JC History cheat sheet

Primary source: produced at the time by a participant or eyewitness (letters, diaries, official records, photographs, artefacts); secondary source: later interpretation or synthesis (textbooks, biographies, documentaries).

Source criticism uses two tests: external criticism establishes authenticity (date, author, provenance); internal criticism establishes reliability and bias of the content.

Bias is not the same as falsehood: a biased source can still yield reliable facts if the bias is identified and allowed for.

Chronology terms: BC/BCE counts backwards to the birth of Christ; AD/CE counts forwards; there is no year zero, so 1 BC is followed by AD 1.

Century rule: years 1-100 are the 1st century, 101-200 the 2nd; therefore 1798 is the 18th century and 1922 the 20th.

Decade rule: 1800-1809 is the first decade of the 19th century; 1900 belongs to the 19th century, 1901 to the 20th.

Evidence types: written, material/archaeological, oral, visual, and statistical; each answers different questions and has different survival biases.

Provenance questions for any source: who made it, when, for whom, for what purpose, and what it leaves out.

Excavation methods: grid or open-area excavation, stratigraphy (law of superposition - lower layers are generally older), and recording by plan, section, and photograph before removal.

Dating: relative dating orders finds (stratigraphy, typology, seriation); absolute dating gives a date range (radiocarbon for organic material, dendrochronology for timber, thermoluminescence for pottery).

Radiocarbon dating applies only to once-living organic material and is reported as a calibrated range with a margin of error, not a precise year.

Archaeological survey types: field walking, aerial photography (cropmarks and shadow marks), geophysical survey (resistivity and magnetometry), and underwater survey.

Artefact analysis: typology classifies objects by form; residue and pollen analysis reconstruct diet and environment; osteology studies human and animal bone.

Conservation and post-excavation: finds are cleaned, labelled, catalogued, and stored in controlled conditions; the site report is the final publication of results.

Legal protection in Ireland: the National Monuments Acts protect recorded monuments; all archaeological objects found without a known owner are the property of the State and must be reported.

A historian's workflow: define the question, locate sources in archives or databases, critique them, cross-check against independent evidence, then interpret and cite.

Mesolithic (c. 8000-4000 BC) hunter-gatherers: Mount Sandel, Co. Derry, is the best-known site; flint microliths and hazel-nut evidence indicate seasonal settlement.

Neolithic (c. 4000-2500 BC) farmers introduced cereals, cattle, and pottery; Céide Fields, Co. Mayo, preserve stone-walled field systems beneath bog; court cairns and passage tombs such as Newgrange (c. 3200 BC) date to this era.

Bronze Age (c. 2500-500 BC) produced metalworking, fulachtaí fia (burnt mounds), wedge tombs, and hoards; the Iron Age (from c. 500 BC) is associated with Celtic-speaking culture, hillforts, and La Tène-style metalwork.

St Patrick's mission is conventionally dated to the 5th century; his own writings, the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus, are the key primary sources.

Monastic settlement layout: circular enclosure (vallum), timber or stone church, round tower (bell tower and refuge), scriptorium, refectory, and workshops.

Irish monks copied and illuminated manuscripts; the Book of Kells (c. 800) and Book of Durrow are Gospel books; the Annals of Ulster and other annals are the main native chronicles.

Skellig Michael, Co. Kerry, is a UNESCO-listed early Christian monastic island; Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, and Armagh were major monastic centres.

Viking raids began in 795 (Rathlin and Lambay); longphorts such as Dublin (841) became towns; the Battle of Clontarf (1014) ended Viking political dominance though Brian Boru was killed.

Age of Exploration context: improved navigation (compass, astrolabe, caravel), Portuguese and Spanish voyages, and the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas dividing new lands between Spain and Portugal.

English interest in Ireland intensified after the Reformation; the Tudor conquest included surrender and regrant, the plantation of Laois-Offaly (1556-57), and the Munster plantation after the Desmond Rebellions (1583).

The Nine Years' War (1594-1603) ended with the Treaty of Mellifont; the Flight of the Earls (1607) removed O'Neill and O'Donnell and opened the way for the Ulster Plantation.

