Abstract
Ireland was first inhabited around 7500 BC by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who travelled across the land bridge that connected southwest Scotland with the northern part of Ireland (it was submerged around 6700 BC). Farmers from the Middle-East arrived in Ireland around 3500 BC. Their elaborate graves are also a feature of Neolithic communities in Brittany and the Iberian peninsula. From the sixth century BC, the island was invaded by waves of Celtic tribes from central Europe, including the Gaels, who established pastoral communities within massive stone forts. By AD 200 the Gaels dominated the island, though there was no central control: society was based on a complex structure of hundreds of small kingdoms. The Romans, who dominated much of northern Europe, never reached Ireland. The Gaels traded with other Celtic peoples and sent raiding parties to form settlements in Scotland (Dál Riata) and west Wales.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Further Reading
Central Statistics Office. National Income and Expenditure (annual), Statistical Yearbook of Ireland (annual), Census of Population Reports (quinquennial), Census of Industrial Production Reports (annual), Vital Statistics (annual and quarterly), Trade Statistics (monthly).
Adshead, Maura and Tonge, Jonathan, Politics in Ireland: Convergence and Divergence in a Two-Polity Island. 2009
Ardagh, J., Ireland and the Irish: a Portrait of a Changing Society. 1994
Bartlett, Thomas, Ireland: a History. 2010
Casey, Ciarán, Policy Failures and the Irish Economic Crisis. 2018
Chubb, B., Government and Politics in Ireland. 3rd ed. 1992
Cronin, Mike, A History of Ireland. 2001
Cronin, Mike, Gibbons, Luke and Kirby, Peadar, (eds) Reinventing Ireland: Culture, Society and the Global Economy. 2002
Delanty, G. and O’Mahony, P., Rethinking Irish History: Nationalism, Identity and Ideology. 1997
Foster, R. F., The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. 1991
Gallagher, Michael and Marsh, Michael, (eds) How Ireland Voted 2016: The Election that Nobody Won. 2016
Garvin, T., 1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy. 1997
Harkness, D., Ireland in the Twentieth Century: a Divided Island. 1995
Kirby, Peadar, The Celtic Tiger in Collapse. 2nd ed. 2010
Kostick, C., Revolution in Ireland – Popular Militancy 1917–1923. 1997
Laffan, Brigid and O’Mahony, Jane, Ireland and the European Union. 2008
Lalor, Brian, (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Ireland. 2003
Lynch, David J., When the Luck of the Irish Ran Out: The World’s Most Resilient Country and its Struggle to Rise Again. 2010
O’Beirne Ranelagh, John, A Short History of Ireland. 3rd ed. 2012
O’Malley, Eoin, Contemporary Ireland. 2011
O’Sullivan, Michael J., Ireland and the Global Question. 2006
Patterson, Henry, Ireland Since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict. 2006.—Ireland’s Violent Frontier: The Border and Anglo–Irish Relations During the Troubles. 2013
Vaughan, W. E. (ed.) A New History of Ireland. 6 vols. 1996
Wyndham, Andrew Higgins, (ed.) Re-Imagining Ireland. 2006
National Statistical Office: Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork.
Website: http://www.cso.ie
Copyright information
© 2022 Springer Nature Limited
About this entry
Cite this entry
(2022). Ireland. In: The Statesman’s Yearbook 2023. The Statesman's Yearbook. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-96056-9_91
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-96056-9_91
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-96055-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-96056-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences