Persecution, famine, and exodus: Ireland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

For centuries, Ireland and Britain have had closely intertwined histories and relations. Ireland, as we know it today, has been influenced tremendously by its relations with Britain. It is known as a place of religious and cultural tension, much of which dates back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and earlier even. During these two particular time periods, the Irish people have suffered a great deal, in part, at the hands of their neighbors in England and Scotland. Two events in particular, the mid eighteenth-century Penal Laws and the Famine of the late 1840s have had insurmountable impacts on the history of Ireland and its people. Ultimately, the poverty and suffering of the Catholic Irish, as well as the mass exodus of these people to North America, can be traced back to the prejudices held and injustices committed by the British government during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The effects of these injustices can still be seen today in the culture and attitudes of Ireland, and there is still a great deal of discontent with the British presence and influence in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

The events that led up to the enactment of the Penal Laws can be traced back to numerous events throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the Williamite Conquest and the 1641 Uprising. The Penal Laws, the first of which were enacted in the late seventeenth century, were created by England as a result of severe unrest and discontent in Ireland. They were designed in particular to keep the Catholic Irish down, and to prevent them from organizing and rising up. These laws, riddled with religious and cultural prejudice, attacked the religious, political, and essential rights of Catholic Irish, effectively making them second-class citizens of their own nation.

Perhaps one of the most important and limiting aspects of the Penal Laws was the Oath of Supremacy. Enacted in 1692, the law effectively prevented any Catholic Irishman from voting or sitting on Parliament.