Although the English first established plantations (confiscated and colonized lands) in Ireland from the 12th century, the 16th–17th centuries plantations were Protestant and displaced Catholic rule in much of Ireland. The first Protestant plantation, established in 1582, was Munster. To settle this region, the English colonizers brutally suppressed resistance (destroying... More
The ‘plantations’ in Ireland were Crown-sponsored settlements of Protestant migrants on land confiscated from the unruly Irish clans. The system’s culmination occurred in Ulster under the Stuart king, James I. Here the settlement was organized by a mix of ‘Undertakers’ (wealthy colonists who ‘undertook’ to import tenants to populate and... More
After a boom during the Napoleonic Wars, Ireland’s manufacturing industries stagnated after the Act of Union (1801). Karl Marx (in the 1860s) described Ireland as ‘an agricultural district of England (to which) it yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits’. Nevertheless, in the 1841 census, a third of the... More
The Irish tail network reached a peak in 1920 with close to 3,440 miles (5,500 km) of track. A long period of retrenchment and decline followed. In the Irish Civil War, anti-Treaty combatants systematically attacked the rail infrastructure, and partition disrupted service patterns, particularly for County Donegal. Poor service, owing... More
The General Election of December 1918 produced a landslide for the nationalist Sinn Féin party in Ireland. Many of their 73 elected MPs were in prison – without trial, though purported involvement in a ‘German Plot’. The election was heavily polarized: the second largest party was the Ulster Unionists with... More
The Iron Age on the Isle of Man began around 500 BCE, and – as there was no Roman colonization – extended until c. 500 CE. While the Romans did not invade, the archaeological evidence suggests that marauding from Celtic neighbours was common. Man’s coastline is dotted with promontory forts,... More
Ironworking appears to have reached Scotland with the Celts around 800 BCE, possibly arriving from Ireland. An eclectic range of habitations date to the period. Crannogs, conical dwellings built on wooden piled platforms over water (lochs and estuaries) were clustered in the Western Isles, Argyll and Galloway. Brochs, two-storey, hollow-walled... More
As with the earlier Deluge and subsequent Exodus, the biblical narratives of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph contain enough detail to suggest some historical basis, but insufficient to attempt any firm chronology. Thomas Mann’s tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers imagines Akhenaten as the pharaoh served by Joseph, and his revolutionary monotheism... More
The trajectory of the military expansion of Islam is not dissimilar to the Mongol conquests of Timur or Genghis Khan. The initial phase was painstaking, with many reverses, before the unification of the warring tribes of Arabia in a religious polity, which was followed by an explosive advance, in all... More
The mosque is the focal point of Islamic society and, along with tombs, palaces and forts, is the main physical representation of Islam’s influence across different regions over the centuries. These architectural forms facilitated the functions of life in Islamic cultures and their stylistic elements take inspiration from a number... More
Islamic art covers a broad spectrum of artistic practices, not necessarily inspired by religion, which evolved within a number of differing Islamic societies. Like Islamic architecture, Islamic art forms vary widely in stylistic attributes depending on their region of origin and the outside cultural influences from which they took inspiration.... More
The Islamic Caliphate of Córdoba disintegrated into a number of regional principalities in 1031 after shifting balances of power and a lengthy civil war following the death of al-Halam II in 976. The caliphate was originally established as the Emirate of Córdoba by Abd-ar-Rahman I, who was a junior member... More