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How can Ireland dominate Britain?

If it's as far back as when the Saxons did then our view of history is that the Irish Isles were constantly invaded when we were apart but under the mighty King Slaine (who shall awake in Ireland's hour of greatest need) we were unified and saw off those bally Norse, Normans etc.
 
the irish speakers in London might well see rule from Dublin as no more imperial than the irish speakers in Cork?
You might want to reconsider that example a wee bit 😉. Any Corkonians I ever met aren't that keen on the langers up in Dublin.
But yes, as a serious point that is well worth considering. Ultimately what constitutes a nation is based on common history and culture.
 
One thing that is hard to factor in is that economics and demographics whilst always important were not the be all and end all of pre modern states, the right marriage alliances and cultural arrangements might let Ireland punch above its weight. I could see it having heavy influences along the coast of Britain and it being a semi regular occurrance for private individuals and Kings alike to take an army to England to fight for kin or reputation. That happened OTL but if Ireland was united and the neighbouring kingdoms hostile there probably could be periods where its basically successful Irish Kings spend their time dominating a vague Celtic sphere, especially when at times there were almost parity between what would late be called Celtic peoples/Britons and the Anglo Saxons as we know them. Could easily be a state of affairs for centuries where Britain is a bit of a free for all where the Irish centered state just has its shit together more and hence tends to be where the other states look to for alliances and settling disputes.


Not sure how long it could conceivably last, probably fading rapidly by the 1000s if it even makes it that far.
 
To Jump head first into a historiographical tarpit, whether the native britains of england were mostly exterminated and replaced by settlers or mostly merely adopted new german fashions through peaceful migration is there any reason the Irish couldn't do what the saxons did, in which case the irish speakers in London might well see rule from Dublin as no more imperial than the irish speakers in Cork?

Map_of_the_Kingdom_of_Northumbria_around_700_AD.svg
 
From what I learnt when working on a research project on medieval and Tudor Ireland in the 1990s , quite apart from the economic disparity between the two islands (Ireland lacking any towns until the emergence of the Scandinavian coastal settlements like Dublin, Limerick and Waterford by around 850) the whole mindset and politico-social structure of the elites were not geared up for any serious effort at Irish unity. The emergence of a politically united Ireland before the Viking invasions, or more likely a forced merger of the inland Irish 'tribal' regional kingdoms and the economically dynamic coastal Viking trading towns by one successful military 'machine', were just about possible.

In the former case, ie pre-c. 800-850, this would need a military triumph of one of the five large provincial kingdoms (Meath/ Midhe in the East-Centre, with its two rival lines of the Ui Niall dynasty; Leinster in the SE; Munster in the SW; Connacht in the W; and Ulster in the N) over all the other four and the ability of a line of strong and capable rulers with a successful army to keep this up over generations , keep out any risk of manpower-wrecking civil wars by having an accepted and unchallenged line of adult succession, and make sure that the other regional states stayed in the alliance as obedient allies/ vassals. The importance of traditional practices in politics/ warfare and the established legal tradition with law-codes, guarded by an independent class of brehons/ law-experts, means that the likeliest way of achieving this would be under the accepted 'High Kings' of Ireland - normally only an honorary primacy and often challenged in war, restricted to the two lines of the Ui Niall (one in Midhe and one in W Ulster), and rotated between them so that a father-son line of inheritance within one family in the English mainland tradition would be unusual and probably unacceptable to most of the warrior elite. The notion of a strong and usually accepted line of 'High Kings' who did not face eternal challenges was mooted as having occurred in the remote past, either the pre-Christian mythical era of the C2nd to C4th AD or else , shakily, in the later C5th and early-mid C6th with Church backing after Christianization - and to have been brought to an end permanently by the successful provincial revolt against 'centralizing' HK Diarmait Ui Cearbhall in c. 560 - when St Columba, later the evangeliser of Argyll / Dalriada in Scotland but then a minor Ui Niall prince-abbot based at Derry, led or inspired the rebel coalition. Historians argue whether any of this 'centralised High Kingship with usually obedient vassals', that could have led to an emerging single state like Wessex-led England in the C10th had it lasted, was real or just a myth , and most now think the latter. Even then, the High Kingship did not usually descend from father-son and wars were common; any nascent 'central state' was unlikely to last with lots of armed provincial challengers. But if any of it was real, Ireland - which had a powerful cultural leadership of the NW Christian world and carried out a lot of evangelization in the C6th and C7th as far as England, Francia, and the Alps - might just have centralised, trade and towns emerged slowly (perhaps helped by more containable viking settlers who the HK's army kept in order as the Byzantine army fought off military attack by the Rus and forced them to keep to trade-treaties and supply mercenaries), and Ireland had an equivalent of the Wessex-led state in England by c. 1000.

