Dan Snow's History Hit - The Origins of The Troubles (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

From the late 1960s to 1998, Northern Ireland was gripped by "The Troubles" - three decades of bloodshed, resulting from competing visions for its future. This week, we're releasing a two-part series that explores why this conflict erupted and how it played out. For this, Dan is joined by Dr Thomas Leahy, Lecturer in British and Irish Politics and Contemporary History at Cardiff University.In this first episode, we trace more than 750 years of British-Irish history to uncover how centuries of religious tension, social division and political strife laid the foundations for this conflict.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello folks, Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. In 1969, Secretary-in-Tenture. had come to a head in a historic city in Northern Ireland, a city whose very name is contested, dairy to Irish nationalists,

those who believe in United Island, and London dairy to Ulster loyalists, those people who wish to see Northern Ireland remain as part of the United Kingdom. In that year, a violent clash broke out between the Royal Ulster, Constabulary, the Northern Irish Police Force, and Protestant loyalists on one side, and Catholic residents of the Bogside District on the other. The confrontation started as members of the Protestant Apprentice Boys, passed the Bogside on their annual parade, seen by Catholic residents as an unacceptable provocation.

Over three days, besieged residents built barricades and armed themselves with rocks and petrol bombs, as the police tried to enter the bogside using tear gas. The situation was so volatile that the British army was deployed to the streets to quell the unrest. It became known as the Battle of the Bogside, and it was a pivotal moment for Northern Ireland, symbolising the start of a period known as the Troubles.

Fast forward three years to January 1972, and Derry is still a tinderbox. There's another demonstration, one that's been called to protest internment without trial. This is a controversial policy which has stoked tensions between the Unionist state and its Catholic and nationalist citizens. In anticipation of unrest, the authorities have called in the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, the parachute regiment. No, there's parrars. They've already earned themselves a reputation of deploying excessive force among the citizens of Northern Ireland

during previous confrontations, like that known as the Bala Murphy Massacre in West Belfast. Now the parrars are watching as 10,000 people gather at the Kregan housing estate and begin marching towards Guildhall Square in the city centre. Their plan was to hold a rally. But as they wind their way through the city's streets, they see the parrots have begun setting up barriers to redirect their march. Undeterred, the protesters decide to make for the free dairy corner instead.

At some point, a group breaks away from the main march and begins throwing stones at the manned barricades. The powers respond by firing rubber bullets, water cannon and CS gas, a nasty type of non-lethal gas commonly used during riots. it makes you tear up, it creates a burning sensation in your nose, your throat and your mouth. For those caught up in this, it was not out a horrible experience, but clashes like this were pretty common in Derry,

and observers would later claim that this exchange was no more violent than usual. But something very unusual does happen. Suddenly, around 4pm, the situation escalates. Near William Street, where other protesters have begun throwing stones at soldiers in the nearby building. The paras opened fire, this time with live ammunition. Fifteen-year-old Damien Donahey and John Johnson are shot and wounded. The paras would later claim that Donahy had been carrying a suspicious object, but multiple investigations would conclude that this was false.

On the ground, confusion rains as protesters scatter. People call out for family and friends. They charge down side streets and alleyways. many head for the bogside, the sight of violent clashes just three years before. Following orders from higher command, that soldiers move beyond the barricades and into the bogside, chasing protests on Fulton and Armoured vehicles to make arrests. They continue firing live rounds, claiming to target IRA members. The protests flee in panic.

Soldiers open fire again on demonstrators. In a matter of minutes, 13 unarmed civilians are shot dead, and at least 15 others are wounded. There are no reliable reports of weapons among the dead, although the army insists that these men were armed. The march is now completely dispersed. Survivors are retreated to homes, churches and makeshift hospitals. The British army claimed that they were fired upon first, but journalists, photographers and medical staff have disputed this.

The news spreads globally. There's outrage, condemnation from international leaders. Bloody Sunday, as it's come to be known. It remains one of the darkest days of the troubles. Hi everybody and welcome to Dan Snow's history. So the event I just described is one of the most infamous in the long and bloody conflict in Northern Ireland that spanned around 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. It was one of those moments that deepened, or really escalated, I suppose,

the conflict that we euphemistically call the troubles. Over the next two episodes in this podcast, we're going to unravel the long and complicated story of the troubles. We're going to help you make sense of what can definitely be a confusing, a tricky subject, but it's an important one to understand. It's a story that, as you'll hear, does not begin in the 1960s, stretches way back before the start of the 20th century. The roots go back centuries. And I make no apology here. We're going to do a deep dive. We're going to go all the way back to the 12th century. We're going to get into it. We're going to look at the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. We'll talk about the Protestant Reformation, the reign of Elizabeth I first, and is worth saying, again, how differently that rain is seen in Ireland to the custom review in England. It just shows that so much history is about where you are standing at that point in time. We're going to be looking at the Ulster Plantation. We're going to be looking at the Ulster Plantation.

the Great Famine, and then we're going to finish up just after the First World War with the 1918 general election. Then in the second episode, we're going to pick it up again in the 20th century. Irish War of Independence, Civil War, and we're going all the way up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. We are very lucky across these two episodes to have a fantastic guest talking us through the tumultuous history. We've got Thomas Lehi. He's a senior lecturer in politics at Cardiff University. He teaches British and Irish politics and contemporary history. And as you'll hear, he's got a fantastic grasp on the competition.

complicated history that we're dealing with here. And all of this obviously remains very divisive, all of it, much of it really very contested. Many of you listening will have lived through part of the story. I certainly did. Some of you may have experienced the events we're going to talk about in. In a small way, the city that I grew up in, London was from time to time smashed with an IRA bomb. That's just something that we got very used to. But many, many more British and Irish people experienced the troubles at much, much closer hand than that. This podcast is an overview. It's a jumping off point. It lays the groundwork. And I hope you go on and do some more studying, researching yourself.

With all that said, I hope you find these episodes helpful. So this is episode one, the origins of the troubles. T minus 10. The Thomas bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black white unity till there is first than black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off.

And the shuttle has split. the power. Thomas, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Tell me about islands before the Anglo-Normans landed there. It was trade. The Romans had sort of investigated it but never invaded, although it was talked about. And indeed, the Irish military activity often had been the other way, lots of Irish raids

and attacks and even some settlements in Great Britain. What was the relationship between the two islands like, say, around the 11th century? century, when William the Conquer arrives in England, how would they have seen each other? I think if we look at Ireland as a society itself, so it would have been decentralized state in terms of you wouldn't have like a centralized government or king or they would have had different chieftains for different areas, rulers, regional kings, which are called Irish-Gaelic chieftains. And yes, as he said, there would have been a lot of conflicts between them, but also anyone who tried to come in, like Vikings, etc., except in longer past. And then also, yes, there

would have been some skirmishes between the rulers of England, well, so an extent as well, and Ireland in the past. So the relationship would have been, in a sense, very similar. If we look at it from English government point of view or the monarch's point of view, it would have been very similar to the relationship with say like Scotland in Wales in that period where you have kind of skirmishes sometimes cross border or cross the sea in this case. But generally, none of these would be particularly successful in terms of like a takeover of large regions of each other's country. So if you look at the UK and Irish Isles, you have Ireland with various different regional rulers. Wells would have been the same. We have quite a few different rulers in local

areas. It would have been quite similar to that set up. And then Scotland and England, yeah, it's really kind of four distinct entities at that point. And that's the situation really until the Normans come in. Like one quick anecdote, which I think is quite useful to know about Ireland when it was under Irish Gaelic chieftains is, and this continued really up to, argue about the 14, 15, 1600s, and certainly the 1600s, there used to be something called Brehann Law in terms of, like, how inheritance would work with ruling families or royals, etc., in England in that period, that it was usually the eldest son, a male, who would inherit land or wealth, etc. In Ireland, it was slightly different. And the fact that

any children, say, of an Irish-Illic chieftain, certainly from the Norman period onwards, on the Catholicism, Entes, Isle, and more, they would all inherit a land. And I think this was an interesting thing, you know, because it was seen that it caused a lot of difficulties because you might have one son or daughter who's envious to the others, again, an equal amount, particularly if they're the older one, thinking, right, I'm going to have an uprising here against my son or my fellow brothers or sisters to take all their land, etc. So there was a scent that it could create instability. I don't think that's necessarily true. If you look at history, we've had a lot of problems,

say for rural families it evolved in England and eventually Britain and the UK where you'd have some monarchs maybe knocking off brothers or sisters or allegations of it, etc. Yeah, primogeniture hasn't run super smooth where it's been tried as well. There's no fail-safe way of passing on wealth and kingdoms down through generations. Let's just say that. Just quickly, let's take a audit of Ireland's religiosity. We've all heard of St Patrick at the end of the Roman period in Britain. Credited we're starting to bring Christianity to Ireland. Christian Island sent missionaries into Britain in the early medieval period to help re-Christianise. Is Ireland regarded as outside Christendom by the kind of Norman period?

