INTRODUCTION TO IRISH HISTORY

6000 B.C. -- Earliest human settlement.

300 B.C. -- Arrival of Celts.

Beginning ca. 400 A.D. -- St. Patrick Christianizes the island.  
        Monasteries founded.  Missionaries sent throughout 
        Europe. 

795 A.D. -- Norse (Viking) invasion.

1014 -- Brian Boru, first king of all Ireland, drives out the 
        Norsemen. 

1171 -- Henry II of England, encouraged by the Vatican, invades 
        Ireland.  Invaders gradually assimilated. 

1370 -- Statutes of Kilkenny (apartheid).  Unsuccessful. 

1500 -- Henry VII shackles Irish parliament to English one. 

1534 -- Henry VIII breaks with the Catholic Church; Ireland 
        remains Catholic. 

1603 -- Queen Elizabeth drives out the last Irish Earls.

1649-50 -- Cromwell subdues rebellions in northern Ireland and 
        settles his men there.  

1691 -- Battle of the Boyne:  King William defeats of deposed 
        Catholic King James; Ireland now completely controlled 
        by the Protestant Ascendancy.  

1704 -- The Test Act, the beginning of Irish Penal Laws.  No 
        Catholics could hold public jobs or office.                          

1798 -- Wolf Tone, head of the United Irishmen, leads failed 
        rebellion which culminates decades of growing desire for 
        independence among both the Protestant Ascendency and 
        the Catholic middle and upper classes. 

1801 -- Act of Union:  English bribes secure the Irish 
        parliament's vote to dissolve itself and merge Ireland 
        into the United Kingdom. 

1803 -- Robert Emmet rebellion crushed. End of the United 
        Irishmen. 

1828-29 -- Test Act repealed (in exchange for the loss of small-
        land-owner voting rights). 

1828 -- Catholic Daniel O'Connell elected to British Parliament 
        and begins agitating for the repeal of the Union. 

1841-45 -- The Potato Famine.  Massive death and massive 
        emigration, mostly to America. 

After 1848 -- Rise of Fenianism, a more militant movement for 
        Irish independence.  Beginning of the Home Rule 
        movement. 

1879 -- Protestant Irish member of parliament Charles Stewart 
        Parnell heads the Land League, an organization pushing 
        for lawful and just Catholic ownership and control of 
        land. 

1881 -- Land reform passed by parliament.

1882 -- James Joyce born.
 
1886 -- First Home Rule Bill defeated.

1889 -- Parnell involved in divorce scandal.  Dissension within 
        the Nationalist Party.  The Catholic clergy denounces 
        him from the pulpit.  The Home Rule movement in 
        disarray. 

1891 -- Death of Parnell.

1893 -- Second Home Rule bill defeated.

1895-1904 -- Approximate time of the stories in "Dubliners." This 
        is also the period of the Irish Cultural Revival. 

1914 -- First World War begins, with Ireland on the verge of 
        civil war. 

1916 -- The Easter Rising brutally put down.

1918 -- Survivors of the Easter Rising establish a provisional 
        independent government. 

1920 -- England finally forced to grant semi-independence to 
        Ireland, now to be divided between the southern 
        provinces and predominantly Protestant Ulster in the 
        north. 

1921 -- Treaty with England and establishment of the Irish Free 
        State, consisting of everything but Ulster.