MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Ireland

ONE LAND · 6 ATLASES

Ireland, on the map of history

What was Ireland before it was Ireland? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Hibernia (mod. Ireland) · The Rise and Fall of Rome, 264 BC – AD 476

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Ireland · The Crusades, 1095–1291

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Ireland · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

The junction of the age’s hopes and hungers: the United Irishmen’s 1798 rising — republican, French-aided, savagely crushed — led to forced Union with Britain (1801); the Great Famine (1845–49) killed a million and scattered two million more even as 1848’s Young Ireland rising flickered out. Its exiles carried Irish republicanism into every English-speaking country.

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Ireland · The Great War, 1914–1918

Ireland fought this war twice over: 200,000 Irishmen served in British uniform while home rule sat suspended — and in Easter 1916 a rising in Dublin, executed leaders, and the conscription crisis turned nationalism from home rule to independence. The war Britain fought for small nations ended with a small nation leaving Britain: the Anglo-Irish war began in 1919.

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Ireland · The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945

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Ireland · The Cold War, 1945–1991

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