The other, post-Viking invasions unification could have occurred as the local provincial kingdoms (which themselves relied on the military and political adherance of their own vassals, hereditary local 'kings' of ancient dynasties within each province, usually each ruling a 'tribe' or kindred)were hammered and in some cases overrun by the Vikings on the coasts - as in England the Viking Great Army after 866 destroyed all the kingdoms but Wessex and left Alfred the last Anglo-Saxon ruler standing (bar a few minor ones). The latter enabled Wessex to take over the other kingdoms and the Danelaw in the years after 900 - and if more of the Irish provinces had been atomised and lost their royal lines in the C9th and C10th the successful fightback by the OTL temporary unifier of the late C10th, Brian Borumha of Munster, could have led to him becoming the equivalent of Alfred and his sons and grandsons keeping Ireland united and his military and political machine in a coherent state. In reality, the majority of the other kingdoms survived and only accepted him as HK out of force and necessity, and had no loyalty to his dynasty - and once he was dead the Ui Niall HK who he had forced to abdicate in 1002, Mael Sechnaill, took his throne back and Brian's family and the Ui Niall shared /rotated it in the C11th, with wars between them. Brian was not of Ui Niall blood or even from the usual royal line of his own Munster, so his rule was in breach with tradition and the other provinces were unlikely to accept his dynasty long-term - if he had not been killed at his defeat of his Viking/ Leinster foes at Clontarf in 1014 he was too old (c. 80) and his dynasty too precarious to last long, and he had no admin machine or cultural backing for a long-term overturning of Irish decentralised tradition. At best, had his capable eldest son Murchadh not been killed at Clontarf too and a more coherent army and administration, like that of Wessex , been created after 104 by his dynasty Ireland could have had a precarious unity, liable to revolt at any time. The chances of this overshadowing a united England is unlikely , not least due to lesser resources - unless England had been broken up long-term by a successful Viking state at York backed by the Scots monarchy, eg a Celtic/ Viking victory at Brunanburh in 937, or England have broken up between rival Wessex princes (eg Edgar vs Edwy in 957 or Edward the Martyr vs Aethelred Unraed in the 980s) as Francia broke up after 843.

The possibilities of Alt Hist in England, Scotland or Ireland in the early medieval period are fascinating and are many in number; an English-led mainland state owed a lot to the luck or skill of rulers in the C10th and C11th.
 
I'm not sure you can, unless get a semi-centralized Kingdom of Ireland first and foremost. From there you might get some loose client states depending on what a hypothetical Irish Kingdom looks like. Irish Domination of the Isles would require many of the clan polities and kin groups kept in line or else it would just be the closest thing you could get to Muromachi-era Japan or the Kievan Rus in Western Europe, unless you count Iberia.
 
Wasn't there a treaty between three lots of rebels in Medieval England to partition England and Wales among themselves, with a super Wales, and a North and South England?

Unlikely to last, but if it did it might allow Ireland to unify and possibly play a strong role in English affairs.
 
This is the tentative 'Triple Indenture' between the Welsh rebel/ nationalist leader Owain Glyndwr, the exiled Percy dynasty patriarch turned rebel the Earl of Northumberland, and the representatives of the 'cheated rightful claimant' to the English throne Edmund Mortimer (then aged only c. 14) in 1405. At the time Henry IV was widely seen as a usurper as he had not been the nearest lineal heir of his cousin Richard II when he deposed him by invasion in 1399 - Henry was 'elected voluntarily' by an assembly of the magnates to succeed R when the latter abdicated and was R's closest adult heir (first cousin in the male line), but this left out Edmund Mortimer whose family R had declared his heirs in 1385 - though the mercurial R may have changed his mind later. The claim rested on Edmund being descended from the daughter of Edward III's second son Lionel Duke of Clarence, R's father having been Edward III's first son the 'Black Prince'; Henry IV was the son of Edward III's third son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It was unclear if the English throne could descend to or via a female, though there was no law against it unlike in France; but Henry seems to have persuaded the lords to ignore the Mortimer claim as Edmund was underage so his accession would mean a regency and possible instability. But partisans of the Mortimers (a major central Welsh Marches landed dynasty) claimed Edmund had been cheated and used him as a nominal leader for plots vs Henry - and after the unsuccessful Percy family revolt in 1403 the exiled Earl of Northumberland and his men joined in this. The military weight to the revolt was to be arranged with the Welsh rebels, who now held most of Wales except the towns of the S and SE but lacked siege-equipment to tackled walled places or heavy cavalry to tackle Henry's knights in open combat, and the French whose king Charles VI's daughter Isabella had been married to Richard II.

