AHC: The Irish Power

Well the idea of an Ireland strongly united enough to become the patron of a Wales that either the English and even Normans never control at all, or that the Irish take back and don't return, is interesting to say the least. It helps address the issue of Ireland lacking some resources.

I've been reading over some sketches of Irish history. Frustratingly the only Wikipedia entries that approach the question of basic resources and carrying capacity of Ireland are the ones looking at prehistory; as soon as historians have access to actual history in the strict sense, recorded writings--they seem to abandon analysis of physical evidence as so many inferior crutches.

I was taught a "study of history" class by a teacher who subscribed to views that would make this seem proper, but I never agreed; the more evidence the better it seems to me. Surely my teacher did not reject the idea of having evidence but it was all to be in service to recovering the thoughts of people in the past, and as I read his intellectual patron Collingwood it seemed this school meant to focus on the thoughts of important people, who advanced the thought of humanity as a whole. It seemed the distilled essence of "maps and chaps," and skewed toward Great Man history and also to a privileged narrative condemning most of human activity to side currents and backwaters.

So unfortunately, the more the Wikipedia writers know about the names and dates and conflicts recorded, the less they seem to care about possible underlying causes and constraints beyond the mere will of the people involved--more importantly, recorded as being involved.

This makes it difficult for me to judge what alternative potentials there might have been. Interestingly the pre-historic article points to evidence of a "Irish Dark Age" between 100 BCE and 300 CE, in which objective evidence such as pollen counts suggests a drop in population while the historic record keeps a telling silence for the most part on the subject of Ireland. Some speculate that perhaps Roman slavers seriously depopulated the island!

Vice versa, the article also comments on Irish raiding as a way of life, one that left the Irish significantly richer than if they had refrained from such opportunism. It also comments on the tradition that made out the ancient Irish to be exclusively pastoralists, observing enough evidence of agriculture to show that they were primarily reliant on cultivated food--though cattle were of tremendous importance all the same.

But in the later articles, covering Irish history as known in the narrower sense of written records, there is no discussion of economic or technological underpinnings, beyond remarks about possible causes of an Irish diaspora coinciding with the rise of the influence of Irish churchmen on the European continent, and remarking that the traditional Gaelic Irish "beyond the Pale" in the era of the Lordship of Ireland suffered from being driven off the best land by the agents of the English monarchy.

Other than this there is little discussion indeed of the economics of Irish life, the potentials the land offered and the limits it may have imposed, or of the role of the Irish as seafarers and traders.

I hope someone interested in this subject has a more solid grounding in the economic facts on the ground than I can easily glean from mere glances at the Internet!

Before I started reading this thread I was of the belief that Ireland just ecologically could not support much surplus population (except by such expedients as dependency on potatoes) but upthread someone posted historical demographics in which Ireland and England were quite comparable. If Normans, and before the Normans several Anglo-Saxon dynasties, could achieve a unified English kingdom and except for a few sporadic and brief times of troubles make a unified English kingdom the historic norm from the time of Alfred to the present day, some 1200 years, why should Ireland necessarily be doomed to the opposite pattern until an England strong enough to overwhelm her completely came along around 500 years ago?

From my cursory reading, it seems to me that there may have been potentials for a unified Irish regime--but typically only at the hands of foreign conquerors. The Viking period for instance, which is credited with instituting the first major nucleated settlements, particularly on the eastern, southern coasts and partway up the west coast. One comment in the wiki articles is that some blame the ability of the northern natives to repel Viking incursions for the relative backwardness of Ulster in this respect, and lack of contact with the outside world in general would not help.

In fact Ireland is indeed isolated and even if we factor in a seafaring tradition of sorts, which to some extent did exist before Scandinavian raids and invasions and clearly would have been further enabled by adoption of Scandinavian methods atop traditional Gaelic ones, sheer distance tends to put them at a disadvantage. For this reason I would despair of the possibility of a strong unified Ireland arising from the Viking period, either due to more aggressive and organized conquerors or as a defensive reaction against them. Such a thing might indeed happen, but either it would have only a marginal influence on the economic and social underlying situation that apparently favored disunion over union and be ephemeral--or if it were to lead to lasting consequences, presumably Ireland would become in some way or another richer, and thus more of an attractive target for would-be conquerors.

Prior to the eleventh century, such conquest would seem to be either at the hands of Vikings or not at all; Ireland's distance protected her as much as it stunted her. But it is clear enough in English history that the desirability, indeed necessity, of having some control over Ireland was apparent to English rulers. With Ireland in hand or anyway neutralized, England was fairly safe and could concentrate on naval power both for an economical defense and tool of opportunistic enrichment. If Ireland were in strong other hands, be it as a unified independent kingdom or as the puppet or ally of some continental power, England is in grave dangers they avoided OTL. Therefore any scenario which does yield Irish independence has a strong influence on England and Scotland as well, very probably diverting England into a very different course than OTL. Thus we can only contemplate a lasting independent Irish power in the face of active and rather desperate English opposition.

To unify the two countries under one crown lastingly, on a more equal basis than OTL, does seem like a possibility to me but it would not address the OP very well.

