Ireland

Lore & Background

Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD. The island was Christianised from the 5th century onwards. During this period Ireland was divided amongst petty kings, who in turn served under the kings of the traditional provinces vying for dominance and the title of High King of Ireland. Between the late 8th and early 11th centuries, Viking raids and settlement took place culminating in the Battle of Clontarf on 23 April 1014 which resulted in the end of Viking power in Ireland. Following the 12th-century Anglo-Norman invasion, England claimed sovereignty. However, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, and was extended during the 18th century. With the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. The Great Famine of the 1840s saw the population fall by over 20%, through death and emigration. A war of independence in the early 20th century was followed by the partition of the island, leading to the creation of the Irish Free State, which became increasingly sovereign over the following decades until it declared a republic in 1948 (Republic of Ireland Act, 1948) and Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s. This subsided following the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In 1973, both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, with Northern Ireland as part of it, joined the European Economic Community. Following a referendum vote in 2016, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland included, left the European Union (EU) in 2020. Northern Ireland was granted a limited special status and allowed to operate within the EU single market for goods without being in the European Union.

In Their Own Story

The autumn gale off the western coast turns the sea into hammered pewter. In the small port of Waterford, a clerk stamps a charter in English red wax while, three miles inland, a chieftain's son watches the ink dry and thinks of the land beyond the mist. The overlord's tax-carrier will arrive with the winter tides. But the ships in the harbour are not bound for London. They are bound for the green shore where the old stories say the first Irish settlers stepped off a storm-tossed keel. The clerk stamps. The boy counts the days. The sea, indifferent, carries both.

Reader's Guide

The source article does not provide any gameplay guide for Europa Universalis IV. It only describes the real-world history and geography of Ireland.

Did You Know?

• Ireland is the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain.
• Woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%.
• The earliest evidence of human activity in Ireland was dated to 33,000 years ago from a reindeer bone found in Castlepook Cave.
• The names Ireland and Hibernia derive from Proto-Celtic meaning 'fertile soil'.