What does the Pope think when and if he thinks about distant island? Good question. So, yes, you do get the influence of people such as St. Patrick going in. And actually, the fact that St. Patrick's having an interaction with Ireland tells us even in that period that certainly if we're looking back or in modern-day context, it's seen as Irish Catholic Island or that kind of general label. Actually, yes, before the Normans entered, and really for a period after that, until

really Henry II, it did have Christian missionaries or a person sent from Rome or the St. Patrick types to try and get more of a backing for the Christian church. And it was a mega successful. And actually, Ireland tended to a different chieftains

and rulers tended to follow a series of different religions, which essentially put on the broad label of pagan. And that's interesting because that then explains, you know, why is it that the Pope then gets Henry II to allow invasion into Ireland? And that's essentially why, because of the fact that they're concerned that Ireland isn't coming under Christian faith and sort of seen as a threat, essentially. So does explain why then when we get under Henry II is there an agreement from the Pope to allow the English monarch to invade just in the Dublin area? that's why it's a kind of landing base to see if they can get this more in-bed in society. So you have blown my mind. I was 46 years old, and I did not think about the Anglo-Norman

conquest of Ireland as part of this, dare I say, the kind of crusading movement. You see the famous crusades, but these other crusading moves towards what we now call Eastern Europe from Charlemagne onwards, bringing the peripheral areas of Europe, well, into the Roman church. Should we think about the Norman conquest of Ireland in those terms? Yes. I would say that seems to be kind of the primary motive. I mean, that's an absolutely pivotal motive behind it and this sense from Rome in particular in that period. I mean, it's interesting, right? If we flip this on its head, and I'm sure this is something we'll talk about later that, you know, under say like Elizabeth I first, Elizabeth Tudor, that, you know, why is their attempt to start really accelerate

like plantation of Ireland in that period with British Protestants? Because it's seen as a Catholic threat to the Protestant British Reformation. If you then flip back to whatever we're talking four or five hundred years before, Ireland's seen in the other vein. It's seen as that it got too much pagan faith and infant in society. So the Church of Rome, which now we'd call the Catholic Church, infants is the English king, Henry II, to get involved because of the fact that it's seen as threat to certainly like Christian values and Christian faith. And exactly what you said in that context of the spread of it across various parts of Europe and eventually tempts in the world. But the second thing as well would be this is something that comes in with the Normans

is a more kind of expansionist philosophy, really, and you can see this from William to conquer onwards that with like the north of England and what happened up there, you know, like Haring of the north for bits that essentially that you are safer in your rule and in your land if you try and centralise rule a little bit more. So it was a combination of both, but the Christianity aspect was key, definitely. It is an amazing moment that Henry II because from the beginning is this Anglo-Norman attempt, we are going to settle Ireland.

Obviously, Henry II's got a huge empire in France, empire across much of what we now call Britain. So he's no stranger to trans-maritime empires, and he just thinks, yeah, no problem, we're just going to add a bit of Ireland. Because no one had done that before. He's going beyond the Romans. I mean, was this a big deal at the time?

Yes, it was. In particular, it doesn't work too successful, that it just essentially goes into an area which there's a phrase that people know called Beyond the Pale that's used quite a lot in English language. The area they settle on the island of Ireland is just around the Dublin area essentially

where the capital of the Republic of the day it's called the Pale. But yes, it was seen as you know you'd use a kind of major port and trading area such as Dublin as your base and then you would expand beyond that. But it's really interesting. You've given that wider context there, that's key.

As you would know that Henry II second's quite distracted and his ancestors thereafter in various other places including parts of what now is from so island's kind of a new project and a new idea to show i think again like flexing your muscles to show power but also i think that key bit is staying in line with you know the church of rome and if they in a sense almost commanded you to look you're powerful you go influence you tame this area then that's essentially partly why they go into that and the normans are good at taming areas, aren't they? They've had generations of practice with very reluctant Englishmen, Welshmen and others. So what's the model here? Just build a massive castle and let the locals

come at you and just outlast them, just outstay them. It's a little bit different, just in a sense, it's not a resource-rich project, if we put it in that way. So I think the idea exactly what you said is right, you go in, you build your carters, you hold it, you put down any local agitation or uprisings, and then you expand. The issue with Ireland, is essentially just finance is put to these various other projects that like Henry the second is involved in and then he's succeeded from like the Norman period and that limits the scope of it because you then have a base in Dublin that you can't go beyond the other point with it as well which is there's so many different local chiefdom some of

them quite powerful because they invade other areas that they take over that get the resources you don't have a centralised target if you like that you can go in remove and then say right this is my base. I'm going to expand from here. So I think that made it very difficult. And it made it very difficult just because of the English monarchs that would have meant spending quite vast sums of wealth. And exactly going back to what you said, but you've already got projects in Wales, Scotland, parts of Europe, particularly places like Normandy, Gascany, etc. You don't have that money available. And that's the problem with the island project. It's not very near the top of the list, which is interesting. They've got other fish to fry, if you want to

call it that. And particularly you think about like the Norman stock and where they feel they've come from. The areas of France that they have influence over a rule is really, really important for them. And I think again, and the second point I make about the different context, so the Pope goes to Henry in a second and says, look, this area is potentially a bit of a pagan encroachment on Christian Europe. So Henry goes in, Ireland actually from there, this is the interesting thing as well. Like what happens when you get Anglo-Normans who go to Ireland? And actually we see once you get really up to even the Tudor period, most of them do things such as as intermarian, and then the Catholic influence is able to spread, and it's quite willing that

people are opting into this. So if we look at what the Normans are doing elsewhere, it's not necessary a super aggressive strategy because they don't have the money and resources for it, as we said. So there's this just kind of secondary effect, which isn't necessarily planned, where some Anglo-Norman lords are essentially going across, and if they are moving outside of Pelt Zone, they're working with some Irish Gaelic chieftain families and spreading influence via that way or via marriage. And the tensions aren't really there, which later when we see, just because of being part of the same religion. And there's quite a willingness with that in the population eventually. Are you suggesting also that Catholicism spreads quite nicely

in Ireland, but not necessarily acceptance of English rule? Before the Reformation, let's keep talking about the medieval period. Yes, yes, definitely. And Catholicism, does, the reasons why that would be the case. So I think there's a couple of factors that can influence that. And one particular standout one, if we think for Irish Gaelic chieftains, there would have been an opt-in to Catholicism from them much earlier than, say, the middling sort or the peasantries to lower classes in society. But that's because of the fact that there's like rewards them and there's influence with Rome or discussions for Rome or trade routes. So that makes sense for them to do so. The second thing about that for them

is it's not a threat linking into the Church of Rome because of the fact that Breck and Law, for example, can stay. So, like, their relatives can still inherit, all their children can still inherit their land and titles, etc. Which is, again, if we do contrast, that's quite different when the Protestant infant spreads in the 1600s. That is a direct threat for Irish at that point, Gaelic Catholic chieftain. So basically, they just see that this church comes in. It helps with trade routes, helped the status onto the European continent for legitimacy, really, for some of these Irish. Gaelic chieftains, and it's no real threat to local customs. Let's go forward now to the eve of the Reformation.

