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How can we forget the period of invasion, plundering and insulting incidents for the people of Ireland which is the seventeenth century? People who either survived all the events of that period or those who had heard things about that time from their ancestors will give us a detailed account on those bloody riots and massacres. Small groups of rebels in the Irish lands were brutally crushing under the heels of their English conquerors and this was the opening of a great chapter in the history of Ireland.

In the early parts of the eighteenth century, the English and the Irish had made the Act of Union and this enabled the differences between the two regions to subdue greatly. North and South parts of the Irish lands were facing internal conflicts which were mainly on whether to follow their old customs or to follow new principles in governing the region better.

When the northern part of Ireland prospered immensely with the growth in industrial and manufacturing sectors, the uneven regions of the southern regions prevented optimistic growth in their lives, forcing them to resume their past again. Britain was blamed for all these troubles and they were forced into sending troops to solve these matters at hand. Both the regions suffered again under this newly renewed fight for freedom and prosperity and it brought about the permanent division of the northern and southern regions.

The Catholics wanted complete independence in this division and there was huge political unrest in the Irish lands for a good part of the early twentieth century. In 1920, the Government of Ireland act was passed in an effort to pacify all of the Irish community which however did not serve its purpose well. British forces stationed in the Irish lands had to face countless attacks from the Irish Republican Army or the IRA with the use of guerrilla warfare style.

Then came the era of the legendary treaty of peace in the 1921; the treaty was signed with the agreement of combining six counties under the region of the Northern Ireland and the remaining twenty three counties in the south along with the three counties from Ulster were brought under the region of southern Ireland. The independent republic of Ireland was formed and things seemed to have come under peaceful times from then onwards.

Ireland had to face more problems in the year from 1960 to 1990 in the form of bloody violence between the Catholics and the Protestants in the land. Intensive armed attacks between the Independent Republican Army and the Protestant paramilitary forces broke out, forcing them to seek help from the British troops again to resolve matters. This brought about the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement between the British and the Irish Prime ministers. Following the cease fire from the IRA, the implementation of this treaty was successful in 1994. At last, in 2010, all the governing powers of Irish lands were given back to Ireland, but the echoes of the past still resound once in a while.

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