Part 573

"These seven islands [the Ionian] were constituted a sort of republic or commonwealth by the Treaty of Vienna [1815]. But they were consigned to the protectorate of Great Britain; which had the right of maintaining garrisons in them. Great Britain used to appoint a Lord High Commissioner, who was generally a military man, and whose office combined the duties of Commander-in-Chief with those of Civil Governor. The little republic had a Senate of six members and a Legislative Assembly of forty members. It seems almost a waste of words to say that the islanders were not content with British government. For good or ill, the Hellenes, wherever they are found, are sure to be filled with an impassioned longing for Hellenic independence. The people of the Ionian Islands were eager to be allowed to enter into one system with the kingdom of Greece. It was idle to try to amuse them by telling them they constituted an independent republic, and were actually governing themselves, … while they saw themselves presided over by an English Lord High Commissioner who was also the Commander-in-Chief of a goodly British army garrisoned in their midst. … It is certain that they got a great deal of material benefit from the presence of the energetic road-making British power. But they wanted to be, above all things, Greek. … Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton [who was then—1858—Secretary for the Colonies in the British Government] … thought the causes of the complaints and the dissatisfaction were well worth looking into, and he resolved on sending a statesman of distinction out to the islands to make the enquiry. Mr. Gladstone had been for some years out of office. He had been acting as an independent supporter of Lord Palmerston's Government. It occurred to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton that Mr. Gladstone was the man best fitted to conduct the enquiry. … He offered, therefore, to Mr. Gladstone the office of Lord High Commissioner Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands, and Mr. Gladstone accepted the offer and its duties." Arriving in Corfu in November, 1858, "he called together the Senate, and endeavoured to satisfy them as to the real nature of his mission. He explained that he had not come there to discuss the propriety of maintaining the English protectorate, but only to enquire into the manner in which the just claims of the Ionian Islands might be secured by means of that protectorate." {1754} But "the population of the islands persisted in regarding him, not as the commissioner of a Conservative English Government, but as 'Gladstone the Philhellene.' He was received wherever he went with the honours due to a liberator. … The visit of Mr. Gladstone, whatever purpose it may have been intended to fulfil, had the effect of making them [the Ionians] agitate more strenuously than ever for annexation to the kingdom of Greece. Their wish, however, was not to be granted yet. A new Lord High Commissioner was sent out after Mr. Gladstone's return. … Still … the idea held ground that sooner or later Great Britain would give up the charge of the islands. A few years after, an opportunity occurred for making the cession. The Greeks got rid quietly of their heavy German king Otho [see GREECE: A. D. 1830-1862], and on the advice chiefly of England they elected as sovereign a brother of the Princess of Wales. … The second son of the King of Denmark was made King of Greece; and Lord John Russell, on behalf of the English Government, then [1862] handed over to the kingdom of Greece the islands of which Great Britain had had so long to bear the unwilling charge."

_J. McCarthy, History of our Own Times, chapter 39 (volume 3)._

IONIAN ISLANDS: End--------

IONIAN REVOLT, The.

See PERSIA: B. C. 521-493.

IONIANS, The.

See DORIANS AND IONIANS.

IONIC (PAN-IONIC) AMPHIKTYONY.

"There existed at the commencement of historical Greece, in 776 B. C., besides the Ionians in Attica and the Cyclades, twelve Ionian cities of note on or near the coast of Asia Minor, besides a few others less important. Enumerated from south to north, they stand—Milêtus, Myûs, Priênê, Samos, Ephesus, Kolophôn, Lebedus, Teôs, Erythræ, Chios, Klazomenæ, Phôkæa. … Milêtus, Myûs and Priênê were situated on or near the productive plain of the river Mæander; while Ephesus was in like manner planted near the mouth of the Kaïster … : Kolophon is only a very few miles north of the same river. Possessing the best means of communication with the interior, these towns seem to have thriven with greater rapidity than the rest; and they, together with the neighbouring island of Samos, constituted in early times the strength of the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony. The situation of the sacred precinct of Poseidôn (where this festival was celebrated) on the north side of the promontory of Mykalê, near Priênê, and between Ephesus and Milêtus, seems to show that these towns formed the primitive centre to which the other Ionian settlements became gradually aggregated. For it was by no means a centrical site with reference to all the twelve. … Moreover, it seems that the Pan-Ionic festival [the celebration of which constituted the Amphiktyony], though still formally continued, had lost its importance before the time of Thucydidês, and had become practically superseded by the more splendid festival of the Ephesia, near Ephesus, where the cities of Ionia found a more attractive place of meeting."