The early Judas, so Henry the 7th, the young Henry the 8th, technically they're lords of Ireland, again, technically in charge of Ireland. Is there a real sense in which he rules Ireland? Is that in meaningful sense part of his kingdom? You are right to be sceptical of that because, no, in terms of him being able to, I guess we could say, you know, crack the whip and order Irish Gaelic Catholic chiefs into doing things they don't want to do, no. And again, it's because the main concentration of power is essentially still remaining places like Dublin. But also the key thing you said there is about the intermarriage element. And what you end up with, we'll try and make this easy enough because

it can get complicated with the various titles. But what you've got in Ireland before the Reformation is what we would call old Irish, so Irish-Gaelic Catholic chieftain descendants, or from their families, et cetera, and the population, then you've got what would be turned as the old English at this point. So these are people who have come over from the Norman Congress period onwards of Henry II that they have integrated and they've integrated into society and actually most have just adopted the same kind of customs

or like Brecon Law and things like that with inheritance as what was existing in Ireland. So no, it's not the case that descendants of, you know, forward from Henry II and English Foolers, Can they just, like, crack the whip and tell people what to do? No, an order around Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains. But they don't really need to do that because of the fact that actually it's quite a fairly cordial relationship because of there has been intermarriage and intermixing and accepting of, in many parts of Ireland,

what Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains and their ways of conducting themselves as rulers and society, there's been an acceptance of that. That's quite different from what comes from Reformation onwards. And I guess if you're in London, you're also not super bothered by what's happening in Galway or Dunningall. So you can live with a degree of autonomy in those regions, and it's kind of live and let live. Exactly, yes. By the time of the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, Ireland, well, there was a very complex picture in Ireland, you've got the old English people that we call the old English.

They're of Norman descent. They weren't English in the way that we understand today. They were descended from the French-speaking Catholic aristocrats from Normandy and France, who had only recently conquered England itself. That in Ireland, over the generations, they became known as the Old English. They'd carved out territories, but they'd also intermarried with local Gallic elites. And they sort of established themselves in their own right. And you could say that Ireland changed them.

By the 1500s, many of these families were more Irish. They saw themselves as more Irish than English and certainly the Norman. And this alarmed the English crown, all these apparent servants of the crown, going native. By that point, the crown really only controlled directly the area around Dublin. It was known as the pale. Beyond the pale, as they say, those old English lords ruled semi-independently, and much of Ireland was broken up into their fiefdoms and also those run by the traditional Catholic, Gallic, Irish chiefs.

Now, this last group are the native elite of Ireland, who retained a distinct Gallic political and social order, one that had proved reasonably hospitable to the Old English, able to accommodate the Old English into some of their existing structures. So the lines between the Old English and the Gallic Irish elite, they sort of blurred. They intermarried, they socialised together, they came to develop a kind of common point of view. And they definitely found common cause in approaching the English government based in London

as it tried to expand its control in Ireland. And definitely when that government tried to impose a new religious settlement on Ireland, when it tried to introduce Protestantism effectively. And that's why this very sort of complex, balancing act, just completely collapses, completely shatters when Henry VIII broke with Rome and demanded that the Irish follows suit. Okay, so let's come now to the Reformation. Driven by events in England, driven by events in Henry the 8th bedroom, England begins the process of reformation and reformations over decades, but effectively, England, which England,

Wales and indeed Scotland as well, will end up as Protestant places. The vast majority of our people in Ireland do not reform. Henry makes himself king of Ireland, in fact, doesn't he, in 1542? Why, though, does he fail to turn his Irish subject Protestants? Okay, so I would say in Henry's project in terms of why that fails comes back to resources and money, and the fact that, you know, trying to establish the reformation in England, Scotland and Wales is, and particularly England, is the major third. focus of what Henry's up to. And obviously you've got the various other parts of his life that are distracting with forcing or marrying different people. And then there's quite a lot

of intrigue. And I'm sure some of your listeners probably seen the things like the Wolf Hall books on television. There's quite a lot of intrigue in the court as well. So that keeps him quite busy. A big thing in this period again is just partly goes into relationship between parliament and the monarchs in England just because of the fact that if you want to go and invade Ireland and do the thorough job and actually invade it and then force its term Protestant, which you need a lot of men for a lot of resources and money. That's a lot of money that's going to have to go through Parliament and the ails of the Lords back in England to do so. And as we just said, there's a lot going on because of the Reformation that makes

that not feasible in this period. The second reason as well, and it comes back to that point we talked about like the decentralisation of power. And for Irish Gaelic Cathayette chieftains, this more accelerates when we talk about Elizabeth I, because there's more an attempt and things are more settled in England at that point in terms of the Reformation to try and encroach a little bit more and to enforce that, no, Elizabeth is a queen and there's certain customs are right, they're going to change. For example, heritance law. So Brechen law could be sidelined and then instead you'd have the henheritance laws that exist in England. Do you can understand for Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftain's but also their children,

they're looking at this thinking, hang on a minute, I'm going to lose my inheritance here, potentially. this is where you start to get animosity in, not just necessarily religious part. It goes back to that point that Ireland was very use of society at that point for the chiefs and rulers to being a decentralised society. It's not just a monarch now who's coming across saying, oh, I have some implant here, we could have some trade there's some agreement. They're trying to change fundamental bits of society, if they can, and centralise power. And when we go back and thinking about the tudor, this was something actually, in my view and argument anyway, would come in under Henry the 7th for Henry the 8th. That was something that

Henry the 7th introduced a much more, I feel like, centralised system of government, where you get your local elves and lords to have a lot more kind of felty and homage to you centrally. And that attempt in Ireland was going to be tricky because of the fact that, as we said, the chieftains were not used to that style of rule. So even without the Reformation, the English Crown and Ireland were on a bit of a collision course. Yeah, so I think the Reformation is definitely the dominant factor that's driving this animosity, but the whole thing about centralising power more from the monarchs in London was going to be problematic. The Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains, definitely.

And I think when we get to say like Elizabeth's period, why is there more effort then as a question, you know, rhetorically to manage the situation in Ireland, and partly because Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains, led by the Earl of Turon, O'Neill, they start to have an uprising then against encroaching what they feel is like English customs coming in, a challenging tradition in Ireland of how society operated, decentralised essentially. But also, I just think that you can see the clash is going to come because if we look then at the macro event, what's happening outside of just the relationship between, say, England and Ireland or the UK and Irish Isles, yeah, there's a real fear for Elizabeth that

France or Spain and the Pope are going to use Ireland as some kind of launch power. as a counter-reformation, land there, invade there, and then they can invade England, Scotland, or Wales. And I often say this, the students we teach. We put that in modern parlance to see how big of a threat did Tudors eventually, when you get to Elizabeth C, Ireland there as a potential counter-reformation haven. It's a bit like the reaction of the US, the Soviet Union, over Cuba. It's exactly the same kind of thing. Cuba in the US, parlance could be used as some kind of pro-Soviet attempt to spread communism beyond just Eastern Europe and Part of Asia. And if we go back to the reformation period, that is exactly how English Protestant monarchs started to view Ireland. They

thought this place is genuinely dangerous to us because of our much more superpower enemies at that point, like Spain and France, and the Pope itself, with the matter of resort that they had an influence in Europe, yes, could use Ireland to try to roll back the Reformation with us. So it goes up the agenda as the reformation's more embedded by the time you get to Elizabeth I. So Elizabeth I, did she make the first real concerted attempt to invade and subdue and bring Ireland into a kind of regular system of royal government, really? Despite the English having landed there 400 years before, is Elizabeth the first the first time this really ratchets up that attempt? Yes, and because there's more of an attempt.

to secure her rule and any kind of subjects, and that includes people who have some form of decentralized local power granted by her, but it's to secure her centrally and her rules. So the idea is there has to be a standardization of things like law and procedures and trade, etc, that it can't just be done ad hoc by, you know, earls or lords, in this case, Ilish Gaelic Catholic chieftains on the island of Ireland that might just overall say they pay homage to her. So it does ratchet up. And I think that that's when, as we talked about, once you then get to the kind of 1590s, you have this Hugh O'Neill rebellion led from today's, what would be, part of Northern Ireland or Ulster. And that's not an accident.

