The Troubles (Ireland)

The Irish Troubles (Traditionally 1969-1997) was a wide ranging conflict that engulfed Northern Ireland for almost forty years.

Origins

In 1167 the deposed King of Leinster, Dermott Mc Murrough travelled to England to hire mercenaries in order to retake his Kingdom. With the consent of Henry II, Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (popularly known as Strongbow) arrived with a small army of Norman knights who proved vastly superior to their Irish counterparts. With their help, Mc Murrough regained his lands. De Clare married Mc Mourrough's daughter, and later laid claim to the crown of Leinster. Henry II, fearful of the possibility of a rival Norman state on his doorstep, arrived in Ireland in 1171 and secured nominal control of the island in 1175. This sequence of events ensured a foothold on the island for successive Anglo-Norman and British rulers, which eventually culminated in the plantations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The most succesful of these plantations was the Ulster Plantation. This colonisation effort was spearheaded by English and Scottish Protestants who took control of the lands confiscated by Irish Lords following the Flight of the Earls in 1607. These original Protestant colonists formed the basis of the Ulster-Scots culture which would find itself at odds with the Catholic Gaelic-Irish culture on the island.