_G. Grote, History of Greece part 2, chapter 13 (volume 3)_.

IOWA: Start--------

IOWA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALLEGHANS, and ALGONQUIAN FAMILY.

IOWA: A. D. 1803. Embraced in the Louisiana Purchase.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1798-1803.

IOWA: A. D. 1834-1838. Joined to Michigan Territory; then to Wisconsin; then separately organized.

See WISCONSIN: A. D. 1805-1848.

IOWA: A. D. 1845. Admission into the Union, with Florida for a slave-state counterweight.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845.

IOWA: End--------

IOWAS, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: SIOUAN FAMILY, and PAWNEE (CADDOAN) FAMILY.

IPSUS, Battle of (B. C. 301).

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301.

IQUIQUE, Battle of (1891).

See CHILE: A. D. 1885-1891.

IRACA.

See COLOMBIAN STATES: A. D. 1536-1731.

IRAK.

At the time of the Mahometan conquest, "Chaldea and Babylonia occupied the rich region south of the river Tigris, watered by the Euphrates, and were known as Irak of the Arabs, as distinguished from Irak of the Persians, which corresponded somewhat nearly to the modern kingdom of Persia. … Irak of Arabia was at this time under the jurisdiction of Persia, and the wandering Arabs who roamed over the broad desert were tributary to Persia when they pitched their tents on the eastern side, and to Rome when sojourning on the side towards Syria; though they were at no time trusty allies or subjects. The region of Irak contains many relics of a former civilization; there are the mounds that mark the site of old Babylon."

_A. Gilman, Story of the Saracens, pages 226-227._

IRAN, Table-Land of.

"Between the valley of the Indus and the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, bounded on the south by the ocean and the Persian Gulf, on the north by the broad steppes which the Oxus and Jaxartes vainly attempt to fertilise, by the Caspian Sea and the valley of the Aras [embracing modern Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan], lies the table-land of Iran. Rising to an average height of 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, it forms an oblong, the length of which from east to west is something more than 1,500 miles. … As far back as our information extends, we find the table-land of Iran occupied by a group of nations closely related to each other, and speaking dialects of the same language."

_M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 7, chapter 1._

See, also, ARYANS.

IRDJAR, Russian defeat at.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.

IRELAND: Start--------

A Logical Outline of Irish History

In Which The Dominant Conditions And Influences Are Distinguished By Colors.

Physical or material. (Red) Ethnological. (Blue) Social and political. (Green) Intellectual, moral and religious. (Tan) Foreign. (Black)

(Blue) In the history of the two islands which form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland there is a contrast of fortune which nothing will account for save unexplainable qualities of race. The Celtic warmth prevailing on one side of St. George's Channel has worked ill in politics as against the Teutonic coolness on the other; and it is probable that no change of circumstances or conditions would have altered greatly the relations of the two peoples. In their situation as close neighbors, it was inevitable that one should dominate the other. It seems to have been no less inevitable that the mastery should settle where it did; and simply by the force of more masterful qualities in the English race.

(Red) If those who dwelt nearer to the mainland of Europe held advantages over those of the farther island, they took nothing from them in the earlier generations, but were overleaped and passed by when the first movements of Christianity and Christian culture into the West began; and it was Ireland, not England, for three centuries, which nourished the purest faith and the highest civilization of the age. If other advantages belonged to the island which was richer in iron and coal, the English were not helped by them to an ascendancy which they had won before the mining of their riches began.

(Green) In the early years of the eleventh century, when most of the island had submitted to the rule of Brian Born, and when he had shaken the grasp of the intruding Danes on the seaports of the eastern and southern coasts, the state and prospects of Ireland would have seemed to be well-nigh as good as those of England at the same time. But that appearance vanished soon, and it never returned. Among the English, the tendency toward national union grew stronger with every generation; among the Irish it got no growth. The political genius of the race, remarkable to the present day in municipal politics, but rarely successful in the greater political arenas, has always been tribal or provincial in its range, and wanting in a national comprehensiveness.