The plan was to divide England up between an enlarged Wales ruling as far E as the Rivers Severn and Trent, the Percies ruling the North (probably to the Humber), and Mortimer getting the rest , and was backed by France which sent in a small army to S Wales - this marched with Glyndwr's men as far East as Worcs in 1405 but could not take any towns or major castles, pulled back, and went home. The biggest boost for it would have been if Edmund Mortimer and his brother had escaped from Henry's internment of them at Windsor Castle; their female guardian (widow of one of Henry IV's victims) smuggled them out in Feb 1405 and a waiting party of Mortimer allies rode with them for Wales, but they were recaptured by Henry's men after a clash in a wood near Cheltenham. (A missed opportunity here for a modern film/ TV series thriller? This is little known compared to the Princes in the Tower or the Wars of the Roses in general; the early C15th is full of telegenic intrigue and inter- royal violence too.) Nor could the Percies stage a simultaneous revolt in the N, possibly due to lack of expected support from Scotland where the royal family was in the middle of a major struggle over the throne as King Robert III aged and his elder son and heir David had been murdered or died conveniently leaving one under-age son James and a predatory uncle , the Duke of Albany, facing off for the succession. The Percies' own tenant army in the N had been savaged and brought under royal control by its defeat by Henry IV in the 1403 rebellion at Shrewsbury - its only chance was if this revolt had not occurred then or had won all the North, pushing the King back, and the Percies had been at full strength in 1405.

The plot had too many 'what ifs' needed to combine to succeed except by extreme luck, eg a successful Mortimer escape plus a larger French army plus Scots help plus neutralising Henry IV's vigorous and talented warlord heir Prince Henry (H V) and his army; nor would the English magnates have accepted it if their support had been needed by a shaky new Mortimer govt after removing Henry IV. But it might have removed Henry given a combination of a larger French attack and Scots help, if Henry's real-life serous illness in summer 1405 had wrecked his campaign; at most, Glyn Dwr might have got extra land to the Severn, temporarily, if he had been able to use a French army to force vassalage over the local barons. A Percy rule over the North as a 'king' is v unlikely.
 
In any event, a tripartite split of England and Wales would have been unlikely to make Ireland primus inter pares. All three territories would have had roughly the same amount of arable land and, while having initially lower populations would have had more exploitable mineral resources and better trade links with the Continent.
 
How about via expansion at a relatively early juncture, and a union of the crowns between the Kingdoms of Ireland and Wales? Just across the Irish Sea, easily defensible due to mountain ranges and natural barriers, Wales would be the first place on the list for a powerful Kingdom of Ireland to either conquer or merge with. And as with the Sudreys, the Irish established large colonies here IOTL, primarily on Anglesey and the Lynn peninsula, before the Goddodin warlords pushed south, drove them out and established the Kingdom of Gwynedd, which would control the entirety of Wales and cement Wales' identity before finally falling to Edward I of England. Have the Irish either hold onto Wales or consolidate its influence there later on (King John I- of England IOTL, but whose father originally intended to make him the first King of Ireland before that- had made a treaty with Llewelyn the Great, and Llewelyn married John I's daughter, Joan, Lady of Snowden; in an ATL, perhaps there could be scope for a Union of the Crowns, paralleling that between England and Scotland IOTL, but preceding it by centuries?), and you've got another giant leap towards Ireland being a major naval and military power, as well as a massive step towards stymieing England's total dominance over the British Isles early on.

So let's say that, ITTL, in the late 1170s or early 1180s, Henry II manages to gain the approval of either Pope Alexander III or his successor (perhaps if someone more amiable than Lucius III gains the Papacy instead) to have John crowned King of Ireland? From that POD, John Angevin's first visit to Ireland in 1185 goes far better than it did IOTL, and John I is successfully coronated as the first King of Ireland, with him and his successors going on to develop and expand the Irish economy, increasing the efficacy of Irish taxation and established numerous new Irish market towns. In contrast, in this TL, the English economy largely stagnates relative to that of Ireland- John never becomes King of England, butterflying Liverpool (a town which he personally founded by royal charter himself in the early 13th century) out of existence, with far-reaching consequences for English colonial aspirations.