When considering a possible path to Ireland as a considerable European power in the late Middle Ages and early modern period then, I see a rather torturous and improbable set of paths, that involve certain contradictions possibly being resolved by advances and reversals.

Thus, a strong Irish unified state in the period before the 11th century, presumably as an outcome of more intense Viking activity, may be completely irrelevant. Supposing a strong unified state tradition were to arise, on any basis, would not this distract the Saxon English and make the project of either conquering it or anyway breaking it up seem important?

For that matter, would such a conqueror as Canute rest with England under his control, facing a unified and independent Ireland across the Irish Sea? Perhaps he would, at that; conceivably such a kingdom might even be an ally.

With or without an Irish kingdom around 1066, how would the Normans react if they were to succeed as OTL in subjugating England? For quite some time to be sure the project of imposing Norman rule thoroughly would absorb them. But would not such effective conquerors then turn their eyes west and plot a similar fate for Ireland?

One possible path to an independent and strong late Medieval and modern era Ireland might indeed be via such an extended Norman Conquest. It does seem that the English defenders in 1066 were at a disadvantage relative to Norman arms--not I think a thoroughly decisive one; Harold might have prevailed and repelled the invasion, quite possibly so decimating the Norman-Flemish coalition so badly that a time of troubles in those homelands might have forestalled another attempt forever. (In that case, I would expect a Saxon England under a Godwin dynasty or any successor to it to eventually turn on Ireland). But on the battlefield, Norman fighting methods did give them an advantage and this did prevail once their foothold was established. Ireland, divided or unified, would be little match for the Continental armed forces either. Thus perhaps the prospects of an eventual Irish kingdom are actually favored if their disunity as per OTL still prevailed by the end of the 11th century and into the 12th, because it makes the importance of securing control of Ireland seem less important to the Normans.

Meanwhile, in fact OTL Normans with their military expertise did infiltrate into Ireland over the century between the Conquest and Henry II's imposition of the Pale of English control. Various rival kings and other lords in Ireland invited some Normans in as allies, and I suppose others may have taken advantage of the chaos opportunistically. The long term outcome of these piecemeal Norman incursions was to Gaelicize them and spread Norman fighting methods among the Irish generally, insofar as they could support them economically.

It seems that it was precisely to prevent a new centralized Irish power arising across the sea to challenge England that Henry II undertook the project of coordinated invasion. It is unclear to me whether it was his conscious policy, and the prevailing one for the next several centuries, to deliberately limit English power to a Pale that tended to be restricted to the easternmost traditional province of Leinster, as a holding action meant to be both economical and committing limited English resources lest local commanders take it into their heads to consolidate Ireland as a basis for power to seize control back in England--as long as the Pale was surrounded by "wild Irish," presumably they could not scrape up enough to overturn English politics while also leaving enough power in place to secure the Pale, whereas a program of general conquest gradually expanding English power to control the whole island was deliberately refused and checked in London. Versus the possibility that many kings, perhaps even Henry II, did contemplate taking over all Ireland but were parsimonious for various other reasons and thus it was down entirely to Irish resistance, not English policy, that large portions remained unconquered and that successes outside the core Pale area tended to be temporary, so in one generation the Pale might be enhanced by a certain extension, a doubling or more, of territory and in another a like amount of extra-Pale terrain was strongly controlled--but meanwhile the previous conquests had relapsed into independence again.

Clearly Henry's policy, if that is what it was, stands foursquare against the OP. A possible path to Irish independence on as near-equal terms to England as respective populations allow emerges from the total conquest of Ireland by English power under one hat or another; as OTL over time some schism fed in part by irrepressible Irish thirst for independence might split the larger kingdom. If this happens before say 1500, Ireland may be a player on similar terms with England.

I suppose then the most likely path to a late medieval/early modern Ireland would be via a strong infusion of initially Norman-allied invaders, coming in a combination of piecemeal recruitment/small scale opportunism and grand invasions by coordinated English policy.

OTL, incidentally, a lot of the Norman barons who went to Ireland and whose descendants were strongly Gaelicized, "More Irish than the Irish" as the saying goes, were actually lords in Wales, and some historians even refer to them as Cambrio-Irish. Thus the possibility that in a civil war spilt Wales and Ireland wind up on the same side is not too unlikely.

However, with a strong unified Ireland against England, however we arrive at it, England is strongly diverted from OTL developments that were premised on English security being enforced by difficulty of amphibious invasion and naval power. This diversion is even worse if the Irish hold Wales too obviously. Even if the Irish have no foothold on the island of Great Britain, such a near power seems to me to tip the balance toward a more absolutist monarchy, and might butterfly English Protestantism too.