And actually, it's a pattern we see repeated in the 1600s because these people are feeling, no, no, this is going too far. They're actually trying to centralise us. And we just become basically like what you see in England to an extent with Elsa Lords, where we're just operating the local law and customs that just decided in London, and we don't have any ability to really influence these things anymore. And that's why there is, you know, the uprising that happens under the O'Nills. So Ireland wasn't used to that system, and it wasn't going to willingly come under it either. Yeah, you're trying to do two things at once. You're trying to reform the entire religious settlement. You're trying to tell people how they're going to get into heaven, as well as

going through that laborious process of centralisation and stripping local elites of their power. That's a huge ask! And that plunges Elizabeth into this catastrophic war. Known as Tyrone's rebellion, or the nine years war, this conflict pitted Ireland's most powerful lords against the might of the English crown. There's one figure that really towers over this story. Hugh O'Neill, he was the Earl of Tyrone. And at first, O'Neill had played the part of the loyal subject, and he held that elder granted by the Crown. He'd been shrewd in playing both sides off against each other. And this just really reflects the fact, even by the 1590s, Island was still a very complicated place. The alliances shifted. There was a patchwork of changing

loyalties. But by 1593, that grey air in the middle, that place for compromise, was just disappearing. English forces were pressing into Ulster. They were enforcing royal law. They were curbing traditional Gaelic practices. They were kicking Gaelic speakers off good farmland. These local disputes spiral. And O'Neill, he chose outright opposition. he chose war, or rather he accepted the inevitability of war that had been imposed by these English encroachments, depending on your point of view. He quickly proved himself a master strategist. He reorganized his army among modern lines. He drilled them in Spanish-style pike formations. He deployed people with firearms, aquibuses. He gave the Irish an edge they hadn't

had before. And meanwhile, the English just underestimated the scale of the threat. Through the 1590s, O'Neill's forces enjoy a series of great victories, victories that you won't have heard of in England, but big victories in pitched battles over English forces, humiliation upon humiliation for the English, and his reputation soared. But the war dragged on, Elizabeth drove the English government to the point of bankruptcy and beyond, and sent more and more troops and supplies to Ireland. The war became more and more brutal. There was scorched earth tactics, the crops were burnt, slaughtered livestock. The civilian population was starved en masse. By the turn of a century, the tide was shifting. There was a battle at Kinsale in December of 601, which is hugely

important. A Spanish army had landed in Southern Ireland. The Irish had attempted to join them, and the English had managed to defeat them. Defeat them both pretty badly, actually. It was a route, and it had been the great gamble of the rebellion, and it failed narrowly. It just failed. The tide turned, and the English won victory after victory. That process, that war really destroyed the old Gallic order. Ireland was just devastated. Its population reduced by famine and violence. The English were now pretty dominant.

And the ground was laid for a new process of colonial settlement, particularly in the north. It became known as the Plantation of Ulster. So what then happens is eventually Elizabeth's forces prevail. She then pardons O'Neill and these accompanances, as some of the Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains involved. But then 1607, there's what's called the flight of the earls. And no one really still understands exactly why this is.

What were the Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains? They were still, the sentinel just paying more homage to Elizabeth and accepting more English customs in. And they fled. They just fleets across to the European continent. So what that leaves in various parts of Ireland, is these what were quite influential Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains that were able to bring together various city-like rebellious chieftains

and areas that don't like the new influence from England. England, they've gone. So at that point, once you get James I first of England or James Dixotland, once James I was on the throne in London, they decide Ireland is a risk because it has just had a rebellion in the 1590s. It could be potentially again, uses a launch pad for Spain or France, etc, to invade England and remove Protestantism. So what you're going to do is send across plantation, modern day palates. It might be called like colonisation. So you move in settler population. So for earls or laws from England or Scotland, and specifically across to the island of Ireland to become the local landlord, the local landowner and the local

Earl. And there was a couple of things going on there. Number one, the Protestant rulers had started to run out of land in England, Scotland and Wales to grant various aristocracies. So the idea was, well, there's land in Ireland. You can grant them. And they've got an expansion there. So there's lots of resources to provide to people. But the second thing, resources we said, that an eye to kind of the back door into Wells, Scotland or England, as a counter-reformation, that we need to keep an eye on this place. And actually, do you know what the idea was from the monarchs, Protestant British monarchs at that point, that we can keep an eye better on things if we have a loyal ruling class in Ireland. Some of them rule is actually removed

themselves, if we talked about six or those seven. But for any of the rest of the areas, once we have our forces and people in there, we can keep an eye on things better. But also because of the, there was still the battle with the Reformation. There's kind of a third thing that, yeah, trying to spread Protestant influence and because of a deeply held religious belief that Catholicism was wrong as a religion. This is settler colonialism. It's the petri dish, really, for the English and British massive imperial experiment outside Europe as well. You're sending over what, sort of Protestant promising free land? You're sending people over. Are you throwing Irish communities off the land? Are you sort of buying it, quote,

unquote. How does it work in practice? Yeah, sometimes that's happening. So in the areas where we talked about the flight of the earls, they've removed themselves. Do you then just put in your people as the rulers in those local areas? They replace the Irish-Gated Catholic chieftains. Just again, as an anecdote with that, an important one is, you know, that answers a question for us later. Why is it? There ends up lots of Ulster British Protestant to live in, like, today's Northern Ireland. Why are they so concentrated in the northeast? The plantations were across the island of island. But because of the ones who came across primarily from Scotland, there was the Lords, British Protestants, they were more success than the areas of the North East

in terms of like business and commerce to selling up like the trading port, places like Derry or people call it London Derry, Belfast, etc. So that's why there is a particular concentration there and also it's just much closer than Scotland to as much easier as an area for them to come across in terms of travel. So that's what happened in those areas. In other areas, yeah, there would be a bunchness of attempts at skirmishes and conflicts. Sometimes local levels, sometimes as we see once you get to the 1640s, that explodes more a national level across the island. Yes, an attempt to remove people and remove Irish Gaelicath at cheapness that remained, but also to spread influence as bizarrely a kind of form of defence for the wider UK-Irish-Irish-Riles British

Protestantism project, if you want to call it that, that's coming down from the monarchs. So essentially that's what would happen. And also, some of it would be by stick, in terms of some bits attempted carrot, is the changes of things like the inheritance laws. But you can see from Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftains and their families, this is deeply resented because it's going to be a massive problem for the fabric of that society. Because suddenly an Irish Gaelic Catholic chieftain, their son in particular, sometimes the daughters as well, suddenly they become the single ruler of an area. under English custom and laws, whereas as we talked about under Brehann law before an Irish-Gaelic Catholic society, that wasn't the case. It was land and wealth, etc. would be divvied out, if you like, between the different children. So it's resisted for the various reasons we see.

