Europe, Ireland and the wider world I: Renaissance to Enlightenment, 1350 – 1750: HI2102 What were

This culminated in the Rebellion of 1798, lead by Wolfe Tone and the Society of United Irishmen, in which Hugh and Jimmy participated: “The road to Sligo. A spring morning. 1798. Going into battle” (445). But, as these characters soon discovered, the rebellion failed resulting in large executions and the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. This piece of legislation, effective from 1 January 1801, brought Ireland under the direct rule of the British Crown.

The Renaissance and the Enlightenment are two significant periods in world history, specifically in European history. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment have distinctive characteristics, but share the notion of being periods of discovery in many aspects of life. Each period has its own set of beliefs, values, and ideals otherwise known as a “worldview”. It can be thought of as a framework of principles through which people interpret the world, and how society should be shaped. The Renaissance is focused on the artistic side of human life. However, the Enlightenment is more intellectual in focus and that advancement has shaped the modern view of an open, progressive and culturally diverse society enjoyed today.

According to the Anglo-Irish treaty, southern half of Ireland would become free, and the northern half would still belong to the United Kingdom. This would cause an underlying civil war that would put the northern and southern Ireland against one another in order to get the British out of Ireland for good. With this underlying war going on, it will restrict the people of Ireland rights and provide many unique laws and events that wound argue for a united Ireland to bring peace to

The Early Modern Western Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. The objective of the Enlightenment was to create authoritative ethics, and knowledge based on an “enlightened” rationality. The leaders’ that were part of this movement were directing the world towards progress and out of a long period of irrationality, superstition, and tyranny; which began during a historical period called the Dark Ages. Therefore, it provided a framework for the American and French Revolutions, as well as the rise of capitalism and the birth of socialism. Most of the ideas in the 18th century are common laws today; like freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the responsibilities of rulers to their people developed during this time. As well as a huge increase in scientific inquiry.

In 1171 internal struggle for power caused the Irish to be open to attack from Anglo-Welsh warriors. This is the first time that Ireland had faced an army from outside of it’s own borders, which had this meant that he Irish had not had to keep up with the current military innovations. In October of 1171 King Henry II arrived in Ireland. In 1172 King Henry took Dublin under his protection and issued the first Charter for “his city”.

During this first intrusion in to Ireland by Anglo Normans brought Norman soldiers from Norman/Welsh and Cornish Background from south Wales. Many were direct descendants of nobles who fought in the Battle of Hastings and were granted and land as reward for the successful battle. The well trained English forces quickly overcame the poorly armored Irish. These Anglo/Norman families became the backbone of southern Irish society. In 1606, the Earl of Pembroke granted the Saunders land located in County Wicklow, known was the “last county”, located on the East coast of Ireland, today part of the Greater Dublin area for their assistance in the invasion of Ireland in

The European politics, communication, science and philosophy were radically reoriented between 1685 and 1815, during a time that was referred to as the Age of Reason, or in other words, the Enlightenment Era. The European thinkers from Britain, France and throughout Europe started questioning the traditional authority and developed the idea that humanity could be made better through rational change. As a result of the Enlightenment, there was production of numerous essays, wars, books, scientific discovery and revolution. The Enlightenment Era directly influenced the French and the American revolutions which respectively led to the peak of its influence and its decline.

In his 1784 essay entitled, “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?,” Immanuel Kant, one of the most prominent and influential figures in all of modern philosophy, as well as a key contributor to Enlightenment thinking and ideals, defines enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage” (Kant, 1784). According to Kant, one of the primary goals of the Enlightenment was to encourage man to cultivate the courage to use his own knowledge and reason apart from guidance or dependence on another. Recognizing that man seems to be inclined to follow the guiding institutions of the day, namely the Church and the Monarchy, Kant cautions man to not fall subject to these external “perpetual

The 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin was the spark which ignited and created the Irish Republican Army (Alonso, 2001; Arena & Arrigo, 2004; Hart, 1997; Page & Smith, 2000). In 1916, several republicans took up arms against the British. The British fought back and killed the rebel

War, oppression, and massacres. All three took place in English-led Ireland during the Victorian Era, and all three were caused by a few differences in beliefs on how to worship the same God. Mainly due to the evangelization of St. Patrick, the Irish people were devoutly Catholic while their English rulers followed a Protestant Church called the Anglican Church of England. Since the Anglican Church was so dominant in England, the Irish Catholics received very poor treatment from the Protestants in England causing things like the Irish Potato Famine and the Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday massacres. However, the Irish people were by no means silent under this oppression, leading to many rebellions. Due to the dominance of Protestantism in England

The Battle of Hastings was fought on 14 October in the year 1066 shortly after the Norman invasion of England. The most important event before the battle was the death of Edward the Confessor, king of England, and the coronation of his successor Harold Godwinson. Across the Channel in France, William, was set on claiming the English crown for himself. With the support of the Pope and from his nobles, William set made plans for invading England. The prelude to William’s invasion was an attack on Yorkshire by Tostig Godwinsson, who was king Harold’s exiled brother, and Norwegian Vikings, led by Harald Hardrada.

The European Renaissance began in Northern Italy in the 14th century. The term ‘Renaissance’ is from the French word meaning ‘rebirth’. It was used to describe the phrase of European history because of the changes experienced from the 14th to 16th centuries, inspired by a resumption of the classical art and understanding of Ancient Greece and Rome. The architects from the Italian Renaissance pursued their main inspiration from the Greek and Roman architecture, these includes the use of classical orders such Doric, Ionic and Corinthian combing classicism with new principles of Humanism upon which so much of renaissance art was based. And architectural elements such as columns, piasters, pediments, entablatures, arches, and domes form the vocabulary

Irish could not manage to drive England away from Ireland. Each time England tried to conquer Ireland the Irish would just hate them more. Bitterness between Ireland and Britain depend with religious differences surfaced. Henry VIII thought in order to keep control of Ireland he would suppress Catholicism in Ireland. The new conflict became English Protestant versus Irish Catholic (Bartoletti, 13). By the fifth century Argyll and Western Scotland were settled by Northern Ireland Scots. They settled in South Welsch, Lleyn Peninsula, and Pembroke. “The Caledonians who had fought Agricola had joined with other groups from the Picts. The name is Roman and means ‘painted men.” “The land of the Picts bordered the territory colonized by the scots from Ireland (Lloyd, 109).” By the third century the Irish became a threat to the Wales and a menace by the fourth. Roman-Britain built new forts to deal with the problem(Lloyd,109). This war was unlike any other war Ireland had fought. The rebels did not want to repeat what happened in 1916 because they did not want to repeal the rising. In 1923 British government had finally given Ireland a limited amount of independence. Irelands new issue was to form a new type of

William, the Duke of Normandy, led an army into England. He won this battle and

William still had to face some opposition in the kingdom but these pockets of resistance were quickly crushed. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy and Count of Maine, had become William the Conqueror, King of England. Few battles in all history have been as decisive as Hastings. The outcome of October 14, 1066, was to wrench England from the Northern axis of Scandinavia and the North Sea around to a profound involvement with the Southern, Latin world. Henceforth the Northern world waned, and the Latin world blossomed into the glory of the High Middle Ages and the