It is both a country and a whole island, but at the same time there are two Ireland. Almost a century ago, in 1922, the Irish Free State separated from the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Unlike Northern Ireland, which has remained faithful to England to this day. But all over the world it is customary to call Ireland an independent and free state. More than ten years ago in Ireland, previously an exclusively agricultural and, frankly, poor country against the background of prosperous neighbors, reforms began that allowed it to become not only European, but also the world leader in terms of GDP per capita.
This economic phenomenon, by analogy with the developing countries of the Asian region, was called the "Celtic Tiger". The name is strange, but the main thing is that it works. The most important role in the formation of the Irish economy was then played by the introduction of a low corporate tax rate, which collapsed to 12.5 percent. Thanks to this, the European headquarters of the world's IT giants immediately moved to the island: Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Yahoo !, Google, Twitter, Linkedin Airbnb and other unicorns. Pros - multibillion-dollar injections into the budget of the country, which now can afford a lot.
Cons - a sharp increase in prices for literally everything that happened due to the massive influx of foreign specialists to constantly open vacancies. By the way, after the corporate tax reduction, the pharmaceutical industry began to flourish in Ireland along with the IT industry.
Many international banks have offices in Dublin. 25% of computers manufactured in Europe are made here. American high-tech companies are actively investing tens of millions of dollars in the Irish economy. Today it is one of the fastest growing countries in the European Union. At the moment, this country is home to just over four and a half million people. This is even less than in St. Petersburg.
But Irish people around the world are a dime a dozen. And the reason for this is the events that took place in the middle of the 19th century. During this period in the agrarian country there was a long, five-year crop failure. During this time, about a million people died from hunger and epidemics, and this is 25% of the total population of the country.
About one and a half million went in search of a better life in America. Today, more than eighty million people of Irish descent live outside their home island around the world. For example, in Australia, half of the population is of Irish descent. And in the United States, this figure is 44 million people, that is, about 9% of the population. But in fact, the reason, of course, is not only a poor harvest, it all began centuries earlier.
History The first slaves in America were white. As they were also called - contracted or bonded servants. If someone wanted to move to America, and he did not have the money to pay for travel, he signed a contract and pledged to work for five years in the position of a servant-slave. He was brought to America and sold at auction.
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At the same time, the trip was often, to put it mildly, not on their own. They were mostly Irish poor peasants and artisans, ruined, deprived of the means of production during the fencing and industrial revolution in England.
Poverty, hunger, and religious persecution drove these people to a distant overseas country, where they had a poor idea of living and working conditions. Recruiters scoured Europe and lured the poor peasants or the unemployed with stories about the "free" life overseas. Kidnapping has become widespread. Recruiters used to drink adults, and lured children. Then the poor were collected in the port cities of England and transported to America in terrible conditions, like cattle.
In colonial newspapers of that time, one could often find such announcements: “A party of young, healthy workers, consisting of weavers, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, masons, sawmen, tailors, coachmen, butchers, furniture makers and other craftsmen, had just arrived from London. They are sold at a fair price. You can also exchange for wheat, bread, flour. Sometimes the slave traders carried on a brisk trade at the same time as black slaves, captive Indians and contracted servants brought from Europe.
A Boston newspaper reported in 1714 that a wealthy merchant, Samuel Sewall, was "selling several Irish maids, most of them for five years, one Irish servant a good barber, and four or five handsome Negro boys." There was a regular trade in contracted servants during the 17th and 18th centuries, after which it declined due to the development of slavery of blacks, who were cheaper, stronger and more profitable than white Irish slaves.