(Tan) The Norman conquest of England was helpful to the consolidation of an English kingdom. The Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland occurring a century later, promoted, on the contrary, the divisions and disorders of the island. It brought a new faction into Irish quarrels, instead of a new sovereign to extinguish them. It was complete enough to forbid the growth of order from any native root of influence or authority, but not complete enough to carry order with itself. In the full sense of the term it was never a conquest. It was rather a persistent invasion, continued and repeated through more than five centuries. In every generation it inflamed anew the fierce animosity which an incomplete conquest will not suffer to die out, until the very descendants of the older intruders were infected with the native hatred of their later-coming kindred. After four hundred years of inconclusive conflict, the English were hardly nearer to mastery, the Irish hardly nearer to submission, than at first.

Then arose between them a new difference to embitter their antagonism. The Reformation of religion was accepted by one race as naturally as it was rejected by the other. But Protestantism under English patronage assumed a more hateful aspect in Irish eyes, and Irishmen as Papists became doubly odious to the English mind. So political hostilities and religious enmities fomented one another, from that time, while the primitive antagonism of race gave energy to both.

Under Cromwell and under William of Orange the subjugation was completed at last in the spirit of a Protestant crusade, and used as crusading victories have been wont to be used. The triumphant Church, planting its strong settlements in the land, assumed to itself all civil and political rights. Every office and every honorable profession were closed against the adherents of the defeated faith; its ministrations were forbidden; its priests were expelled.

(Green) But this was not all. As British commerce grew and British industries were built up, they contributed yet another to the malign confederacy of passions which oppressed the Irish people. The merchant, the manufacturer, the landowner and the farmer, on the English side, were banded by common jealousies to suppress competition in Ireland. They hindered the improvement of its resources and paralyzed its energies by atrocious legislation. They reduced its population to dependence on the most restricted production, leaving little except husbandry for a vocation, and that under grinding terms. They created by such measures a nation of peasants, as poor and as helpless as serfs, living wretchedly on precarious holdings of soil, at the mercy of landlords who regarded them with dislike and contempt.

It was under such crushing conditions as these that Ireland remained until near the end of the eighteenth century, always hating the oppressors, often resisting the oppression, but weakly or rashly, without judgment or enduring resolution. Then began a great change in the tenor of her history. Two influences of the age came into play, one acting on the conscience of the English people, the other on the mind and temper of the Irish. One has worked to the yielding of justice, the other to the firmer pressing of demands for it.

At this day it may be said that oppression in Ireland, whether religious or political, is wholly and forever extinct; that whatever remains in dispute between Celt and Saxon is from questions such as rise in every nation, and that the bitterness which stays in Anglo-Irish politics is the lingering rancor of a hateful past, not quickly to be extinguished.

A Logical Outline of Irish History: End--------

IRELAND: The name.

"Ireland was known by many names from very early ages. Thus, in the Celtic it was called Inis-Fall, the isle of destiny; Inis-Ealga, the noble island; Fiodh-Inis, the woody island; and Eire, Fodhla, and Banba. By the Greeks it was called Ierne, probably from the vernacular name of Eire, by inflection Erin; whence, also, no doubt, its Latin name of Juverna; Plutarch calls it Ogygia, or the ancient land; the early Roman writers generally called it Hibernia, probably from its Iberian inhabitants, and the later Romans and mediæval writers Scotia, and sometimes Hibernia; and finally its name of Ireland was formed by the Anglo-Normans from its native name of Eire."

_M. Haverty, History of Ireland, page 76, note._

See, also, SCOTLAND: THE NAME; and IRELAND: TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.

{1755}

IRELAND: The primitive inhabitants.

"The first people … of whose existence in Ireland we can be said to know anything are commonly asserted to have been of Turanian origin, and are known as 'Formorians.' As far as we can gather, they were a dark, low-browed, stunted race, although, oddly enough, the word Formorian in early Irish legend is always used as synonymous with the word giant. They were, at any rate, a race of utterly savage hunters and fishermen, ignorant of metal, of pottery, possibly even of the use of fire; using the stone hammers or hatchets of which vast numbers remain in Ireland to this day, and specimens of which may be seen in every museum. How long they held possession no one can tell, although Irish philologists believe several local Irish names to date from this almost inconceivably remote epoch. Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture them wandering about the country, … it will give us a fairly good notion of what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like.

See FOMORIANS.

