Notes:
Dublin (Irish: Baile Átha Cliath, IPA: bˠalʲɛ a:ha klʲiəh) is the capital and largest city in Ireland, near the midpoint of Ireland's east coast, at the mouth of the River Liffey and at the centre of the Dublin Region. Founded as a centre of Viking settlement, the city has been Ireland's capital since mediæval times.
The city of Dublin is the entire area administered by Dublin City Council. However, when most people talk about 'Dublin', they also refer to the contiguous suburban areas that run into the adjacent local authority areas of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. This area is sometimes known as 'Urban Dublin' or the 'Dublin Metropolitan Area'.
The population of the administrative area controlled by Dublin City Council was 505,739 at the census of 2006. At the same census the Dublin Region population was 1,186,159, and the Greater Dublin Area 1,661,185. (estimated by the CSO to reach 2.1 million by 2021). Today, approximately 40% of the population of Ireland live within a 60 mile fan radius of this east coast city.
A person from Dublin is known as a Dubliner or colloquially as a Dub, or, pejoratively, a Jackeen.
In a 2003 European-wide survey by the BBC, questioning 11,200 residents of 112 urban and rural areas, Dublin was the best capital city in Europe to live in, and Ireland the most content country in Europe.
Dublin is the third most visited capital city in Europe (after Paris and London) with over four million visitors a year.
History of Dublin
The City of Dublin can trace its origin back more than 1000 years, and for much of this time it has been Ireland's principal city and the cultural, educational and industrial centre of the country.
Founding and early history
The earliest reference to Dublin is sometimes said to appear in the writings of Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy), the Egyptian-Greek astronomer and cartographer, around the year A.D. 140, who refers to a settlement called 'Eblana'. This would seem to give Dublin a just claim to nearly two thousand years of antiquity, as the settlement must have existed a considerable time before Ptolemy became aware of it. Recently, however, doubt has been cast on the identification of Eblana with Dublin, and the similarity of the two names is now thought to be coincidental.
Beginning in the 9th and 10th century, there were two settlements where the modern city stands. The Viking settlement of about 841 was known as Dyflin, from the Irish Duiblinn (or "Black Pool", referring to a dark tidal pool where the River Podddle entered the Liffey on the site of the Castle Gardens at the rear of Dublin Castle), and a Gaelic settlement, Áth Cliath ("ford of hurdles") was further up river. The Celtic settlement's name is still used as the Irish name of the modern city, while the modern English name came from the Viking settlement of Dyflin, which derived its name from the Irish Duiblinn. The Vikings, or Ostmen as they called themselves, ruled Dublin for almost three centuries, though they were expelled in 902 only to return in 917 and notwithstanding their defeat by the Irish High King Brian Boru at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. It is now thought that the Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical settlement known as Duiblinn, from which Dyflin took its name.
Viking Dublin had a large slave market. Thralls were captured and sold, not only by the Norse but also by warring Irish chiefs.2 This nominally ended with the adoption of the Brehon Laws, but actually continued for a further century.
Dublin celebrated its millennium in 1988 with the slogan ‘'Dublin's great in '88’. The city is far older than that, but in that year, the Norse King Glun Iarainn recognised Mael Seachlainn II Mor (the High King of Ireland), and agreed to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law.1 That date was celebrated, but might not be accurate: in 989 (not 988), Mael Seachlainn laid siege to the city for 20 days and captured it. This was not his first attack on the city.
Dublin became the centre of English power in Ireland after the 12th century Norman conquest of the southern half of Ireland (Munster and Leinster), replacing Tara in Meath — seat of the Gaelic High Kings of Ireland — as the focal point of Ireland's polity. Over time, however, many of the Anglo-Norman conquerors were absorbed into the Irish culture, adopting the Irish language and customs, leaving only a small area around Dublin, known as the Pale, under direct English control.