I think some sort of Protestant movement is highly likely to arise. It might possibly be repressed militarily, but I think that resentment against the centralized power of the Roman Catholic Church, tending to favor the interest of more central and southern European powers over more peripheral and northern ones, was part of the package of rising bourgeois power, in the form of merchants and photo-industrialists. These factions enriched powers that shrewdly or accidentally fostered them and pressed their interests on aristocratic rulers, even going as far as forming the basis of new houses rising to seize old crowns or found new ones, or otherwise become tantamount to monarchs under other names as in the Lowlands. And the English in particular had a long tradition of dissenting with Rome. On paper, England going Protestant appears to be an act of mere will on Henry VIII's part, but I believe he was choosing to run with strong winds and currents he had hitherto found it tough sailing to tack against. I do not mean to say England was foredoomed to go Protestant; perhaps if the monarchs had chosen to do what it took to keep the Catholic church in place the dissent would remain unorganized and ineffective, though I suppose it would become a factor in every crisis the regime faced for other causes. But it does seem to me that certain strong interests would make going Protestant an option for many generations of monarchs, and do so would solve some problems while admittedly creating others.

What about Ireland though? Would the same factors making a break with Rome very popular in some circles prevail there as well? I suspect, yes, but more weakly as Ireland will have less of these interest groups, being essentially poorer, and the odds are good that Ireland remains a Catholic power no matter what the English do--and indeed if England takes that path, Irish Catholicism seems all the stronger as a nationalistic matter of pride.

If we can envision a situation similar to OTL in broad strokes in 1580, but with an independent Irish state that is strongly Catholic (not without dissenters) while England has something like the OTL Tudor monarchy with an official Anglican denomination, in such a situation both England and the Protestant cause in general would be in dire straits compared to OTL, and they were dire enough!

But clearly Ireland too would be just as mired down. If England is Protestant and Ireland is Catholic then Ireland's inherent weaknesses in demographics and economics are offset by Continental alliances to either France or Spain, probably--but that also means the Irish are to some degree going to have to defer to their continental patrons. In the situation I have outlined (quite improbable to arise) England is one step away from being crushed by a Catholic coalition invasion, which given OTL realities on the ground in Elizabeth's reign would be quite likely to succeed. The upshot might most likely be a union of the British Isles--ruled initially by the Irish! That is, if their continental patrons permit it as the price of Irish aid in the invasion of England.

I think it might be fun to contemplate an Irish-led union of the British Isles, the "High Kingship of Ireland and the British Isles" perhaps. It might go so far as to locate the capital at Tara instead of Dublin, and persist with a nominal Irish leadership to this day.

However, I think such a confederation, on any terms--highly centralized, or with England broken up into sub-kingdoms alongside Wales and several Irish kingdoms and Scotland split into two or three pieces, whatever--would over time come to again be dominated by the English. Perhaps the Irish manage to retain special prestige or play off a generally anti-English sentiment to check the English from full assumption of overlordship, but they'd be swimming against the economic and demographic current. Over time, southeast England would come to dominate the economy and perhaps leverage power out of proportion to her population. I don' think the English language would go away under any circumstances short of a program of ethnic cleansing unknown to the historical period--even if we imagine the Irish doing exactly in England as the English did OTL, the numbers are wrong, and I think such an attempt would backfire badly. Smart Irish rulers would refrain from such measures and without them, the English identity would hardly be eradicated.

I could go farther with this but it gets away from the OP, unless we are happy to call a largely English kingdom "Irish" on paper.

To instead keep England and Ireland separate paralyzes both I believe, as far as the OP's other desire to see a strong Irish colonial/imperial role overseas.

I can imagine more convoluted possibilities which involve the Irish in Iberian programs as partners, but these are also long shots. Even with the Irish doing things like discovering the Azores and Madiera, or sponsoring Columbus, Ireland is pretty weak to stay in control--perhaps they can be allocated shares of a Spanish monopoly on the New World under something like the Treaty of Tordesillas, but on the whole I think the British Isles either need to be united or anyway partially neutralized for anyone from them to play the sort of role England did OTL. Playing a role more similar to Denmark makes them a footnote in general history, much as Scotland's efforts were either sporadic or subsumed into British conquests.

A strongly Gaelicized UK under nominal Irish control but in fact being a vehicle of English power within a few centuries of its formation seems the closest I think we can realistically come. Conceivably a strong Norman-Irish kingdom that fails to crush and incorporate England early on might dynastically fuse with some Iberian power, politics might then lead to conquest and subjugation of England but split it off from Irish control and England might be so repressed as to be little threat to a Hiberno-Welsh power within the Iberian alliance, and British Isles Celtic Catholics play a huge role in Iberian world empire.

These are my best efforts, given what I view the economic and demographic constraints to be, favoring the bigger island on every time scale.

I'd pursue unified British Isles but it does not satisfy the OP nor is it that interestingly different from OTL; preventing the running sore of Irish rebelliousness without promoting a worse English rebelliousness making the kingdom truly and long-term United would be the major difference, but the British OTL managed to repress Irish rebellion handily enough that it did not undermine their global activities seriously. So outcomes on such a scale would be similar, probably a period of great power followed by eclipse as global colonialism becomes unviable. By and large the broad stroke outcomes would tend to be similar, unless events shove the British Isles into a more peripheral role--as for instance a successful hegemonic Catholic power based on the Continent which doles out its British appendages only crumbs might accomplish.

This reverses every provision of the OP challenge!
 
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