Ireland Prior to 800 AD.
At the start of the 5th century there were about 500.000 people living in Ireland. The people were known as the Celts, and had come to Ireland from mainland Europe around 500 BC. These people spoke various dialects of Gaelic, a very ancient language that still is to be found in isolated areas. There were no common religion, so there were frequent conflicts between the group inhabitants. This is also a problem today. There were no ordinary marriage structures with one husband and wife, but the men were married to several women. One man could have 20- 30 children, and the families were big. In the year 400, Ireland was divided into 150 independent kingdoms, each called a tuath. Each tuath had a king, and about 3000 citizens. There were continuous conflicts between these tuaths, and therefore the kings had to be skilled warriors. The king's job was to raid other kingdoms and hunt. The peasants who lived in the kingdoms worked like slaves for the king in his farmland, but he protected them in reward. In 406 a young citizen of the Roman Empire, named Patrick, was kidnapped from the west coast of what is now England, and brought to Ireland as a slave. After 7 years of slavery he escaped and went to Gaul, what is now France. In Gaul he was educated as a Christian priest, and in 432 he graduated to a bishop. The pope then sent him to Ireland in order to convert the Irish people to Christianity, and he succeeded. He is regarded as the one who brought Christianity to Ireland, and he ordered several monasteries, churches and schools to be built. He has been made the patron Saint of Ireland because of this work.
800-1014: Power struggle in Ireland
In spring 795 some Vikings (warrior people mainly from Norway) launched an unprovoked and surprise attack on a monastery near what is now Dublin. They murdered all the monks, and took as much gold and food as they could carry. Before leaving they razed the monastery to the ground, and set fire to the ruins. After this attack, they understood that the monks were meek and the monasteries were loaded with valuables, so a violent phase in Irish history started, and lasted for 40 years. During this period all the major monasteries were plundered, and priceless documents and pieces of art were destroyed. In 830 the Vikings discovered the beauty and the value of this island, and began to settle there instead of plundering. They learned to speak Irish, and became more friendly. They founded several towns, between them Dubh Linn (Dublin) in 841. Gradually the Vikings became Christians, and a huge cathedral was constructed in Dubh Linn in 841. Over time the Irish and the Viking culture mixed, and rich cultural centres developed.
After the death of Brian Boru, all the Irish King immediately declared themselves high Kings. This created series of interkingdom wars which went on for a century, and the power of the kings of Ulster, Munster and Leinster slowly declined. In 1166, the king of Connaught in western Ireland Rory O'Connor became powerful enough to be able to claim to be the High King of Ireland. At this stage the Normans (descendants of Vikings who had settled in France), had attacked and defeated the southern part of Britain. They had reformed the Christian church there, and set up their own kingdom. This kingdom, of which Henry 2nd. was king, is the same one that exists in England today - more than 900 years later.
In 1171 that 
In 1485, Henry 7th came to the throne in England. When Henry looked at Ireland he did not like what he saw. For one thing, his predecessor had allowed Garrett Mór of the Kildares to gain so much power that he was now becoming a threat to the English control of the island itself. He also decided that English control in Ireland was pathetic and resolved to restore control to the level that the Normans had enjoyed 250 years before and decided he had to take some action in Ireland. Another era of violence followed, and the British king managed to support from some of the Irish rulers. After Henry the 7.th, his predecessor Henry 8.th continued the violent reign in England, and this influenced the Irish as well. In 1533, when Henry 8th tried to marry Anne Boleyn, the Roman Catholic church forbade him from doing so because he was already married. Henry found no way to get around this other than declaring that the Pope was no longer head of the Church of England, and made himself head instead. This meant that it was he, not the Pope, that had the final word on church matters in England. He was now able to permit himself to marry Anne Boleyn In 1536, the Church in Ireland was ordered to recognise Henry as head of the Church. However most ordinary Irish people refused to recognise Henry as leader of the church and continued to regard the Pope as head. Some Bishops 'reformed' to Henry's church, but soon became Roman Catholics again. The other thing Henry did was to dissolve the many monasteries in England and Ireland - places that had existed for over 11 centuries - by selling the land and scattering the Monks. This greatly influenced the population, as the Monks had often been the ones who nursed the sick and cared for the poor in the local communities.
The Importance of the potato The potato was not a native of Ireland. It had been found by Spanish conquistadors in south America in the 1500s - was shipped to Europe, and reached Ireland around 1590 For the next 80 years it was grown in small numbers, mainly in Munster, as a garden crop or stand-by. Farmers found that potatoes could grow double the food in the same land. They also realised that if they planted some of their land with potatoes, they would have enough to eat, and still have land to grow oats and other plants they needed. By the early 1800s, the population had reached such a level (over 8 million by the start of the famine) that many of the farmers and farm labourers became almost wholly dependant on the potato. By the 1830s, 30% to 35% of Irish people depended on the potato as their main source of food. In September 1845 a strange disease struck the potatoes as they grew in fields across Ireland. Many of the potatoes were found to have gone black and rotten and their leaves died. In the harvest of 1845, between one-third and half of the potato crop was destroyed by the strange disease, which became known as 'potato blight'. It was not possible to eat the blighted potatoes, and the rest of 1845 was a period of hardship, although not starvation, for those who depended on it.
The following spring, people planted even more potatoes. The farmers thought that the blight would not happen again, and that they would not have to suffer the same hardship in the next winter. However, by the time harvest had come in Autumn (Fall) 1846, almost the entire crop had been wiped out, and it was in 1846 that the first starvations started to happen. Blighted potatoes In this period (1846- 1849), disease was spreading which, in the end, killed more people than starvation did. The worst period of disease was 1849 when Cholera struck. Those worst affected were the very young and very old. In 1850 the harvest was better and after that the blight never struck on the same scale again.
One of the most obvious effects of the famine was emigration. Although the famine itself probably resulted in about 1 million deaths, the emigration caused the population to drop by a further 3 million. About 1 million of these are estimated to have emigrated in the immediate famine period, These migrants largely ended up in North America, with some in Australia and in Britain. This is the main reason why a large number of people with Irish background are located in America.
The 
The division of Ireland did not stop the violence. Some thought it was a treachery to let the six northern counties be associated to the UK. The fighting got even harder and hundreds and hundreds of people were killed. To stop the killings British troops were sent to Northern Ireland with the only result: The violence escalates. One of the most violent incidents is