Medieval Dublin
After the Hiberno-Norman taking of Dublin in 1171, many of the city’s Norse inhabitants left the old city, which was on the south side of the river Liffey and built their own settlement on the north side, known as Ostmantown or "Oxmantown". Dublblin became the capital of the English Lordship of Ireland from 1171 onwards and was peopled extensively with settlers from England and Wales. The rural area around the city, as far north as Drogheda, also saw extensive English settlement. In thhe 14th century, this area was fortified against the increasingly assertive Native Irish – becoming known as the Pale. In Dublin itself, English rule was centred on Dublin Castle. The city was also the seat of the Parliament of Ireland, which was composed of representatives of the English community in Ireland. Important buildings that remain from this time include St Patrick's Cathedral, Christchurch Cathedral and St Audoen's Church, all of which are within a kilometre of each other. The last surviving section of Dublin's medieval walls overlook St Audoen's onto Cook St.
The inhabitants of the Pale developed an identity familiar from other settler-colonists of a beleaguered enclave of civilisation surrounded by barbarous natives. The siege mentality of medieval Dubliners is best illustrated by their annual pilgrimage to the area called Fiodh Chuilinn, or Holly Wood ( rendered in English as Cullenswood) in Ranelagh, where in 1209, 500 recent settlers from Bristol had been massacred by the O’Toole clan during a fair. Every year on "Black Monday", the Dubblin citizens would march out of the city to the spot where the atrocity had happened and raise a black banner in the direction of the mountains to challenge the Irish to battle in a gesture of symbolic defiance. This was still so dangerous until the 17th century that the participants had to be guarded by the city militia and a stockade against, "the mountain enemy".
Medieval Dublin was a tightly knit place of around 5-10,000- people, intimate enough for every newly married citizen to be escorted by the mayor to the city bullring to kiss the enclosure for good luck. It was also very small in area, an enclavave hugging the south side of the Liffey of no more than three square kilometres. Outside the city walls were suburbs such as the Liberties, on the lands of the Archbishop of Dublin, and Irishtown, where Gaelic Irish were supposed to live, havining been expelled from the city proper by a 15th century law. Although the native Irish were not supposed to live in the city and its environs, many did so and by the 16th century, English accounts complain that Irish Gaelic was starting to rival English as the everyday language of the Pale.
Life in Medieval Dublin was very precarious. In 1348, the city was hit by the Black Death – a lethal bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th century. In Dublin, victims of the disease were buried in mass graves in an area still knowown as "Blackpitts". The plague recurred regularly in city until its last major outbreak in 1649. The city was also the scene of constant warfare, both endemic low level violence and as a battleground in major wars. Throughout the middle ages, it paid protection money or "black rent" to the neighbouring Irish clans to avoid their predatory raids. In 1314, an invading Scottish army burned the city’s suburbs. As English interest in maintaining their Irish colony waned, the defence of Dubblin from the surrounding Irish was left to the Fitzgerald Earls of Kildare, who dominated Irish politics until the 16th century. However, this dynasty often pursued their own agenda. In 1487, during the English Wars of the Roses, the Fitzgeralds occupied the city with the aid of troops from Burgundy and proclaimed the Yorkist Lambert Simnel to be King of England. In 1536, the same dynasty, led by Silken Thomas, who was angry at the imprisonment of Garret Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, besieged Dublin Castle. Henry VIII sent a large army to destroy the Fitzgeralds and replace them with English administrators. This was the beginning of a much closer, though not always happy, relationship between Dublin and the English Crown.
Colonial Dublin
Dublin and its inhabitants were transformed by the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries in Ireland. These saw the first thorough English conquest of the whole island under the Tudor dynasty. While the Old English community of Dublin and the Pale were happy with the conquest and disarmament of the native Irish, they were deeply alienated by the Protestant reformation that had taken place in England, being all almost all Roman Catholics. In addition, they were angered by being forced to pay for the English garrisons of the country through an extra-parliamentary tax known as "cess". Several Dubliners were executed for taking part in the Second Desmond Rebellion in the 1580s. The Mayoress of Dublin, Margaret Ball died in captivity in Dublin Castle for her Catholic sympathies in 1584 and a Catholic Archbishop, Dermot O'Hurley was hanged outside the city walls in the same year.