Never underestimate the ability of ambitious younger sons to make their feelings known. You've got this sort of terrible feedback loop. You've got displaced Catholics, Irish Catholics, furious, they rebel. The rebellion provokes British government response. Anyone involved in that rebellion is thrown off the land, prescribed, kills, exiles. That land is then given to Protestants. There's a vicious cycle here. Yes. And the combination of it comes in just 1630s, but also once we get into the 1640s. To an island, someone called the Earl of Stafford, so there's essentially like an English governor that ruled Ireland on behalf of the monarchs at that point. Leila Stafford did try and get more standardisation of religious practice and feltied back

to the English monarchs. And this is resisted particularly by what were remaining of the Irish-Gaelic Catholic rulers. What's interesting at this point when you look at wider society as well, so this is the next kind of big clash. It goes back to those terms we used earlier. To at this point, in Irish society, you have Old Irish, which are Irish-Gedic Catholic background, old English, which are Catholic background, despite coming from the Norman period, and we talked about they've intermarried, and now you get what's called the New English. So the New English, or they could say New Scottish as well, because it's both. The new English are Protestant. So they're coming into the situation, and the other two groups, because you've now got a coming together of old Irish,

Catholic background, and old English, Catholic background, and they're both coming together and if you like putting their finger to the wind saying, hang on a minute, all of us are going to be dispossessed here of our land and wealth because we all have something in common, which is the Catholic faith. So once you don't go into the 1640s, once you have the period with Stafford, and then if you like, and we see this repeated later in Irish history, England becomes massively distracted because there's a civil war between Parliament and the king, and that's the same in Scotland and Wales as well. So the old Irish remaining chieftains, and the old English, you have to think there, old English remaining rulers come together and

they say, let's have an uprising. Again, it starts from Ulster and it then spreads quite quickly across the whole of Ireland because just quite simply, parliamentarian forces plus the kings at this point Charles I, forced, are totally distracted because they're just fighting each other specifically in England. This is Dan Snow's history. There's more on this topic coming up. To understand the Irish rebellion of 1641, and I'm very grateful you've got this far on this podcast, folks. This is not easy. And we're now at the hardest bit. Everyone knows the mid-17th century is the hardest bit in British and Irish history. So this is it, guys. We can do this. This is our Everest. Let's recap on who the main groups in Ireland were at the time. First, you've got the Gallic Irish.

These are the native Gallic population. They trace their links. need back to wait before the hated English or the Normans ever set foot on the Emerald Isle. They had a native system of Irish law, the Brehan Law, they were overwhelmingly Catholic. They were roughly speaking, irredeemably opposed to the English crown. Then you've got the Old English. They're the descendants of that first way, first couple of ways of Anglo-Norman settlers. By the 17th century, they were mostly Catholic and they'd largely assimilated with the Old Irish. they'd come to share their worldview and opinion of English Protestants.

Then, third, we've got the New English. They were more recent English and Scottish Protestant settlers, planted in Ireland, colonial settlers, from Elizabeth Tudor and then from James I and 6th and onwards. They were living on confiscated land. They were very, very strong, particularly in Ulster in the north of Ireland. They saw Ireland as unclaimed, as wilderness, as there to be colonised, be brought under the plough by them. They saw Ireland exactly as their contemporaries would

have seen Canada, North America at the time, just virgin soil with a few annoying people living on it who needed to be cleared out. They were obviously staunchly loyal to the English and Scottish crowns, the British crown in London. So by the 1640s, Ireland was just a very, very tense mosaic. You've got dispossessed old Irish and old English Catholics, and you've got land-hungry, swaggering, confident, new English Protestants who are certain the future belongs to them. The spark for war came in October 1641. A group of Gallic Catholic nobles in Ulster launched an uprising. Their aim was to take advantage of the turmoil brewing in England, the Civil War is about to kick off in England, so great, this is a time to force concessions

from a much weakened crown. The rebellion spread like wildfire across Ulster. Catholics attacked Protestant settlers. They seized lands and strongholds. They massacred civilians. Protestant accounts made the most of this. They spoke of thousands killed, though those numbers were likely exaggerated. But still, there was real violence and brutality, and that created deep fear and anger among Protestants and a burning desire for revenge. You have probably seen this story a few times in history, folks. The war that followed was savage and chaotic. It deepened over the next few years. Both sides, won and lost, it edd and flowed. But the Irish could never maintain the unity that was needed. The old Irish and the old English often quarreled over strategy and religion and things.

Some want to compromise the king, others pushed for more full-on independence. Now, by 1649, unfortunately for those Irish, everything had changed. King Charles I had been executed in London. The English and Scottish monarchies have been overthrown. Now, ultimately, this would prove disastrous for the Irish cause because the parliamentarian general, who happened, unfortunately, for the Irish to be something of a military genius, the ultra-strict Protestant Oliver Cromwell,

was now no longer distracted by affairs in England. He was able to devote his full attention to Ireland. and bring with him probably the most well-equipped, experienced, disciplined and ambitious army since the legions left these shores more than a thousand years before. Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland at the head of the new model army. And he would go on to conduct a very bloody conquest and really a permanent transformation of Irish society. Cromwell does what the Plantagenets never did, which was, he does things very methodically. He looks. locks down England and Wales. Then he invades and completely occupies Scotland the way that no

English sovereign had ever really done this effectively before. And then he goes to Ireland to do the same. So he is a guy who's laser focused on getting the British and Irish Isles firmly under the control of London for the first time in history. Yes. And I think if we're asking the question there, like what's the main difference? You know, how come he's partly able to do that? definitely partly resources, partly is not distracted by elsewhere, but there's a really key third element here. And I think this then has a big influence in terms of what we'd call a non-conformist Protestant thinking in Ireland and how they think about society and this relationship with Britain, etc. Non-conformist essentially like what would say

they baptive, Methodist, Presbyterian, et cetera, so not Anglican church. And what I'm talking about there is that if we go back to the civil war, like what is the civil war about in England's Scotland, Wells. Essentially, you've got a form of Protestantism, which they might term as like high church, Anglicanism, to the Church of England, for example, the church at Wales, being led by Charles I. And it's for non-conformist Protestant. They say, this is just Catholicism out of the Pope. It's still got all the high church element to it. It's still not following what they feel this should be in the sense of true faith. And that's the mindset of like the parliamentary forces and the non-conformist Protestants in particular who fight with

I mean, that's their thought of the Anglican Church. If you then think, well, what's their thought of the Catholic Church? You know, for Cromwell, their idea and the parliamentary forces that essentially this isn't like an Antichrist army, led by Rome. So it's seen as particularly dangerous for what they want in terms of religion and then society and government. That's why Cromwell is so willing to plug in with huge resorted into what needs to happen in Ireland and actually go in and think this time, we're not going to mess about

with devolving any local power, we're just going to go in and crush it and we'll rule it and we'll dispossess the people who have been ruling it from the Catholic background because it's seen as an existential threat to not just British Protestantism at this point, but the particular brand of Protestantism that Cromwell believes.

And then one last thing I'll say with that, where you've got like the printing press became a big thing in the English Civil Wars. You have to like counter-propagand on each side. An event at the start of the uprising by the Irish Catholic community from the 1641 rebellion in Ireland on Portadown Bridge in Portadown, which then exists as an era today in Northern Ireland. And there was allegations of like a massacre of Protestant there that they were piked or shot and then thrown into the river running

in Ports. So again, if we fast forward to when Cromwell's coming across the late 1640, so I don't want to sort of the business in England, that it plays in the mindset of that particular like non-conformist Protestant army, that they believe that, you know, this is, again, like the Antichrist's force. And they say, look at the master of these people did. Do they have to be punished for what they did? And that might explain also a few listeners, you know, why are some of Cromwell's measures, if we call it that, like the siege of Dracodon, or so there's a lot of the local civilian population

was slaughtered. And that's not excusing it because I don't excuse it. But it's trying to make sense of why do they do that kind of thing? because in their head, this army that we're up against is the opposite and opposing religion to them, and it's a genuine threat in their head. So that's why it ends up in that way. Let's go on beyond Cromwell now. In a way, there's a sense of deja vu, a pattern here. We get a sort of English, not quite a civil war, but a constitutional crisis in 68, 68, 69, that is the glorious revolution, distraction, distraction, distraction in London,

William III, kicks his father and law and uncle, James Second, off the throne. And sure enough, then you get William going to Ireland after that in a slightly similar way to sort of then having secured England, Scotland, Wales, then go to Ireland to secure Ireland and people will have heard of the Battle of the Boyne and the Williamite War in Ireland. There's a slightly similar pattern there, isn't there? Definitely, yes. The pattern is similar. And again, the reasoning is similar in the sense that that conflict comes about because once James II is kicked off a throne in London and England,

because of seen by particularly the Protestant lords who have obviously a large amount of power and they're seen as, again, a threat to Protestantism. So again, even with that point, we're talking 100 years on from the Reformation, the Judas, but it's still by the Protestant British rule is seen as a threat that if you have any kind of English Catholic influence coming back in.

