Ch.12 Unhappy Unions
Ireland’s Troubles
- The quarrel between Ireland and England had been going on for hundreds of years. In 1541, the English king Henry VIlI had claimed Ireland as his own. Even though Henry VIII became a Protestant, most of Ireland remained Catholic.
- One September morning in 1845, an Irish farmer in his field pushed his hand into the ground to check on his potatoes. His fingers found only soft, rotten mush. Desperately, he began to dig. A horrible stench rose up out of the ground. All of the potatoes beneath the thick stem had rotted away in the ground. The blight had come to Ireland.
The Boers and the British
- The people of the Transvaal could see that the British intended to take over their country and the Free State as well. So in 1899, the Afrikaners in both the Transvaal and the Free State declared war on Great Britain. The British called this war the ˝Boer War.˝