In 1592, Elizabeth I opened Trinity College Dublin (located at that time outside the city on its eastern side) as a Protestant University for the Irish gentry. However, the important Dublin families spurned it and sent their sons instead to Catholic Universities on continental Europe.
The Dublin community's discontent was deepened by the events of the Nine Years War of the 1590s, when English soldiers were required by decree to be housed by the townsmen of Dublin and they spread disease and forced up the price of food. The wounded lay in stalls in the streets, in the absence of a proper hospital. To compound dissafection in the city, in 1597, the English Army's gunpowder store in Winetavern Street exploded accidentally, killing nearly 200 Dubliners. It should be noted, however, that the Pale community, however dissatisfied they were with English government, remained hostile to the Gaelic Irish rebels led by Hugh O'Neill.
As a result of these tensions, the English authorities came to see Dubliners as unreliable and encouraged the settlement there of Protestants from England. These "New English" became the basis of the English administration in Ireland until the 19th century.
Protestants became a majority in Dublin in the 1640s, when thousands of them fled there to escape the Irish Rebellion of 1641. When the city was subsequently threatened by Irish Catholic forces, the Catholic Dubliners were expelled from the city by its English garrison. In the 1640s, the city was besieged twice during the Irish Confederate Wars, in 1646 and 1649. However on both occasions the attackers were driven off before a lengthy siege could develop. In 1649, on the second of these occasions, a mixed force of Irish Confederates and English Royalists were routed by Dublin's English Parliamentarian garrison in the battle of Rathmines, fought on the city's southern outskirts.
In 1650s after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Catholics were banned from dwelling within the city limits under the vengeful Cromwellian settlement but this law was not strictly enforced. Ultimately, this religious discrimination led to the Old English community abandoning their English roots and coming to see themselves as part of the native Irish community.
By the end of the seventeenth century, Dublin was the capital of the English run Kingdom of Ireland – ruled by the Protestant New English minority. Dublin (along with parts of Ulster) was the only part of Ireland in 1700 where Protestants were a majority. In the next century it became larger, more peaceful and prosperous than at any time in its previous history.
From a Medieval to a Georgian City
By the beginning of the 18th century the English had established control and imposed the harsh Penal Laws on the Catholic majority of Ireland's population. In Dublin however the Protestant Ascendancy was thriving, and the city expanded rapidly from the 17th century onward. By 1700, the population had surpassed 60,000, making it the second largest city, after London, in the British Empire. Under the Restoration, Ormonde, the then Lord Deputy of Ireland made the first step toward modernising Dublin by ordering that the houses along the river Liffey had to face the river and have high quality frontages. This was in contrast to the earlier period, when Dublin faced away from the river, often using it as a rubbish dump.
Dublin started the 18th century as, in terms of street layout, a medieval city akin to Paris. In the course of the eighteenth century (as Paris would in the nineteenth century) it underwent a major rebuilding, with the Wide Streets Commission demolishing many of the narrow medieval streets and replacing them with large Georgian streets. Among the famous streets to appear following this redesign were Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dame Street, Westmoreland Street and D'Olier Street, all built following the demolition of narrow medieval streets and their amalgamation. Five major Georgian squares were also laid out; Rutland Square (now called Parnell Square) and Mountjoy Square on the northside, and Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square and Saint Stephen's Green, all on the south of the River Liffey. Though initially the most prosperous residences of peers were located on the northside, in places like Henrietta Street and Rutland Square, the decision of t the Earl of Kildare (Ireland's premier peer, later made Duke of Leinster), to build his new townhouse, Kildare House (later renamed Leinster House after he was made Duke of Leinster) on the southside, led to a rush from peers to build new houses on the southside, in or around the three major southern squares. The massive northside houses ending up becoming tenements, into which large numbers of poor people moved, often being exploited by landlords, who packed in entire families into each large Georgian room. Only the area of the old city named Temple Bar (located between Dame Street and the river Liffey) and the area around Grafton Street survived with their narrow medieval street pattern intact.