So James II and essentially, if you want to call it, that plans his comeback tour via Ireland. And again, they laid siege to the Derry City. and that's why also you have this phrase from Ulster Unionist British Protestants today about like no surrender so this is apparently what happened in Derry City

that James II comes with his Catholic army various local Irish people opting into that and says basically give up the city because we're going to take it and then they shut the city walls Derry's a walled city and they say no surrender and then James the Second Forces trying to sense just starve them out but what happens exactly what you said what the term William of Orange

comes across. And yes, the William of Orange's army then defeats were raided in Irish Catholic forces. So they accomplished and sealed the power in Ireland at that point. Cromwell's brutal conquest of Ireland cemented a couple of things. One was that Ireland's fate for the foreseeable future was inseparably tied to what was going on in English politics, to England itself. The other was that their rift between Catholics and Protestants was now an unbridgeable

chasm. And as the monarchy returned in Britain, well, successive kings just made decisions that only worsened that situation. There was another war in the late 17th century, so called Williamite war between King James II and his son-in-law, William of Orange. That also pitted Protestants against Catholics in Ireland once again for a massive showdown. Tom's already mentioned one of the defining moments of Irish history, the siege of Derry in 6089. That's when James and his Catholic army marched on the Protestant stronghold. The city's gates were shut by the 13 apprentice boys. They're still celebrated in Protestant memory and pageantry to this day. That siege lasted 105 days and inside the city conditions were horrific. There was famine and disease and bombardment.

But then in July, relief ships broke through a boom across the river foil and brought supplies. So the siege was lifted. And for the Ulster Protestants, Derry Barry became a symbol of heroic resistance against Catholic power, against the Catholics that surrounded them. Shortly afterwards, William Orange landed an island. Protestants flocked to his banner, and he won a victory in that war. He chased his father-in-law. He chased James 2nd out back to his exile in France. And again, the Catholics who had rallied James's cause, they were abandoned, they were left out to dry. And in the aftermath, William's Protestant followers an island, went on the rampage. More and more land was taken. The Protestants were even more

dominant politically. Religious identity has elided with political loyalty. So Protestantism was now tied with the Protestant succession in London. Catholicism became a symbol of resistance to that monarchy in London, to that royal line. So by the end of the 17th century, you see society utterly divided. And that would endure for centuries. That would fuel the troubles. Let's dash through to 1801, the act of union between Britain and Ireland, now incorporated into the United Kingdom, Irish MPs go and sit in Westminster. But these are all Protestant Irish. I mean, Irish Catholics are sort of excluded from, as you say, the army, certainly the officer corps of the army and political life across the archipelago.

Yes, exactly. And partly when, you know, when we get to the Act of Union, I mean, that appears after the 1798, there was an attempted All-Irebellion, led by a group called the United Irishman, led by a Protestant, actually, Wolf-Tone. And Wolf-Tone is interesting because he's from, again, what we call like Protestant descent or non-conformist background. And interestingly, because they were also discriminated again, once you got into the period with Charles and the second back on the throne, because the kind of hierarchy, even with Protestantism as those two were part of the official state judge Anglicanism, and those who were non-conformists again were seen as like some kind of threat in society to the extent, not as much as just copulatism, but still to the extent were. So anyway, partly that explains, you know, wise wolf tone as a Protestant leader leading a United Island movement to kick out British Protestant rule and British rule full stop. But the difference is as well, they picked up ideas to the American War of Independence and then French Revolution. So this, in a sense, is a new idea that's coming in. It's still.

or dangerous idea for the British Protestant rule on the island of Ireland, because it's suggesting equality, fraternity, and also no religious groups should rule. There should be religious tolerance and want a secular republic, basically, to be created. It's quite heavily infiltrated. It's one of the main reasons to defeat quite quickly, the United Irishmen. So the active union comes after that, then to say, do you know what, for the rule is Westminster, but also the monarchs, this is going to be much easier if we just rule this place directly from London. So there's no kind of like local devolved power because it's a threat. So that's the situation you get to by the active union at that point. And as you said, it's stringent against the majority population of

the island at that point, the Irish Catholic population. Really, as a hangover, it goes back to the things we've been talking about really, you know, from the Tudor period and the Stewart's period and obviously Cromwell's, that there's a suspicion, again, if you give Irish Catholic's power in any part of the island, they're going to kind of untangle British rule in Ireland slowly but surely byer it. So they're potentially a rebellious, seditious population would be the fort so you don't give them the opportunity to exert any power under British rule, whether that's in the army or the courts, etc. George III was a particular believer in that. He resisted Catholic emancipation, as it's called, several times. But in 1829, after George III, in the great crisis of the late

1820s, early 1830s, which you can't go into in this podcast, but with all sorts of interesting ramifications. The Catholics are allowed a degree of freedom. They can now sit in Parliament and hold public office, and they've had restrictions removed from them very belatedly, I guess, attempts to engage the Catholic Irish in this pan-British and Irish project. Can we, though, whiz forward to the great famine that people have heard of roughly late 1840s, early 1850s? First of all, tell me about the famine. Then it's political importance. Yes. So, as we just talked about there. The backdrop beforehand is important because once you start to allow Catholics to play by emancipation, the full role in various parts of UK and Irish society, potentially, the

tensions in the relationship could have been declined, maybe going forward, potentially permanently. Who knows? The famine interrupts that and the famine interrupts that because of, first of all, why does it affect Ireland to a great extent? And it does so just because of what happened in Ireland in terms of farming, and again, this is an island anyway, it's a pre really industrial area. So farming is a real staple of society in terms of food and wealth. What they had taught what we could call like middling sort, which lay become like middle classes, and then the kind of Irish overclasses in terms of peasantry at this point, is that everyone had grown a tater as a staple crop on small plots of land.

And it was seen by doing so that everyone could, yeah, earn a certain amount of living, have enough food to live off, etc. So it was seen as an economical way of allowing everyone to have an element of wealth in society. But the problem with that, of course, is if you rely on one specific crop and it fails, then you're in big trouble because this is what you end up with, like a famine, etc. So when we talk about the Great Famine, it's a series of events, really, from 1845 up to about 1848, roughly. Essentially, this is what just continually happens. It had happened in Europe if we look across the European continent paralleled, but the effect of it was just much more catastrophic in Ireland because of the focus of the majority of the population was this small like tenant farming. And that was a staple product. And if we look at the figures, about a million people die, about 1.5 million people emigrate. So we're talking primarily to North America, particularly United States and Canada. And it has a seismic effect. And it has a seismic effect because, there's two beliefs in society that then emerge. From the large part, let's say, the Irish

Catholic population and some of it's more political figures, there's a belief that either this was deliberate, or there's a belief that it wasn't deliberate, but there was not really much assistance and aid that are provided to actually remedy this situation by the British government. So it leads to, yeah, significant tension going forward in animosity. And I don't think it's an accident, Even if we fast forward over 100 years later, where does what was called the Provisional Irish Republican Army get some of his weapons from America? But if you look then at the generations of people and some of the people who are doing that and looking back at their families, so why are they in America in the first place? It come from areas, for example, like Mayo or West Coast and Ireland or some of the South Coast areas, which were quite hard hit by the famine. So, yeah, it's certainly in terms of, like, the generations of family afterward, it causes

significant grievance, understandably, and it's a real problem going forward. As we said, just that backdrop I talked about the very beginning there, that relations potentially could have improved because you took the discriminatory acts in society away, but, yeah, then the famine kind of seems to reinforce the vision, really. This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this. The Great Irish Famine, or The Great Hunger, is one of the darkest chapters in modern European history. It was so severe that Ireland's population plummeted by about a third due to death and emigration.

The horrors of this period that the turmoil were seared into the minds of the Irish at the time. Historians and the public still argue about that famine in fascinating ways. Firstly, could more have been done. Critics argue that the British turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe. And the other question is, if more could have been done and wasn't, was this deliberate? Was it genocide? Some argue that British government's failure to come up with famine relief. There was deliberateness there.

