and O’Connell took his place in parliament in 1830.
Derrynane House is the ancestral home of Daniel ‘the Liberator’ O’Connell (Route 5, Stage 6)
The Great Famine
Before the Great Famine of 1845-52 Ireland was one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. The tenant farmers eked out an impoverished existence on land owned by a largely absent aristocracy. There was widespread dependency on potatoes as a subsistence crop, and when blight struck in 1845 the British government was disastrously slow to respond to the unfolding crisis. The ensuing famine saw some one million deaths with a further million emigrating, mostly to the United States, although estimates vary widely.
THE GREAT FAMINE
The potato fungal disease Phytophthora infestaris first struck in Ireland in 1845. There had already been warnings that there was an over-dependence on potatoes but it was when the blight returned in 1846 that the full horror of the Great Famine began to unfold. The disease did not appear in 1847, although by this stage there was a lack of seed potatoes and the crop was low. The blight then returned in 1848 and 1849, and had run its course by 1850. Contemporary political ideas put faith in markets to deal with shortages and private charities and landlords to deal with the immediate crisis. It was not until 1847 that the British government changed tack and began actively feeding the population – but by then Ireland was already the scene of harrowing starvation and disease was rampant. Estimates of the total number of deaths vary, but they amounted to at least a million. Some of the accounts recorded at the Skibbereen Heritage Centre (Route 6, Stage 4) are truly shocking, but it is in the silence of the Abbeystrowry famine graveyard, where 8000–10,000 unidentified people are buried, that the true scale of the tragedy can start to be comprehended.
The Famine was a watershed in Irish history and has become a rallying point for Irish nationalists and totemic of English exploitation and suppression in Ireland. The following years saw some small victories in improving land rights but a Bill that would have returned an Irish parliament to Dublin was continually blocked by the upper chamber of the British parliament, the House of Lords. An awakening of Irish culture was also underway with, for example, the Gaelic League founded in 1893 to promote the everyday use of the Irish language.
The Easter Rising and beyond
The prospect, in 1912, of an Irish Home Rule Bill finally being forced past the recalcitrant Lords galvanised unionist groups in favour of close ties with Britain, and both Irish nationalist and unionists began to gather arms. The Home Rule Act was given royal assent in 1914, but then suspended when Britain was drawn into World War I.
The nationalist Easter Rising of 1916 saw the taking of strategic sites in Dublin, including the General Post Office, and the proclamation of an independent Irish republic. The British government, then engulfed in a life-or-death conflict with Germany, had no qualms about using troops diverted from the Western Front and heavy armaments in central Dublin. Many of the rebels were executed as traitors – a heavy-handed approach that boosted support for Irish nationalism. Future president of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, was originally given a death sentence which was later commuted to life in prison.
In the post-war election of 1919, the nationalist Sinn Féin party won the majority of Irish seats (in the Westminster parliament). The members then declared Ireland independent and formed the Dáil Éireann (Irish Assembly). The Irish War of Independence followed, ending in 1921 with the Anglo-Irish Treaty that established the Irish Free State. The treaty allowed six of the northern counties of Ulster – mostly still in favour of union with Britain – to opt out of the Free State, a right they promptly exercised.
A Victorian post box overstamped with the ‘SE’ Irish Free State mark
The Treaty was, however, divisive among nationalists, many of whom objected to the partition of Ireland. The Free State’s status as a dominion, albeit autonomous, of the hated British Empire also rankled. The subsequent Irish Civil War of 1922-23 between pro- and anti-Treaty forces petered out into a de facto victory for those backing the deal. However, the loss of lives – including charismatic and high-profile figures such as Michael Collins – and the damage from guerrilla warfare laid a poor foundation for a fledgling independent nation.
Ireland remained neutral during World War II. Its next major landmark came in 1973 as the country joined what was then the European Economic Community (now the EU) at the same time as its single largest trading partner the United Kingdom. By then ‘The Troubles’ had already broken out in Northern Ireland, where British troops were engaged and paramilitaries from pro-Republican and pro-British factions were on the streets. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998, ratified by all sides, brought an end to the violence, but political conflict and socio-political division remain.
Eye of the tiger
In the south of the island, economic growth had at best been stuttering since independence, while unrest in the north had blighted investment there since the 1970s. Historically, many of Ireland’s best and brightest left to pursue careers in Britain or further afield. At the start of the 1990s Ireland was a poor country by Western European standards but, driven by EU investment, low taxation, pro-business policies and the availability of a well-educated workforce, the economy entered a boom phase. The economy grew at over 9 per cent a year between 1995 and 2000 and continued to expand at up to 6 per cent a year until the global credit crisis began to hit in 2007-8.
Ireland was by then dubbed the ‘Celtic Tiger’ as one of the few European economies to match the growth in the Asian Tiger economies at the time. Companies such as Microsoft and Facebook had chosen Ireland as a European base. Land prices had ballooned and new housing estates littered the Irish landscape. But the good times ended abruptly with the ‘credit crunch’ of 2008. A calamitous downturn followed and, as a Eurozone economy, Ireland suffered the indignity of intervention from the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
By the early part of the second decade of the century Ireland’s economy returned to growth. Dublin booms again although the growth is less visible in the west of the island. Tourism, for a long time a reliable contributor to the Irish economy, is stirring after suffering (at least by comparison with other sectors) during the Tiger period. Luring visitors away from Dublin and traditional hotspots such as Killarney is a policy goal: projects such as the Wild Atlantic Way are seeing significant investment and improvement in accommodation, places to eat and visitor facilities, some of which seemed destined to moulder away during the boom years.
Dawros Bay is ringed with small beaches such as this one at Rossbeg (Route 1, Stage 8)
What’s in a name?
Because of the history of the island, most places in Ireland have both Irish and Anglicised names. Visitors to Ireland generally find the Anglicised names easier to recognise, read and pronounce – something which could be crucial when following or asking for directions. Purely for pragmatic reasons, therefore, this guide tends to use the Anglicised versions.
Appendix B gives a few of the original Gaelic placenames with an explanation of their meanings.