For all its Enlightenment sophistication in fields such as architecture and music (Handel's "Messiah" was first performed there in Fishamble street), 18th century Dublin remained decidedly rough around the edges. Its slum population rapidly incrreased - fed by the mounting rural migration to the city - housed mostly in the north and south-west quarters of the city. Rival gangs known as the "Liberty Boys" -mostly weavers from the Liberties - and the "Ormonde Boys" - butchers from Ormonde quay on the northside - fought bloody street battles with each other, sometimes heavily armed and with numerous fatalities. It was also common for the Dublin crowds to hold violent demonstrations outside the Irish Parliament when the members passed unpopular laws.
One of the effects of continued rural migration to Dublin was that its demographic balance was again altered, Catholics becoming the majority in the city again in the late 18th century.
Rebellion, Union and Catholic Emancipation
Until 1800 the city housed an independent (though still exclusively Anglican) Irish Parliament, and as mentioned it was during this period that much of the great Georgian buildings of Dublin were built. By the late 18th century, Irish Protestants - the descendants of British settlers - had come to see Ireland as their native country, and the Irish Parliament successfully agitated for increased autonomy and better terms of trade with Britain. Liberals began to talk of repealing the Penal Law and ending discrimination against Catholics. (See Ireland 1691-1801)
However, under the influence of the American and French revolutions, some Irish radicals went a step further and formed the United Irishmen to create an independent, non-sectarian and democratic republic. United Irish leaders in Dublin includeed Napper Tandy,Oliver Bond and Edward Fitzgerald. Wolfe Tone, the leader of the movement, was also from Dublin. The United Irishmen planned to take Dublin in street rising in 1798, but their leaders were arrested and the city occupied by a large British military presence shortly before the rebels were to assemble. There was some local fighting in the city's outskirts - such as Rathfarnham, but the city itself remained firmly under control during the 1798 rebellion.
The Protestant Ascendancy was shocked by the events of the 1790s, as was the British government. In response to them, in 1801 under the Irish Act of Union, which merged the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the Uniteted Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland the Irish Parliament voted itself out of existence and Dublin lost much of its political influence. Though the city's growth continued, it suffered financially from the loss of parliament and more directly from the loss of the income that would come with the arrival of hundreds of peers and MPs and thousands of servants to the capital for sessions of parliament and the social season of the viceregal court in Dublin Castle. Within a short few years, many of the finest mansions, including Leinster House, Powerscourt House and Aldborough House, once owned by peers who spent much of their year in the capital, were for sale. Many of the city's once elegant Georgian neighbourhoods rapidly became slums. In 1803, Robert Emmet, the brother of one of the United Irish leaders launched another rebellion in the city, however, it was put down easily and Emmet himself was hanged.
In 1829 Irish Catholics recovered full citizenship of the United Kingdom. This was partly as a result of agitation by Daniel O'Connell, who organised mass rallies for Catholic Emancipation in Dublin among other places. O'Connell also campaigned unsuccessfully for a restoration of Irish legislative autonomy. O'Connell was later elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, and is remembered among trade unionists in the city to this day for calling on the British army to suppress a strike during his tenure.
Late 19th Century
After Emancipation and with the gradual extension of the right to vote in British politics, Irish nationalists (mainly Catholics) gained control of Dublin's municipal government with the reform of local government in 1840 Daniel O'Connell being the first Catholic Mayor in 150 years. This prompted many of Dublin's Protestant and Unionist upper classes to move out of the city proper to new suburbs such as Ballsbridge, Rathmines and Rathgar - which are still distinguished by their graceful Victorian architecture and by originally loyalist organisations like the Royal Dublin Society. A new railway also connected Dublin with the middle class suburb of Dún Laoghaire, then called Kingstown.
