Its only in the past few decades Ireland has become a rich country, prior to that its primary export has always been people. Its...just not a rich land. Poor in resources, horrible farming land, etc...
This is the 11th century we're on about so things are even worse- no potato, possibly not even a few staple old world crops/animals (I'm no expert on the spread of agriculture), the bulk of the island would still be one big swamp, etc...
Honestly, where do people get their info from!
every time theres a thread with ireland in it, the same old testicles comes out, ..... the land is too poor, theres no resources, its always been a agricultural nation, theres not enough people, its was too divided, and anyway if there was any industrial devlopment it would be in the north east!!!!
has anyone ever been there?, has anyone even done the slightest bit of research before they pan things that dont conform to the "england is the centre of the universe, always was and always will be"approach!
First yes there is poor land, but as a proportion of the whole island, its proportion of land that cant be very productive is better than wales and scotland ,same as englands, certinly better than most mediterian countries ... the carrying and yield capacity is wayyyyy better than med countries. some of the best agri land in europe is in meath, tipperary, cork, waterford, kildare, limerick... most of the country!
second .. resources ... yes it doesnt have big coal fields, or iron fields, it does have some, and most of these in shallow deposits, easy to get at it! It has plenty of gold and copper, lead, silver, it would have had timber coming out of its wazoo (the royal navy was built with no small amount of irish oak,) Also if we are talking before the 15th centuy and certinly in the pre medieval most iron used in the british isles was actually bog iron - ie sedimentay iron, leeched from surrounding soil into low lying boggy areas..... not very high grade but easier to get at and process with the tech of the day. So ireland had probably more than england!
third, its an agricultural nation ....... which country didnt have its economy based almost totally upon farming before 1800, or even 1830!
and when the thread is about a POD before 18th century why do people have to point out that it couldnt have started a industrial revolution, because it doesnt have resources.... see my point about resources. Also there are plenty, actually crap loads of old mills (food and cloth) ironworks, mines, quarries, kilns, etc dotted around the country (i can off hand think of .....8 industial sites from the late 18th to the mid 19th century that were within 15 miles of my home ...not counting those that i didnt know about, have been demolished, built over or converted )
As for the "fact " that any industry that did arise , would have done so in the north east, none of the resources that there are , are in the north east.. (ok some gold in tyrone, salt in antrim)... so why would the industry "have" to arise there?
4... the number of people..... plenty of people, especially if we take a leaf from polands agrument about voting rights in the EU, and number of euro mps each country gets. ie based on population is fine, especially if you figure what the population would have been now if most of them hadnt been killed off in the second world war! If there is a big enough POD then the several mass depopulations in elizibeathan times, cromwell, war between james and william, the famine, and the mass emigation since ( and a few others besides), all of which took large percentages of the pop - between 5 and 10%), probably wouldnt have happend, or not as bad, then there would have been plenty of people. not as many as england of course, but way more than scotland or wales, or holland or portugal (see my last paragraph)
last .. too divided....... yes it was divided but every little chieftan owed aligence to a bigger chief, etc, all the way up to a point where there was basically a half dozen at most "states" in around the 1000 ad. Inother word it had a feudal social structure, same as everywhere else. worse some countries at the time, better than most... for example prior to alfred and canute, how many statelets were there in england ?( not counting wales and scotland)
bottom line, though im talking about ireland specifically here, but there are plenty of small countrys with big aggrresive neighbours that have done alright , and all with less resources, holland... portugal, sweden, etc, etc, . Its actually an aberation of history that england got to the power and infulance it had, and that was based on a perfect storm of many different things, .. political structure, geography.... luck!... it is not a law of physics like what goes up must come down!
One of the points of the board is to discuss what ifs , not to just take what happened in the past and assume the same would happen again, except there would be a city with a differnt name, or a king with 2 mistresses intead of 5! . Sadly alot of the threads and timelines here are just slightly different versions of what happened in OTL.
use a bit of imagination people!