Some things are just too horrible for history to repeat.
Ireland is a country steeped in memories and stories of past tragedies. Despite the effort invested in teaching future generations about the breadth of Irish history, they do not cover everything. Some secrets are too dark to be taught to you in school.
That does not mean we cannot learn about them now. For we were given eyes, ears, and minds. Not so that we could remain blind, deaf, and ignorant of the world. But so that we could challenge ourselves and learn about the dark secrets of history.
Read on to learn about the events in Irish history they do not teach you in the classroom.
10. Plan Kathleen – the Nazi conquest of Northern Ireland
Overwise know as the Artus Plan, Plan Kathleen was a secret military proposal for the invasion of Northern Ireland. What makes this a dark secret not commonly taught is that the invasion was planned by Stephen Hayes. The acting leader of the Irish Republican Army in 1940.
The plan would ultimately be discovered before it could be implemented. And although other Nazi military plans would discuss an invasion of Northern Ireland (e.g. Plan Green), it complicates he history of that time for Ireland. Muddying the narrative of Irish neutrality and the costs of independence.
9. Queen Victoria blocking Ottoman aid during the Great Famine – pride and prejudice
Few can claim that the tragedy of the Great Famine between 1845 and 1849 is a dark secret of history. While many countries would help Ireland during this time, some of that aid would be restricted.
Specifically, aid sent from Sultan Abdul-Mejid I of the Ottoman Empire to assist Ireland during this period of humanitarian crisis and how to avoid a diplomatic incident with the British monarch, the aid sent was reduced so as not to embarrass Queen Victoria for her inaction.
A complicated story tangled in between covert speculations and meetings. The donations sent by the Ottoman Sultanate were nonetheless embarrassing to Queen Victoria. Whom is often cited in folklore as having sent no more than £5 to famine relief from her own coffers.
It demonstrates a lack of negligence and indifference that was a contributing factor to why the Irish Famine is one of the darkest moments in Irish history. Not that there were simply no potatoes.
8. The massacre of Irish wolves – an inconveinet pest
One can be forgiven for not understanding the tragedy behind this story. As wolves have often been villified throughout history and folklore.
However, they are important inhabitants of the land and the loss them anywhere is an insurmountble loss to the memory of that land. For they are a signifier of the history and memory of Ireland. And with the death of the last native wolves of Ireland in 1786, there have been no new memories or stories.
A dark secret of history is that massacre of native species by an occupying power is done to exert control and influence over that land. Legislation against wolves in Ireland only dates back to 1584, and would only become stricter in the following years. 200 years was all it took for a species that had existed in Ireland alongside people for millennia to disapear entirely. All for the sack of being an ‘inconvenience’.
7. The sack of Baltimore – when a town was sold into slavery
On June 20, 1631 the village of Baltimore in West Cork was raided by pirates from the Barbary Coast. At least 107 people were captured during this raid and sold into slavery in Algiers. Amongst those lost to the slavery of the Ottoman Empire, only three people are known to have made it back to Ireland.
More than being just a circumstantial raid, there are theories that the Sack of Baltimore was planned. Sir Walter Coppinger, the landowner of Baltimore, is speculated to have invited the pirates to attack. As with the settlers being taken in a raid, he would then be able to profit over the lucrative fishing trade of Baltimore. This is just speculation though, and the dark secret of what actually led to the raid is sadly lost to history.
6. The 1816 year without summer – how a typhus epidemic went undocumented
The year 1816 is infamously known as “The Year Without Summer”. A period when severe climate abnormalities resulted in average temperatures decreasing by 0.4–0.7 C. It was also when a typhus epidemic spread from Ireland to the rest of Europe, claiming 65,000 lives in Ireland alone.
However, the typhus epidemic did not simply start in 1816, but had been simmering away for years before boiling over. The dark secret about the epidemic is not that it happened, but that it only started grabbing media headlines when it started affecting the upper class.
For the disease had been spreading across poor communities in the years up to 1816. But went undocumented because they were not important enough to help.
5. Hedge schools – cultural erasure
The ‘sin’ of non-conformity is one that has been levelled against the Irish for centuries of occupation by the British Empire. And rebellion, both violent and non-violent, has been how Irish culture has persevered.
One such act of rebellion was the Hedge schools, which sought to teach and educate youths about the culture and faith of Ireland. All while being outlawed by the Empire.
During the centuries of occupation, education towards children of non-conforming faiths was outlawed by the government, with only Anglican faith schools allowed to operate.
This was done with the intention to slowly eradicate the pillars of native culture and resistance, as through control of education, the British Empire would be able to control the narrative and what was taught to future generations.
4. Ireland’s deforestation – where have all the trees gone?
For centuries, Ireland was known as a land of woods and forests. Home to a beautiful temperate rainforest ecosystem. However, after centuries of exploitation and deforestation to fuel the construction of the British Royal Navy, that is no longer the case.
Now one of the least forested countries in Europe, the marks of colonial rule still scar the land. For years after its independence, the land has yet to recover from the wounds dealt to it.
The nature of forestry and who “owns” it has always been a deeply political issue in Ireland for centuries.
However, with the memory of these Irish forests fading, it becomes harder and harder to advocate for their regrowth and replantation. For people do not remember the great forests in their own lifetime, simply the abscence of them.
3. The 1542 Crown of Ireland Act – the pen is mightier than the sword
Massacres and battles are commonly told stories when recounting the dark history of Ireland. However, one of the most consequential moments of Irish history came not with a sword or a murder, but the signing of a pen upon paper.
The Crown of Ireland Act 1542 provisionally made all monarchs of England and their successors the inheritors of Ireland. They were owners of the land, its people, and its resources.
In the writing of the act, Ireland would no longer be considered as an entity outside of the British Empire. Starting a long list of plantations, famines, and massacres which would scour the Irish land and people for centuries to come.
2. Oliver Cromwell – to hell or to Connacht
One of the great tragedies of history being told by the victors, is the cleansing of their crimes. This is the case with Oliver Cromwell, whom is often remembered as an effective military leader who ended an autocratic regime.
While perhaps true for the people of Britain, it is not true of who he was to the people of Ireland, ranking amongst the most hated people in Irish history.
During his brutal conquest of Ireland, starting with the massacre of Drogheda in 1649, Cromwell would coin the phrase “To Hell or to Connacht.”, a threat made to Irish Catholics to either leave ‘his’ land through death or through mass migration.
This resulted in an unfathomable upheaval in the politics of Ireland and the redistribution of land away from the Irish.
1. Irish diaspora abroad – no Irish need apply
“No Irish Need Apply.” This phrase, as well as many others, brings back the past of a difficult time for Irish immigrants moving abroad.
And although the phrase has lost the relevance in the public conscience it once held, the reality was not as far away as we would like to believe. And those same prejudices once attributed to the Irish have not disappeared, but have found a new target to attack.
The tragedy is, the discrimination against the Irish through this phrase is not unique. That hatred never disappeared but simply moved the spotlight onto another group.
And in doing so, the memory of that discrimination once levelled against the Irish has slowly faded. And in letting the memory fade, the discrimination itself does not end.
The lesson history class failed to teach us is that just because the target has shifted, it does not absolve us from doing what is right for others.