Dublin, unlike Belfast in the north, did not experience the full effect of the industrial revolution and as a result, unemployment was always high in the city. Industries like the Guinness brewery, Jameson Distillery, and Jacob's biscuit factory provided the most stable employment. New working class suburbs grew up in Kilmainham and Inchicore around them. Another major employer was the Tram system, run by a private company - the Dublin United Tramway Company 3.
Monto
Paradoxically, although Dublin declined in terms of wealth and importance declined after the Act of Union, it grew steadily in size throughout the 19th century. By 1900, the population was over 400,000. While the city grew, so did its level of poverty. Though described as "the second city of the (British) Empire" its large number of tenements became infamous, being mentioned by writers such as James Joyce. An area called Monto (in or around Montgomery Street off Sackville Street) became infamous also as the British Empire's biggest red light district, its financial viability aided by the number of British Army barracks and hence soldiers in the city, notably the Royal Barracks (later Collins Barracks and now one of the locations of Ireland's National Museum). Monto finally closed in the mid 1920s, following a campaign against prostitution by the Roman Catholic Legion of Mary, its financial viability having already been seriously undermined by the withdrawal of soldiers from the city following the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (6 December 1922).
The Lockout
In 1913, Dublin experienced one of the largest and most bitter labour disputes ever seen in Britain or Ireland - known as the Lockout. James Larkin, a militant syndicalist trade unionist, founded the Irish Transport and General Worker's Union (IITGWU) and tried to win improvements in wages and conditions by the use of sympathetic strikes. In response, William Martin Murphy who owned the Dublin Tram Company, organised a cartel of employers who agreed to sack any ITGWU members and to make other employees agree not to join it. Larkin in turn called the Tram workers out on strike, which was followed by the sacking, or "lockout" of any workers in Dublin who would not resign from the union. Within a month, 25,000 workers were either on strike or locked out. Demonstrations during the dispute were marked by vicious rioting with the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which left 3 people dead and hundreds more injured. James Connolly in response founded the Irish Citizen Army to defend strikers from the police. The lockout lasted for six months, after which most workers, many of whose families were starving, resigned from the union and returned to work.
The End of British Rule
In 1914, afer nearly three decades of agitation, Ireland seemed on the brink of Home Rule (or self government), however, instead of a peaceful handover from direct British rule to limited Irish autonomy, Ireland and Dublin saw nearly ten years of political violence and instability that eventually resulted in a much more complete break with Britain than Home Rule would have represented. By 1923, Dublin was the capital of the Irish Free State, an all but independent Irish state, governing 26 of Ireland's 32 counties.
Howth Gun Running 1914
Unionists, predominantly concentrated in Ulster, though also with concentrations in Dublin (Edward Carson the Unionist leader was a Dublin man), resisted the introduction of Home Rule and founded the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) - a private armrmy - to this end. In response, nationalists founded their own army, the Irish Volunteers to make sure Home Rule became a reality. In April 1914, thousands of German weapons were imported by the UVF into the north (see Larne gunrunning). When thhe Irish Volunteers attempted to do the same in July, at Howth, near Dublin, British troops from the Scottish Borderers regiment tried to seize their arms, but were unsuccessful. The soldiers were jeered by Dublin crowds when they returned to the city centre and they retaliated by opening fire on a crowd at Bachelor's Walk (along the quays), killing three people. Ireland appeared to be on the brink of civil war by the time the Home Rule Bill was actually passed in September 1914. Howevever the outbreak of World War I led to its postponement. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party called on nationalists to show their gratitude by joining the British Army. Thousands of Dubliners did so (particularly those from working class areas, where unemployment was high) and many died in the war. This caused split in the Volunteers. The majority, who followed Redmond's leadership formed the National Volunteers. A militant minority kept the title of Irish Volunteers, some of whom were now prepared to fight against, rather than with British forces for Irish independence.