Ulster Plantation (1609): confiscated lands distributed to English and Scottish undertakers, servitors, and London companies; Derry was rebuilt by the London guilds; native Irish were largely displaced to poorer land.

Cromwellian settlement (1652-59): the Act for the Settling of Ireland and the 'To Hell or to Connacht' policy transferred land to adventurers and soldiers; land ownership shifted massively from Catholic to Protestant hands.

Restoration and Williamite land settlement: the Act of Settlement (1662) and the Treaty of Limerick (1691) were followed by the penal laws restricting Catholic landholding, education, and political rights.

Plantation features to identify: bawns, fortified houses, planned towns, Protestant parish churches, and the introduction of new surnames, farming methods, and English law.

Population and land by 1703: Catholics held roughly 14 per cent of Irish land, a key measure of the plantation's impact.

Causes: penal laws and Catholic exclusion, Presbyterian grievances in Ulster, the influence of the American and French Revolutions, and agrarian unrest such as the Defenders and Peep o' Day Boys.

The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast in 1791 by Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, and others, initially seeking parliamentary reform and later an independent republic.

The failed French invasion at Bantry Bay (December 1796) prompted a government crackdown: martial law, arms seizures, and the arrest of the Leinster leadership in 1798.

1798 rising dates: 23 May outbreak in Leinster; Battle of Vinegar Hill, Co. Wexford, 21 June; General Lake's forces suppressed the camp; 12 October, Humbert's French force surrendered at Ballinamuck.

Wolfe Tone was captured aboard the Hoche, tried by court martial, and died in prison; the rebellion's death toll is estimated in the tens of thousands.

Act of Union 1800 (effective 1 January 1801): abolished the Irish Parliament, created 100 Irish MPs and 32 representative peers at Westminster, and promised Catholic emancipation, which was blocked by George III.

Opposition to the Union came from Grattan's Patriots, the Catholic hierarchy (initially), and merchants; it was carried with massive government bribery of borough patrons.

Consequences: Dublin declined as a political capital, absenteeism grew, and the Union became the target of later repeal campaigns by O'Connell and Home Rule movements.

Cause: dependence on the potato as a subsistence crop, subdivision and conacre, rapid population growth (over 8 million by 1841), and the fungal blight Phytophthora infestans arriving in 1845.

Timeline: blight reported in 1845; partial failure 1846; worst year 1847 ('Black '47'); 1848 and 1849 saw further failure and cholera; the Famine is usually dated 1845-1852.

Government responses: Peel's relief works and Indian meal imports (1845-46); Russell's laissez-faire approach, public works, and the Poor Law extension; the Gregory Clause denied relief to anyone holding more than a quarter acre.

Workhouse system under the Poor Law (1838): 130 unions; workhouses were overcrowded and fever-ridden; the 1847 Poor Law Extension Act made landlords liable for rates on holdings under £4.

Mortality: about one million died and about one million emigrated between 1845 and 1851; deaths were concentrated among labourers, smallholders, and the poor.

Emigration patterns: to Liverpool and Britain, the United States (Boston, New York), Canada (Grosse Île quarantine station), and Australia; coffin ships had high mortality from typhus and dysentery.

Aftermath: the Encumbered Estates Act (1849) facilitated land sales, the population fell to about 6.5 million by 1851, and later decades saw continuing emigration and the rise of the Land League.

Primary sources for the Famine include the 1841 and 1851 censuses, Poor Law records, relief commission papers, and emigrant letters.

Home Rule crisis: the Third Home Rule Bill (1912) was passed in 1914 but suspended for the war; the Ulster Volunteer Force (1913) and the Irish Volunteers (1913) were formed; the Curragh Mutiny (1914) undermined government authority.

Easter Rising, 24-29 April 1916: headquarters at the General Post Office, Dublin; the Proclamation of the Republic was read by Patrick Pearse; about 450 killed; leaders executed at Kilmainham, turning public opinion toward republicanism.