John's elder brother Geoffrey escapes his death in the jousting tournament in 1186, becoming King of England instead; Geoffrey's personal friendship with Philip II of France sees Geoffrey retain his place as the ruler of Normandy, Brittany and Anjou, as a vassal of Philip II; the long-proposed marriage of his daughter, Eleanor, to Philip's son and eventual successor, Louis VIII, goes ahead without King Richard alive to interfere, and the Angevin kingdoms on the mainland soon merge with the Kingdom of France. However, he becomes a far more neglectful and tyrannical ruler in England than John I ever was IOTL, rousing far more resentment about his even worse misgovernment, fiscal policies and treatment of many of England's most powerful nobles. As such, with the Magna Carta never signed ITTL, the First Baron's War becomes a full-blown civil war, one which ousts the Angevin dynasty permanently. Largely indifferent about the loss of England, with his primary focus on France, Geoffrey withdraws from England; and the Kingdom of England fragments, with the 25 (probably more ITTL) feudal baronies fighting against one another for dominance, and England becoming a patchwork quilt of principalities with no true king, to an even greater extent than Germany and the contemporary Holy Roman Empire.

Because of this, the primary base of power, wealth and trade in the British Isles shifts permanently from the chaotic, divided and war-ravaged lands of England to the stable, unified, well-governed and far more peaceful Kingdom of Ireland- with Llywelyn the Great, one of John I's greatest allies and son-in-law IOTL, along with the unified Kingdoms of Wales under his dominion, eventually becoming vassals of the Irish crown instead of the English crown ITTL, and with a dynastic union between the Royal Houses of Angevin and Aberffraw. And when British colonialism does kick off ITTL, instead of setting sail from Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol, Liverpool and London, the ships set sail predominantly from Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Derry, Waterford, Drogheda, and perhaps even Bangor, Anglesey, Pembroke and Chester as well. And TTL's British Empire effectively becomes the Irish Empire instead.

IOTL, Ireland came as near to matching England in population as it ever did back in the period 1400-1450; at this time, Ireland was actually more densely populated than England, with England's estimated population standing at 1.9-2M, and Ireland's estimated population standing at 1.25-1.5M. And if you added the populations of Wales at the time (i.r.o 300K) and the annexed Scottish territories which had formerly comprised the Kingdom of the Isles (i.r.o. 50-80K) to TTL's Kingdom of Ireland, making the Irish Sea a truly Irish Sea ITTL, then you'd have had the two of them basically on a numerical parity with each other back then, immediately after the end of the Hundred Year's War and prior to the Wars of the Roses. It certainly isn't ASB that a weakened England's population might remain on a par with, or lower than, that of a strengthened and expanded Ireland in an ATL, leaving the British Isles dominated by Ireland instead in an ATL.

It's also worth mentioning that we now know that the Irish got to both the Faroe Islands and Iceland first IOTL. But because the effort on Iceland was only mounted by a small and limited monastic settlement of hermits, they never truly colonized the island; the Papar instead merely resided there for a few years before abandoning it. And on the Faroe Islands, virtually all of the Norse colonial settlers which eventually came to dominate the islands, along with the effective leaders on the islands, came from the Norse settlements around the Irish Sea. However, an earlier attempt during the age when Irish pirates were the dominant raiders and settlers in the North Atlantic, immediately following the Roman departure from Britain in the early 5th century, or a later attempt in an ATL in which the Irish increase their dominance of the seas, and thus become true rivals of the Vikings, could easily see Iceland being permanently settled by the Irish instead of by the Norse as IOTL. And thus, you'd have an Irish naval empire, effectively keeping the Vikings contained within the North Sea and the Baltic.

And thus, from there on, all of OTL's Viking colonies or potential colonies further west, north and south are there for the taking for TTL's Irish. Such as Greenland, Newfoundland, Madeira and the Azores, and possibly even the Canary Islands. And from there, they could advance onward to North America, The Caribbean, North and West Africa, and potentially even South America as well, depending upon where their focus lies, which trade commodities and other opportunities they seek, and the levels of competition and adversity they face. If you want an Ireland more powerful than England (or any other nations/countries in the British Isles), then its greatest advantage would lie in its capacity to project power towards the west, across the Atlantic.
 
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