Easter Rising 1916
In April 1916 about 1250 armed Irish republicans under Padraig Pearse staged what became known as the Easter Rising in Dublin in pursuit not of Home Rule but of an Irish Republic. One of the rebels' first acts was to declare this Republic to b be in existence. The rebels were composed of Irish Volunteers and the much smaller Irish Citizen Army under James Connolly. The rising saw rebel forces take over strongpoints in the city, including the Four Courts, Stephen's Green, Bolands Milll, the South Dublin Union and Jacobs Biscuit Factory and establishing their headquarters at the General Post Office in O'Connell street. They held for a week until they were forced to surrender to British troops. The British deployed artillery to bombard the rebels into submission, sailing a gunboat named the Helga up the Liffey and stationing field guns at Cabra, Phibsborough and Prussia street. Much of the city centre was destroyed by shell fire and around 450 people, about half of t them civilians, were killed, with another 1,500 injured. Fierce combat took place along the grand canal at Mount street, where British troops were repeatedly ambushed and suffered heavy casualties. In addition, the rebellion was marked by a wave of looting and lawlessness by Dublin's slum population and many of the city centre's shops were ransacked. The rebel commander, Patrick Pearse surrendered after a week, in order to avoid further civilian casualties. Initially, the rebellion was very unpopular in Dublin, due to the amount of death and destruction it caused and due to the fact that many Dubliners had relatives serving in the British Army.
Though the rebellion was relatively easily suppressed by the British military and initially faced with the hostility of most Irish people, public opinion swung gradually but decisively behind the rebels, after 16 of their leaders were executed b by the British military in the aftermath of the Rising. In December 1918 the party now taken over by the rebels, Sinn Féin, won an overwhelming majority of Irish parliamentary seats. Instead of taking their seats in the British House of Commons, they assembled in the Lord Mayor of Dublin's residence and proclaimed the Irish Republic to be in existence and themselves Dáil Éireann (the Assembly of Ireland) -its parliament.
War of Independence 1919-21
Between 1919 and 1921 Ireland experienced the Irish War of Independence -a guerrilla conflict between the British forces and the Irish Volunteers, now reconstituted as the Irish Republican Army. The Dublin IRA units waged an urban guerrilla campaign against police and the British army in the city. In 1919, the violence began with small numbers of IRA men (known as "the Squad") under Michael Collins assassinating police detectives in the city. By late 1920, this had expanded into much more intensive operations, including regular gun and grenade attack n British troops. The IRA in Dublin tried to carry out three shooting or bombing attacks a day. Such was the regularity of attacks on British patrols, that the Camden-Aungier streets area (running from the military barracks at Portobello to Dublin Castle) was nicknamed the "Dardanelles" (site of the Gallipoli campaign) by British soldiers.
The conflict produced many tragic incidents in the city, of which a number are still remembered today. In September 1920, 18 year old IRA man Kevin Barry was captured during an ambush on Church street in the north city in which three British soldiers were killed. Barry was hanged for murder on November 1, despite a campaign for leniency because of his youth. Another celebrated republican martyr was IRA gunman Sean Treacy, who was killed in a shoot out on Talbot street in October 1920 after a prolonged manhunt for him. The British forces, in particular the Black and Tans, often retaliated to IRA actions with brutality of their own. One example of this was the Black and Tans burning of the town of Balbriggan, just north of Dublin in September 1920 and the "Drumcondra murders" of February 1921, when Auxiliary Division troops murdered two suspected IRA men in city's northern suburb.
The bloodiest single day of these "troubles" (as they were known at the time) in Dublin was Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when the Michael Collins' "Squad" assassinated 18 British agents (see Cairo gang) around the city in the early hours of the morning. The British forces retaliated by opening fire on a Gaelic football crowd in Croke Park in the afternoon, killing 14 civilians and wounding 65. In the evening, three republican activists were arrested and killed in Dublin Castle.