Were they willing to let that Irish population collapse? were they happy to see that Irish Catholic population shrink dramatically? Others see cock up instead of conspiracy. The British government might have been negligent, incompetence. It might have been cruel, but they don't see a plan to exterminate Irish people. Now, regardless of where we land, the famine changed Irish society, and the way the famine was remembered would prove to be rocket fuel. It fueled resentment against British rule.

The memory of it would play a huge part in effect. ends to come. Each one of these talking points that we're bringing up today could be an entire podcast series in its own right. So I apologize to listeners that are rattling pace of this, but we get to Home Rule, this expression that anyone familiar with 19th century history will just hear over and over again. But Home Rule, I guess, growing from those critiques of the British government's behaviour during the famine, whether it's deeply malicious and or competent, remote, uncaring. Home rules, this idea that we can reverse the active union to an extent and devolve power, make decisions affecting Irish people back in Ireland. Yes, and that's perfect, like the words

you use devolution. So, Home Rule is what we'd call today like devolution in terms of what we have with the government. It's Senate of Cardiff Bay in Wales, Hollywood and Scotland, and obviously Belfast now has its own parliament as well, basically dormant just outside the Belfar Satchew from Northern Ireland. So this was an earlier debate about it. And, okay, so where does this debate come from, partly because of tensions in Ireland, and what you start getting after the famine as well, the Emancipation Act are allowing more and more people across UK and Irish Isles to vote because of changes in law in Westminster, has allowed more of the Irish Catholic population to vote. When they're able to vote, the majority of the population of voting for

Irish nationalist parties. Now, some of the Irish nationalist parties, once we get into the late 1800s period, think actually the easiest way to try and start untangling the relationship we have with Westminster is, we'll try with devolved government first. And we've got a member at that point, Scotland and Wells didn't have that until 1999. This was quite with a smaller revolutionary idea of devolving power out from London, that's not how things really were done up to that point at all. And the majority of the population were voting for candidates who backed that viewpoint. And I think it's just because as we said, the tensions that had emerged from the famine and the kind of lingerie of history that we talked about with a bit in people's

mindsets. And the last thing I should have said there as well is not something we've been that used to in Westminster government, but at this period, when the Liberal Party were in power, later a little bit with the Conservatives as well, more people are voting so it makes politics a little bit more volatile. And what was happening is they weren't winning maybe some of these outright, you know, first past the post majority. In the case of the Liberals, they start to rely, and this is really up to World War I on Irish Nationalist MP who sat in Westminster for what we call the Irish Parliamentary Party. And therefore, of course, if you can make deals, if we know about in recent years, parties from Northern Ireland, if you're going to make

deals as a Westminster government with parties in the island of Ireland, they're going to want something in return. What they want in return for Irish nationalist is Home Rule. So the Liberals are willing to back from Gladstone onwards home rule bills to give Ireland basically devolution within the UK. The issue is before 2011, the House of Lords could veto. Things would go for the House of Commons. And what was happening in the House of Lords, the Conservative Party plus the Ulster Unionist Party. So this is essentially British Protestant descendants when we go right back to what we talked about in the 1600s, the plantation of Ireland,

particularly concentrated in the North East. They resisted this. And their argument, particularly at Ulster Protestants, from a British Protestants who wanted the whole of Island at that point stayed within the UK. Their argument was home rule would mean Rome rule. And that means that the Catholic Church would call the shots and will be discriminated against. So they're blocking it each time it tries to go through the House of Lords. And people will be astonished to learn that for some politicians, the outbreak of the First World War, was a relief because it meant an end to this crisis in Ireland between the home rule and the anti-home rule lobbies. that involved militias training. There was a mini-British army mutiny at one point as well. I mean, a proper crisis within the British state. It seems to be put into deep freeze, doesn't it,

by the First World War? What happens to Ireland, 1914 to 18, during those war years? Yes. And I think that context is absolutely crucial because, and again, this is a useful anecdote for people who want to know their parliamentary history. Why does an Irish home rural devolution bill eventually go through by the time before we get to World War I, because the liberal government under Asquiff takes away the House of Lords of Vito. That's why it ended relation to Irish home rule bills. So now on the House of Commons, it meant the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Liberals could put through a home rule bill. Trouble was, by 1912, when that goes through, the Ulster year in this British Protestant population, they signed something called the

solemn legal covenant in Belfast in that year. And it says, a lot of them signed it in Bloods as well. and it said that if we're forced into any form of all island government, remember here, we're not talking about Ireland Republic, we're talking about devolution from Dublin under British rule. They said, if that happens, we will resist it by any means necessary, which means use of force or violence of need be. And exactly what you said is crucial that Asquith and Lloyd George was in the government at that point as well, I had enough of this. So pre-World War I, a place called Carrar military camp, which is today would be in today's Republic of Ireland, they asked the British forces, which was a large concentration of them there, to go north and crush what was called the Ulster Volunteer Force. So the UVF were connected to that point,

the main unionist party, and they were resisting the home rule. And they were gun running and drilling, mainly gun running somewhat ironically from Germany. And a large segment of the British Army refused to do that. And their argument was, look, these are loyal British subjects. So we're not going to put down law for British subjects. So you're in big trouble then before World War I, because Irish fallen here start drilling in retaliation, saying, well, if the Ulster Protestants are arming themselves in front of civil war, then we need to protect hotels and we'll start drilling. I'm going to jump in here and interrupt Thomas's Herculean account

of almost 800 years of history once again, because especially around this point, things get a little confusing. I feel like I've said that once or twice in this podcast already, but there are now lots of different groups in the mix. So here's a quick summary remember of the terms as they stand. In broad terms, unionists refers to Protestants, largely from Ulster, but definitely other parts of Ireland as well, who wanted to maintain Ireland's position within the United Kingdom. They liked the Union.

So, effectively, this meant they were happy with rule from Westminster, rule from Westminster's Parliament that was overwhelmingly Protestant and Protestant in nature. At this time, they were firmly against Irish self-government, devolution, if you like, home rule, because that would have meant that Irish Catholics had the upper hand in Ireland itself. By contrast, the term nationalists broadly means Irish Catholic. who at this time sought self-government, however, within the existing British Empire. Now, a subset of these nationalists were actually Republicans. They were people who took this set further, and they wanted an Irish Republic. They had nothing to do at all with Britain.

Out, gone, thank you. No king, no queen, separate republic. These terms evolved and adapted somewhat over the decades as the situation changed, but that's a broad sweep. That's where we are in the build-up to the First World War. Now, in the early 1910s, these things really mattered in Westminster in British politics, not just in Irish politics, in British and Irish politics, because the Liberal Party were in power in Westminster. They won very narrow election victories. They beat the Conservatives. But they only beat the Conservatives because they could rely on votes from Irish nationalist MPs. So these are members of the Irish Parliamentary Party who at that time wanted home rule. They wanted devolution of power for Ireland. The Liberals needed

their votes in order to maintain a majority in the House of Commons. But in the House of Lords, it's the UK's upper chamber, and therefore any statute has to have passed through both houses of Parliament. So the House of Lords affects it as a veto on any legislation. Well, the House of Lords is absolutely stuffed full of conservatives. All the old aristocrats are in there, aren't they? These deeply conservative, all men who owe their position to hereditary inheritance, and therefore they like to be pretty conservative. They are allied with the Ulster Unionist Party. Overwhelmingly, they were fiercely opposed to Irish self-government. So they blocked all and any home rule legislation. Their fear was if they

allowed self-government, it would mean Catholic rule, and that would effectively mean rule by the Pope in Rome, and it would mean persecution against the Protestants in Ireland. Now, actually, the power of the House of Laws changes in 1911 with the Parliament Act, and we won't get too much into that. But it meant that the power of the House of Lords was much reduced and there was a process by which the House of Commons could kind of steamroll legislation through. And so home rule was actually passed in 1911. But many of these conservatives and unionists, they declared actually that this was such an important issue that Parliament was not supreme and this law must be opposed by any and all means including violence. So not super conservative there, folks, calling for violence. And this is the funny