Next followed a Belgic colony, known as the Firbolgs, who overran the country, and appear to have been of a somewhat higher ethnological grade, although, like the Formorians, short, dark, and swarthy. Doubtless the latter were not entirely exterminated to make way for the Firbolgs, any more than the Firbolgs to make way for the Danaans, Milesians, and other successive races; such wholesale exterminations being, in fact, very rare, especially in a country which like Ireland seems specially laid out by kindly nature for the protection of a weaker race struggling in the grip of a stronger one. After the Firbolgs, though I should be sorry to be obliged to say how long after, fresh and more important tribes of invaders began to appear. The first of these were the Tuatha-da-Danaans, who arrived under the leadership of their king Nuad, and took possession of the east of the country. These Tuatha-da-Danaans are believed to have been large, blue-eyed people of Scandinavian origin, kinsmen and possibly ancestors of those Norsemen or 'Danes' who in years to come were destined to work such woe and havoc upon the island. … What their end was no man can tell you, save that they, too, were, in their turn, conquered by the Milesians or 'Scoti,' who next overran the country, giving to it their own name' of Scotia, by which name it was known down to the end of the twelfth century, and driving the earlier settlers before them, who thereupon fled to the hills, and took refuge in the forests, whence they emerged, doubtless, with unpleasant effect upon their conquerors, as another defeated race did upon their conquerors in later days."

_E. Lawless, The Story of Ireland, chapter 1._

ALSO IN: _T. Moore, History of Ireland, volume 1, chapter 5._

IRELAND: Tribes of early Celtic inhabitants.

"On the northern coast dwelt the Veniconii, in the modern county of Donegal, and the Robogdii, in Londonderry and Antrim. Adjoining to the Veniconii, westward, were the Erdini or Erpeditani, and next to them the Magnatæ, all in Donegal. Farther south were the Auteri, in Sligo; the Gangani, in Mayo; and the Velibori, or Ellebri, in the district between Galway and the Shannon. The south-west part of the island, with a great portion of the interior, was inhabited by the Iverni, who gave name not only to the great river but to the whole island, and who may, perhaps, be considered as the aboriginal inhabitants. … In the modern counties of Waterford and Tipperary, Ptolemy places a tribe called the Usdiæ or Vodiæ, according to the variations of the manuscripts. In the modern county of Wexford dwelt the Brigantes; and northward from them were the Coriondi, in Wicklow; the Menapii, in Dublin; the Cauci, on the banks of the Boyne; the Blanii, or Eblani, on the bay of Dundalk; the Voluntii, in Down; and the Darini, bordering on the Robogdii, in Antrim. Three, at least, of the tribes who held the eastern coast of Ireland, the Brigantes, the Menapii, and the Voluntii, were, no doubt, colonies from the opposite shores of Britain."

_T. Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon, chapter 2._

IRELAND: 5th-8th Centuries. The coming of St. Patrick and the Christianizing of the Island. Its Schools and its Missionaries.

"Lying on the extreme verge of Europe, the last land then known to the adventurous Scandinavian, and beyond which fable had scarcely projected its dreams, it was in the fifth century since the Redemption that Christianity reached them. Patricius, a Celt of Gaul it is said, carried into Erin as a slave by one of the Pagan kings, some of whom made military expeditions to North and South Britain, and even to the Alps and the Loire, became the Apostle of Ireland. Patrick escaped from slavery, was educated at Rome, but in mature manhood insisted on returning to the place of his bondage, to preach Christianity to a people who seem to have exercised over the imagination of the Apostle the same spell of sympathy which in later times subdued strangers of many nations. He was received with extraordinary favour, and before his death nearly the whole island had embraced Christianity. The coming of Patrick took place in the year of our Lord 432, and he laboured for sixty years after; planting churches and schools, rooting out the practices and monuments of Paganism, and disciplining the people in religion and humanity. It was a noble service, and it impressed itself for ever on the memory of the race whom he served. … In the succeeding century the Church which he planted became possessed by a passion which it has never entirely lost, the passion for missionary enterprise. Its fathers projected the conversion of the fierce natives of the Continent to the new creed of humility and self-denial, and by the same humane agents which Patrick had employed in Ireland—persuasion and prayer; a task as generous as any of which history has preserved the record. In this epoch Ireland may, without exaggeration, be said to have been a Christian Greece, the nurse of science and civilisation. The Pagan annals of the country are overlaid by fable and extravagance, but the foundation of Oxford or the mission of St. Augustine does not lie more visibly within the boundaries of legitimate history than the Irish schools, which attracted students from Britain and Gaul, and sent out missionaries through the countries now known as Western Europe.

{1756}