In response to the escalating violence, the British troops mounted a number of major operations in Dublin to try and locate IRA members. From January 15-17 1921, they cordoned off an area of the north inner city bounded by Capel st, Church st anand North King st, allowing no one in or out and searching house to house for weapons and suspects. In February they repeated the process in the Mountjoy Square and then the Kildare st/Nassau st areas. However, these curfews produced few results. The largest singe IRA operation in Dublin during the conflict came on May 25, 1921, the IRA Dublin Brigade burned down the The Custom House, one of Dublin's finest buildings, which housed the headquarters of local government in Ireland. However, the British were soon alerted and surrounded the building. Five IRA men were killed and over 80 captured in the operation, which was a publicity coup but a military disaster for the IRA.
Civil War, 1922-23
Following a truce (declared on July 11, 1921), a negotiated peace known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty between Britain and Ireland was signed. It created a self-governing twenty-six county Irish state, known as the Irish Free State. However it also disestablished the Irish Republic, which many in the nationalist movement and the IRA in particular felt they were bound by oath to uphold. This triggered the outbreak of the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, when the intransigent republicans took up a arms against those who had accepted a compromise with the British. The Civil war began in Dublin, where Anti-Treaty forces under Rory O'Connor took over the Four Courts and several other building in April 1922, hoping to provoke the British into re-starting the fighting. This put the Free State, led by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith into the dilemma of facing British military re-occupation or fighting their own former comrades in the Four Courts.
After some prevarication and after Winston Churchill had actually ordered British troops to assault the rebels, Collins decided he had to act and borrowed British artillery to shell the republicans in the Four Courts. They surrendered after a twwo day (28 -30 June 1922) artillery bombardment by Free State troops but some of their IRA comrades occupied O'Connell Street, which saw street fighting for another week before the Free State army secured the capital. (See Battle of Dublin). Over 60 combatants were killed in the fighting, including senior republicans, Cathal Brugha and Harry Boland. About 250 civilians are also thought to have been killed or injured, but the total has never been accurately counted. Oscar Traynor conducted some guerrilla operations south of the city until his capture in late July 1922. Ernie O'Malley, the republican commander for the province of Leinster was captured after a shootout in the Ballsbridge area in November 1922. On December 6 1922, the IRA assassinated Sean Hales a member of Parliament as he was leaving Leinster House in Dublin city centre, in reprisal for the executions of their prisoners by the Free State. The following day, the four leaders of the republicans in the Four Courts (Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Dick Barret and Joe McKelvey) were executed in revenge. Dublin was relatively quiet thereafter, although guerrilla war raged in the provinces. The new Free State government eventually suppressed this insurrection by mid 1923. In April, Frank Aiken, IRA chief of staff, ordered the anti-treaty forces to dump their arms and go home. The civil war left a permanent strain of bitterness in Irish politics that did much to sour the achievement of national independence.
Independence
Dublin had suffered severely in the period 1916-1922. It was the scene of a week's heavy street fighting in 1916 and again on the outbreak of the civil war in 1922.
Many of Dublin's finest buildings were destroyed at this time; the historic General Post Office (GPO) was a bombed out shell after the 1916 Rising; James Gandon's Custom House was burned by the IRA in the War of Independence, while one of Gandon's surviving masterpieces, the Four Courts had been seized by republicans and bombarded by the pro-treaty army. (Republicans in response senselessly booby trapped the Irish Public Records Office, destroying one thousand years of archives). The new state set itself up as best it could. Its Governor-General was installed in the former Viceregal Lodge, residence of the British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, because it was thought to be one of the few places where he was not in danger from republican assassins. Parliament was set up temporarily in the Duke of Leinster's old palace, Leinster House, where it has remained ever since. Over time, the GPO, Custom House and Four Courts were rebuilt. While major schemes were proposed for Dublin, no major remodelling took place initially.
