nikkiepige

Ireland. A land in conflict. The conflicts in Ireland probably started back in 1170, where the Englishmen started taking more and more of Ireland. And the king og England – Henry 2. – even called himself king of both England and Ireland, obviously not all irish liked it. But in 1536 Ireland and England fought often, and the english won almost every time. The reason they fought was that England was a protestant country, while Ireland still was catholic. This meant trouble because the most important person in the church for the English people was the king, but for the Irish it was the pope. I find it quite obvious that this would mean civil war. But the fighting was also about the fact that englsh kings took the land from the irish and gave it to englishmen and scotsmen. In the year of 1690 england won two very important battles, and ireland and England did not fight again for a hundred years. In that time it was very hard to be irish, they almost couldn’t keep land, go to schools, or even got to catholic churches . and they didn’t even have the opportunity to change the way things were, because they could not vote or speak in the Parliament. That made the protestants rich, and the catholics poor. I found it very dispiceable that england could treat people like that. And the fight still continues, every year protestants march through the streets of Belfast, hylde the former king of england – william – who won fights against Ireland, and obviously the Irish gets angry. In 1795 and 1798 the irish fought the english once again, and this time they got help from France (the text dosn’t say whh6y, but I think that France was also Catholic. Either that, or they just wanted to fight England) it didn’t change anything though, Englands won again. In 1801 england and Ireland was made one country by the “Act of Union”, the Parliament was of course in London. After a hundred years the Natiolists(Catholic Irishmen) wanted change, but the Unionists(Protestants) wanted things to stay the way they were. In the west of ireland, many poor catholics lived on small farms, the best thing to grow on the hard and stony land, was potatoes. Therefore many farmers only has potatoes to eat. But in the 1840s the potatoes died. This left many farmers without any food at all, thousands died of hunger. Many Irish decided to leave ireland and go to America, hoping to find a better future there. The rich protestants were only happy to see the poor catholics leaving “their” land, now they could have cows on the land, where the farmers used to live. They even asked ships to take catholics to america, but many died on the ships. Around 1900 life had gotten a little better for the catholics in Ireland, but they were still very poor, and there was still thousands who sent to americs every year. The nationalists wanted to break the “Act of Union”, and to have an independent Ireland with a Parliament of it’s own. But the Unionists didn’t want that, and they were ready to fight, for the sake of keeping things the way they were.