The knowledge of how to make bronze came to Ireland from Europe around 2000 BC.  Copper was mined in Ireland and tin was imported from Britain.  During this period of time which lasted until around 500 BC the larger stone tombs gave way to simpler burials.  Towards the end of the period a large number of stone circles were constructed in the geographical areas of Ulster and Munster, probably for ceremonial functions.

The Celts arrived around 500 BC in sufficient numbers to replace the language and culture of Ireland's Bronze Age residents with that of the Celts.  The Celts were an Iron Age people and brought that technology to the island.

The Celts divided themselves into over a hundred small kingdoms, each ruled by a king.  Sometimes a king had the allegiance of other kings and some kings had a lot of control.  These were kings of provinces.  Early maps by Mediterranean sailors and geographers have identified the key tribes in Ireland around the time of Christ and these have been matched with historical evidence and folklore.

The Celtic culture was based around a system of honor, whereby warriors gained honor by valor in battle. Unlike conflicts in later history, it was almost invariably the aristocracy who did the fighting while the peasantry - who often worked like slaves for their king - remained on their farms. The whole system was supported by Brehon Law, a well structured system of justice where most crimes were settled by fines which were related to the status of the victim.

Irish written records only go back to 431 AD.  The Gaelic king of Tara, known as Niall of the Nine Hostages, is the earliest historical figure generally accepted.  He ruled for 27 years and his three sons reorganized the country into three kingdoms.  This was a period of great change in Ireland.  Politically the former tribal affiliations had been replaced by the 700s by that of patrilineal and dynastic background.  Irish pirates struck all over the western coast of Britain in the same way that the Vikings would later attack Ireland.

And St. Patrick brought Christianity in 432 which had a profound effect on the island.  Yet according to Prosper of Aquaitaine, a contemporary chronicler, Palladius was sent to Ireland by the Pope in 431 as "first Bishop to the Irish believing in Christ."  This demonstrates that there were already Christians living in Ireland.  Palladius most likely worked with the Irish Christians in the Leinster and Meath kingdoms, while Patrick worked as a missionary to the Pagan Irish.

The Vikings first recorded raid in Irish history happened in 795 when Vikings from Norway looted the Island.  The early Viking raids were generally small in scale and quick.  The Vikings were expert sailors and by the early 840s had begun to establish settlements along the Irish coasts to spend the winter.  In 852 the Vikings landed in Dublin Bay and established a fortress.  After several generations a group of mixed Irish and Norse ethnic background arose, the so-called Gaels (Gall being the Irish word for foreigner).  The Vikings never achieved total domination of Ireland and 1014 marked the beginning of the decline of Viking power in Ireland.

The first English involvement in Ireland took place in 684 AD but they didn't not stay long.  The next involvement took place in 1169 AD when the Normans invaded Ireland.  Fearing the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland King Henry II of England landed a large fleet in 1171 becoming the first King of England to set foot on Irish soil.  Throughout the thirteenth century the policy of the English Kings was to weaken the power of the Norman Lords in Ireland and by 1261 the Normans were weakened.

The Black Death arrived in Ireland in 1348 and because most of the English and Norman inhabitants of Ireland lived in towns and villages the plague hit them far harder than it did the native Irish.  After the plague passed, Gaelic Irish language and customs came to dominate the country again and by the end of the 15th century English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared.  Poynings Law in 1491 put the Irish parliament under the control of the Westminster parliament, seriously curtailing the Dublin government.

Henry VIII decided to re-conquer Ireland and bring it under crown control in 1536.  After several bloody conflict this was completed almost a hundred years later.  After this point the English authorities in Dublin established real control over Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralized government to the entire island, and successfully disarming the native lordships.  However, the English were not successful in converting the Catholic Irish to the Protestant religion and the brutal methods used by the crown authority to pacify the country heightened resentment of English rule.

Starting in the mid 16th and into the early 17th century, the English carried out a policy of colonization.  Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists and formed the ruling class in Ireland.  A series of Penal Laws discriminated against all faiths other than the established Anglican Church of Ireland.  The victims of these laws were mainly Catholics and Presbyterians.