The "Emergency"
Ireland stayed strictly neutral during the Second World War. So much so that it was not even called "the war" in Irish discourse, but "The Emergency". Dublin escaped the mass bombing of the war due to Ireland's neutrality, though some bombs were dropped by the German air-force and hit the North Wall - a working-class district in the north inner city. The bombing was declared accidental, although many suspected that the bombing was deliberate revenge for de Valera's decision to send fiire engines to aid the people of Belfast following major bombing in that city. One faction of the IRA hoped to take advantage of the war by getting German help and invading Northern Ireland. In December 1939 they successfully stole almost all the Irish Army's reserve ammunition in a raid on the Magazine Fort in Dublin's Phoenix Park. In retaliation, De Valera interned the IRA's members and executed several of them. The war years also saw rationing imposed on Dublin and the temporary enlargement of the small Jewish community by Jews who fled there from Nazi persecution.
Tackling the Tenements
The first efforts to tackle Dublin's extensive slum areas came in 1932, when Eamon de Valera, senior survivor of 1916 and leader of the defeated anti-treaty forces in the Civil War, won power at the ballot box. With greater finances available, major changes began to take place. A scheme of replacing tenements with decent housing for Dublin's poor began. Some new suburbs such as Marino and Crumlin were built but Dublin's inner city slums remained.
It was not until the 1960s that substantial progress was made in removing Dublin's tenements, with thousands of Dublin's working class population being moved to suburban housing estates around the edge of the city. The success of this project wawas mixed. Although the tenements were largely removed, such was the urgency of the providing new housing that little planning went into the building of the new public housing. New suburbs like Tallaght, Clondalkin and Ballymun instantly acquired huge populations, of up to 50,000 people in Tallaght's case, without any provision of shops, public transport or employment. As a result, for several decades, these places became by-words for crime, drug abuse and unemployment. In recent yearsrs, such problems have eased somewhat, with the advent of Ireland's so called Celtic Tiger economic boom. Tallaght in particular has become far more socially mixed and now has very extensive commercial, transport and leisure facilities. Ballymun, the scene of Ireland's only high rise housing scheme, has been largely demolished and re-built in recent years.
Ironically however, given Ireland's new found economic prosperity, there is once again a housing shortage in the city. Increased employment has led to a rapid rise in the city's population. As a result, prices for bought and rented accommodation have risen sharply, leading to many Dubliners leaving the city to buy cheaper accommodation in counties Meath, Louth, Kildare and Wicklow, while still commuting daily to Dublin. This has arguably impacted negatively on the quality of life in the city - leading to severe traffic problems, long commuting times and urban sprawl.
City/Town : Latitude: 53.3425, Longitude: -6.26583333333333Matches 1 to 17 of 17
Matches 1 to 2 of 2
Last Name, Given Name(s)  |
Christening  |
Person ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Joinville, Pierre (=Piers) de Geneville of Ludlow | 1292 | Dublin, Éire | I812375 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 2 | Vane Stewart, Charles William 3rd Marquess Of Londonderry | Monday 18 May 1778 | Dublin, Éire | I93257 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
Matches 1 to 6 of 6
| Last Name, Given Name(s) |
Death |
Person ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arnold, Tom | Monday 12 November 1900 | Dublin, Éire | I687733 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 2 | de Burgh, Katherine | Thursday 01 November 1331 | Dublin, Éire | I843813 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 3 | Guinness, Arthur | Sunday 23 January 1803 | Dublin, Éire | I672572 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 4 | Guinness, Benjamin Lee | Tuesday 19 May 1868 | Dublin, Éire | I672568 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 5 | Hepburn Ruston, Joseph VIctor Anthony | Thursday 16 October 1980 | Dublin, Éire | I258206 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 6 | Houben, Joannes Andreas | Thursday 05 January 1893 | Dublin, Éire | I171401 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
Matches 1 to 1 of 1
| Family |
Marriage |
Family ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guinness / Guinness | Friday 24 February 1837 | Dublin, Éire | F256303 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
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