thing to remember about the Bill, like the First World War. Many Europeans, certainly many Brits, were not looking at the Balkans. They were not looking at Austria, Hungary, and Serbia. They thought the next war would be in Ireland. Unionists created the Ulster Volunteer Force, which is a paramilitary group. And on the other side, nationalist paramilitary groups like the Irish volunteers were on the rise too. So there were a crisis brewing. There were deep divisions between the unionists and nationalists, Protestants and Catholics, roughly. A civil war seemed to be around the corner. And so Winston Churchill talks about this. In some sense, the outbreak of the First World War could not have come at a better time for British politicians

because it interrupted it overrode. It superseded this brewing conflict. The World War I interrupts it and it interrupts it because the UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Ulster British Protestants obviously makes sense for their identity. Majority of them going to British forces in World War I, so we'll fight for Crown and Empire. More surprisingly, over half to three quarters of Irish nationalists agree to fight with British forces is a world one. And they do that because their leader at that point, a guy called John Redmond of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which still in 1914, was the majority party for Irish nationalists on the island of Ireland, said, look, this is a way to bring down tensions with Ulster Protestants,

because we'll show we can agree for a common cause related to Britain and Ireland when needed. So they helped reconcile with the Ulster Protestant population, but also was to try and get the British government to get this devolution up and running and say, what if we show loyalty to the British government, the British forces in this war, will be rewarded for that. At the same time, about a quarter of the Irish volunteers, we could label as Irish Republicans, said, no way, we're not fighting wars for Britain, or as they would call it, like England. So in 1916, they staged an uprising in Dublin and they take over the general post office. People can still go today. If you go outside and the pillars outside, you can still see the bullet hole marks or the British forces

got them out if you want to put it in that way. And what they did was they said, well, as they put it, England's, you know, difficulty is Ireland's opportunities. So in other words, whilst UK was fighting in World War I, all stage an uprising because their backs are turned and we'll see how it goes and see if it works. It doesn't work in terms of the British reinforcements are called. The Irish Republicans call have a proclamation of an Royal Island Republic. They're blitzed out, basically bombed out of the General Post Office. and the leading figures of it, people like Patrick Pierce, that executed. But if you look at it from the most of the Protestant viewpoint,

the same year as the Battle of the Soms, so they argued, this is proof the Irish Catholics are going to stabbing Britain in the back, and there's no way we can come under any All-Iland government because this is the type of behavior you get. So the majority of the population, like the Irish Catholic population, were not actually at the time of the rising in favour of it. What changed that was a couple of things. One was the execution of the leaders,

quite a few of them were young, and this was seen as over the top, not something necessarily that kind of merited that type of treatment thereafter. There was elements of still martial law that existed in a sense like military rule for a while after the rising, just because of the British government was concerned of being any repeat of this while World War was going on. The other big changing event as well, or two other things. One is then the other rebels, people like Michael Collins, who later led as a key figure in Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Party, and then the Irish Republican Army, the IRA. And the others were put a place called Frongoch in North Wales,

which is an internment camp, basically. But weirdly, they were allowed to just mix, et cetera. So all they did was just plan another uprising and discuss like, okay, that didn't go well. And their idea was next time we'll copy what we saw, like, the African boar population doing the ball war that will not have set peace battles because we'll just lose against British forces, better arm, better train.

We'll have hit and run tactics. and that's all they planned from there and then by 1918 Lloyd George for some bizarre reason just releases them all back into Ireland so that's partly where they picked up these ideas from and the other key thing was conscription so although Irish personnel did fight

in World War I, until 1918 there wasn't conscription on Ireland because there was a fear it was going to cause more animosity in potential civil war so because of offensive against Germany at the end of the war the British forces tried to do that and the government. And then there was animosity, particularly for the Irish Catholic population,

with all the reasons we've said. And Sinn Féin and the IRA linked it, particularly Sinn Féin, the political party linked into that. And that helped them gather support in Ireland's 1918. General election, when they did win a majority across the island of Ireland. And then they said they're standing on a platform that a unilaterally could declare Ireland of Republic independent. That's exactly what they did. And they won the majority of the vote. The rise of Sinn Féin is a really important part of us. It was founded in 1905. It gained traction after the Easter Rising in 1916. It became the home of Republicans. And during the 1918 elections, it won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats, overwhelmingly

defeating the moderate Irish parliamentary party. And so suddenly the focus of Irish nationalism has shifted from devolution, from home rule, towards complete independence. And on the back of that big election win, Sinn Féin declared the formation of an Irish Republican Parliament. It began the policy of abstentionism. Sinn Féin MPs would not recognise, would not take their seats in the Parliament of Westminster. This was full separation. We'll bring this podcast to an end within the First World War and that critical election fought as the barrels of the guns on the Western Front were barely cooling down right at the end of 1918. So in four years you've gone from Redmond, sort of home rule, devolution within the

British state within the British Empire. You've now got a far more radical vision of Ireland's future, Sinn Féin, and they persuade the Irish electorate of that, do they? And have we covered why that is? Do you think it's just a backlash from that 1916 failed uprising, the British government's heavy-handed response? Why that radical shift in Irish opinion? I think it's two things, and I think we can just put it into short and long-term factors. In terms of long-term factors, everything we've been talking about, there would have been animosity going back to things like the famine, there would have been an animosity back to discriminatory laws, etc. They're in place when Irish Catholics couldn't really take part in any established part of the state or they couldn't

vote, etc. So that would be in the memory. But the short-term factors are key as well, but compounding that, well, hang on, we've been promised home rule, and then there's not home rule, then there's delayed home role, and the Ulster Protestants said they resist it, and the British army wouldn't put them down. So there's all these factors in the background. The treatment of the Easter rising in 1916, Irish Republican rebel leaders were seen. seen as heavy-handed. And I think the second thing is we definitely said there was that the conscription threat people did not like and they saw as this is unnecessary. And, you know, again, I think in the Irish Catholic mindset at that point was just what are we getting in return to these

things? We make these sacrifices and then we still see Ulster Protestants resisting any form of home rules. We still have to be ruled directly by Westminster, which is not something we agree with doing. So I think that that's absolutely key. And you can see that across when you look at the electoral result because, you know, Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Party, they said they'd get elected in 1918 and they would have taken their seats to Westminster. And in this case in 1980, actually set up a rival parliament, an independent Irish Republic parliament. And the majority of people across the island voted for that. But of course, then if you look at what later became Northern Ireland, so the six counties of the North East, yeah, they have a unionist majority.

So they're in kind of lies, so Ulster Unionist, British Protestant, people who do not want any part of island, but particularly the part where they concentrate the north-east to come under Irish Catholic rule. They perform in the north-east of the island. Well, they get a majority in what later becomes Northern Ireland. There is it kind of the seeds of partition you can see are partly there at that point in 1918's election. Well, that December 19 election was hugely important. It was a real turning point. Can you imagine? Just because the world hadn't had enough drama during the First World War, suddenly boom, a month after the end of the war, you've got this full.

blown turmoil, crisis in Ireland. Fascinating. The war in Europe might have been over, although they would be fighting around the world in the years that followed through the messy end of the First World War. It was still dealing with that at the moment. And it seemed that a war on island was about to be added to that. It was about to begin. It would pit communities against each other, neighbour against neighbour. Communities that shared this small island but were terribly divided by religion and divided by their visions for Ireland's future. So join us again on Wednesday. we'll look at the events the 20th century from the Irish War of Independence

right through to partition the civil rights movement and we're going to see how all this led up to the crescendo of violence in the 1970s. So a big thank you to the wonderful Thomas Lehi he'll be joining us again in episode two to help us make sense of this complicated and important story. So make sure you don't miss it, you know what to do? You just hit following your podcast player

and the episode will just appear in your library automatically. It's beautiful. That's all for now, folks. See you later. Thank you.