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"to which the former until recently laid claim." Now, now (Brit living in Ireland here)... In fact it is the other way around. We laid claim to the island in 1
by lucaspiller 14y ago
"to which the former until recently laid claim."
Now, now (Brit living in Ireland here)... In fact it is the other way around. We laid claim to the island in 1801 forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Around the turn of the 20th century, they weren't too happy with us though and wanted out, so in 1921 we agreed to let them have a chunk of it back (forming Ireland, Republic of and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland). Now even today they still want the rest back, and half of the rest wants to go back (hence all the troubles in Northern Ireland), but we aren't letting them :D
- SheriffFatman 14y agoI think we may be talking at cross purposes. I'm a Brit too, and I'm well aware of the history you describe. If anything, you've presented the truncated version: English/British interference in Ireland goes back more than 800 years, to the Anglo-Norman invasions of ~1170 and the award of the Lordship of Ireland to the King of England by Hadrian IV (the first, and so far the last, English pope). I was alluding to Article 2 of the Constitution of Ireland of 1937, which explicitly claimed the whole island of Ireland as the state's national territory; this was replaced by more wishy-washy language about the Irish nation in the wake of the Good Friday agreement of 1999. By the way, the Irish state created by the 1921 treaty explicitly wasn't a republic: it was a dominion of the British Empire, and the King of England was still technically King of Ireland (even under Irish law) until 1949.