The 17th century was perhaps the bloodiest in Ireland's history.  Two civil wars caused huge loss of life and resulted in the removing of Irish Catholic landowning class and their subordination under the Penal Laws.  The Catholic gentry actually briefly ruled the country as Confederate Ireland until Oliver Cromwell re-conquered Ireland on behalf of the English Commonwealth in 1649-1653. 

Ireland became the main battleground between the Catholic James II and the Protestant English Parliament what replaced him with William of Orange.  Unfortunately, for over five hundred years this battle that has never stopped, even after the Irish parliament enacted the Act of Union, which merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1800 to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.  part of the deal for the union was that Catholic Emancipation would be conceded.  But King George III controversially blocked this change, later repealed in 1823.

Today, Ireland is divided between Catholic and Protestant still, and today, she continues her struggle for self rule and for peace between each other.

IRISH SLAVERY

The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World.   His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.  After him Charles I, along with Oliver Cromwell, who went after Catholics with a vengeance and is still hated in Ireland today, continued the practice of selling the Irish into slavery.  By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat.  At that time, at least 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.  That's right, not African slaves, White Irish slaves.

Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human cargo, livestock, for English merchants.  They were cheaper than Africans because, for the most part, they were either cheap or downright free.  African slaves cost as much as 50 Sterling, Irish only 5.  Until the end of the 1600s, the majority of the slaves into the New World were White.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves, not indentured servants as your history books would have you believe.  Ireland's population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one decade alone.  Fathers were sold into slavery without their wives and children.  When the families left behind could not care for themselves, they were then sold into slavery as well by the uncaring British.  During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England.  At least 52,000 Irish, mostly women and children, were sold to Barbados and Virginia.  Another 30,000 Irish men and women were to the highest bidder.  In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2000 Irish children taken to Jamaica to be sold as slaves to English settlers.

These slaves were not indentured servants.  They were property and could be hung by their hands or have their hands or feet set on fire for punishment.  They were burned alive, had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.  A planter could whip or brand or even beat an Irish slave to death, without punishment.  Death was a monetary setback, but cheaper than killing a more expensive African slave.  And depending on the economy at the time, cheaper than feeding the slave.  The first several slave rebellions in Barbados were by Irish slaves, not African.

The English masters decided to change the centuries old English Common Law and made the status of children follow mothers, not fathers.  Therefore, if the mother was free, so was the child.  If enslaved, then all children became the property of the master.  So even if she gained her freedom, her children would still be enslaved.  Irish moms would not abandon their children and remained in servitude.  In order to increase the size of the workforce, English masters began breeding Irish women for profit and personal gain, sometimes with African slaves because the "mulatto" slaves brought higher prices.  Laws had to be passed to prevent this heinous practice in 1681.

Even after the colonies gained independence, England shipped tens of thousands of Irish slaves into the newly freed United States of America.  Inn 1798, after the Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia.  Most went to Australia after that time when the American government began refusing the Irish unless they were true indentured servants.

"Negro slavery was efficiently established in colonial America because Black slaves were governed, organized and controlled by the structures and organization that were first used to enslave and control Whites.  Black slaves were 'late comers fitted into a system already developed.'"
(Michael Hoffman, They Were White and They Were Slaves and Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South, pp. 25, 26)

Historian Oscar Handlin writes that in colonial America, White "servants (SLAVES) could be bartered for profit, sold to the highest bidder for the unpaid debts of their masters, and otherwise transferred like movable goods or chattels...The condition of the first Negroes in the continental English colonies must be viewed within the perspective of these conceptions and realities of White servitude."
(Michael A Hoffman, They Were White and They Were Slaves, p. 39)

Truth you seldom learn about - America's dirty little secret, White, Irish slavery on our shores.  (The Scotch, and the poor of England were also enslaved in the new World, including the United States.)

Read the books White Cargo  and They Were White and They Were Slaves for more information

Additional information can be found at http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html and http://www.revisionisthistory.org/forgottenslaves.html

FAMOUS IRISH IN AMERICA

Considering how difficult a lot of them had at the beginning, the Irish are hard-working people and many have served this country faithfully.  Here are just a few:

Matthew Brady - Civil War photographer
Aedanus Burker - Chief Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court, represented SC in the First Congress
Thomas Burke - brother of Aedanus, governor of North Carolina, captured by the British during the Revolutionary war and died
Charles Carroll III - only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence
Henry Ford - Pioneering automobile manufacturer
John Hancock - signer of the Declaration of Independence
William Randolph Hearst - Editor and publisher of the largest newspaper chain in America.  Also a member of Congress
James Hoban - Designed and supervised the building of the White House, modeled upon Leinster House in Dublin. 
Andrew Jackson - 7th President of the United States
Audie Murphy - Most decorated American soldier of World War II
Timothy Murphy - of Morgan's Rifle Corps, most famous marksman of the Revolutionary War
Captain Florence O'Sullivan - commanded one of the ships in the first fleet that colonized South Carolina.  Sullivan's Island is named after him.
James Patton - Crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times bringing Irish settlers.  Augusta County, Virginia settled largely through his efforts.
Louis Sullivan - Modernist architect considered the father of the skyscraper
Charles Thomson - came to America as an indentured servant but became a prosperous merchant and served as secretary of the Congress.  It was his duty to read the Declaration before the Congress for the first time and to notify George Washington of his election to the presidency in 1789

IRISH IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

At least 150,000 Irish joined the Union Army during the Civil War.  It is unknown how many joined the Confederacy but one just has to listen to the accent of southerners and hear the southern tunes, especially Civil War ballads that Southern soldiers loved to sing, and you know that, not only were there Irish in the ranks of the Confederacy but the Irish had settled all over that area as well.  But because the population of the Confederate states was more native-born than immigrant during the Civil War years, the specific Heritage of her troops isn't as well known as that of the Union Army.

In the North, centers of Irish settlement were Boston and New York and in the Federal army there was the fabled Meagher's Irish brigade, led by the flamboyant Thomas Meagher.  They went into battle with an emerald green flag that had a large golden harp in the center.  The draft riots of July, 1863 were due to, those not rich enough to purchase a substitute, were mostly Irish.  Temper's flared and rioting began.  Frustrated Irish laborers vented their anger.

Yet to war they went and the Irish Brigade, originally consisting of three New York regiments, gained the reputation for dash and gallantry.  They would lose over 4000 men, either killed or wounded.

IRISH IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA

The Irish like to boast that St. Brendan sailed to America almost a millennium before Christopher Columbus.  But even if he didn't make it, Galway born William Ayers was one of Columbus's crew in 1492.

  A small number were more prosperous and came seeking adventure.  Others were among the thousands who were exiled to the West Indies by Oliver Cromwell during the 1640s and later made their way to America.  There was an increase in Irish immigration during the 18th century, though the numbers were still small and most were Presbyterians from Ulster fleeing religious discrimination.  In later years it was common to assign the term Scotch-Irish to these immigrants.  A significant minority of 18th century immigrants were southern Catholics escaping social and economic conditions and penal laws enacted by the British to do away with the Celtic heritage and religion of the Catholic majority.  Some converted to Protestantism after encountering discrimination as well as an absence of Catholic churches and priests.  The preferred destinations were New England, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, and Virginia.

In the early years of the 19th century Protestants, many of whom were skilled tradesmen, continued to account for the majority of Irish immigrants.  But by the 1820s and 1830s the overwhelming majority of those fleeing the country were unskilled, Catholic, peasant laborers.  Ireland was becoming Europe's most densely populated country and the land could not support them.  A number of potato failures occurred during the 1820s and 1830s before the major famine of the 1840s.

Many Irish immigrants first came to Canada since passage was cheaper than to the United States than just walked into America.  After 1840 they began sailing directly to American ports.  During the 18th century most Irish immigrants took up some sort of farming.  In the 19th century they tended to remain in urban centers such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia or in the textile towns where their unskilled labor could be readily utilized.

It was the Potato Famine of 1845-1851, one of the most severe disasters in Irish history, that initiated the greatest departure of Irish immigrants to the United States.  Since potatoes constituted the main dietary staple for most Irish as many as 1.5 million died of starvation during the famine.  From the beginning of the famine until 1860 about 1.7 million Irish immigrated to America.  It has been estimated that from 1820 to 1900 about four million Irish immigrated to the United States in all.

The majority of Irish immigrants continued to inhabit urban centers, mainly in the northeast but also Chicago, New Orleans and San Francisco.  Only a small number went west to farm since most didn't have the money to purchase land.

Between 1820 and 1920 about 4,400,000 Irish immigrants entered America, the second highest number from any nation.