Sinn Féin's 1918 election victory (73 seats) led to the first Dáil Éireann (21 January 1919) and the Declaration of Independence; the Soloheadbeg ambush on the same day began the War of Independence.

War of Independence (1919-21): IRA guerrilla tactics, flying columns, and Dáil courts against the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries; Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920; the burning of Cork city, December 1920.

Anglo-Irish Treaty, 6 December 1921: dominion status, an Oath of Allegiance, a Governor-General, and the partition of six counties; the Boundary Commission was to review the border.

Civil War (1922-23): pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty IRA; the Four Courts shelling (28 June 1922) began the conflict; Michael Collins was killed at Béal na Bláth (22 August 1922); the Free State executed 77 prisoners.

The 1922 Constitution established the Irish Free State; the 1937 Constitution (Bunreacht na hÉireann) later replaced it under de Valera.

Key figures: Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Constance Markievicz, and James Connolly.

Renaissance meaning 'rebirth': revival of classical learning, humanism, and individualism; it began in the Italian city-states (Florence, Venice, Rome) in the 14th-15th centuries.

Patronage: the Medici family in Florence funded artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo; popes Julius II and Leo X commissioned Raphael and Michelangelo.

Key achievements: perspective in painting, anatomical study, the printing press (Gutenberg, c. 1450), and vernacular literature (Dante, Erasmus, Machiavelli).

Northern Renaissance: Erasmus's humanist scholarship, Thomas More's Utopia (1516), and the realism of Jan van Eyck and Dürer.

Reformation causes: clerical abuses (simony, pluralism, indulgences), the printing press, and the challenge of Luther's 95 Theses (1517).

Luther's teaching: justification by faith alone, authority of scripture, and the priesthood of all believers; he was excommunicated in 1521 and protected by German princes.

Counter-Reformation: the Council of Trent (1545-63) reformed doctrine and discipline, the Jesuits were founded by Ignatius Loyola (1540), and the Index of Forbidden Books was published.

Causes of the Reformation in England: Henry VIII's need for an annulment; the Act of Supremacy (1534) made the monarch head of the Church of England; the dissolution of the monasteries followed.

Causes of the French Revolution: fiscal crisis, unequal estates, Enlightenment ideas (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire), and the example of the American Revolution.

Key dates: Estates-General (May 1789), Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789), storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789), Declaration of the Rights of Man (August 1789), execution of Louis XVI (January 1793), Terror (1793-94), and Napoleon's rise.

Napoleon's impact: Napoleonic Code, centralised administration, Concordat (1801), Continental System, and the retreat from Moscow (1812); the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) restored the balance of power.

Industrial Revolution: mechanisation of textiles (spinning jenny, water frame, power loom), steam power (Watt), railways (Stephenson's Rocket, 1829), and urbanisation.

Nationalism: 1848 revolutions across Europe, Italian unification under Cavour and Garibaldi (1861), and German unification under Bismarck (1871).

Irish parallels: the 1798 Rebellion, O'Connell's Catholic Emancipation (1829) and Repeal movement, and the Young Irelanders' 1848 rising.

Socialist thought: Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto (1848) and the rise of trade unions and labour movements in the later 19th century.

Revolutionary evidence skills: distinguish causes, events, and consequences; use manifestos, declarations, and constitutions as primary sources.

Causes of World War I: alliances, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, and the trigger of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo (28 June 1914).

Treaty of Versailles (1919): German war guilt, reparations, territorial losses, and the League of Nations; the treaty's terms are often linked to later instability.

Russian Revolution: February 1917 overthrew the Tsar; the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power under Lenin; the Russian Civil War followed.

Dictatorships: Mussolini's Fascists in Italy (1922), Hitler's appointment as Chancellor (1933), and the Nazi consolidation of power.

World War II: invasion of Poland (September 1939), the Holocaust (six million Jewish victims), D-Day (6 June 1944), and the war's end in Europe in May 1945.

Cold War: NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955), the Berlin Wall (1961), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989).

European unity: the Schuman Plan (1950), the Treaty of Rome (1957), and the development of the European Community.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 with the aim of maintaining international peace and security.