Ireland is the 3rd largest island in all of Europe, and ranks at number twenty in the entire world. Its area exists to the north west of the European continent as a whole and is surrounded on all sides by hundreds of other smaller islands and islets. Separated by the Irish Sea on the eastern side of Ireland is the island of Great Britain. As far as politics is concerned, the state of Ireland covers roughly eighty-five percent of the island. The northern most portion of Ireland, appropriately referred to as Northern Ireland, is a part of the United Kingdom.
     The oldest settlements of Ireland date back 10,000 years. By 200 BC the Celtic migration and influence had come to rule the island. By the middle ages, small settlements of the Vikings and Normans gave way to total English domination by the 17th century. Protestant English rule resulted in the minimizing of the Catholic majority, though in the north, Protestants were in the majority. Ireland became part of the United Kingdom in 1801. A famine in the mid 1800s caused deaths and mass exodus. After the war of independence, Ireland was broken into two parts in 1922. This was the independent Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. The Free State left the Commonwealth to become a republic in 1949. In 1973 both portions of Ireland joined the European Community. Unrest in Northern Ireland led to much violence from the late 1960s until the 1990s, which diminished following a peace deal in 1998.
     Ireland has a total population of a little under six million, with 4.2 million in the republic and almost 1.75 million in Northern Ireland. This is an important growth from a modern historical bottom in the 1960s, but still much less than the top population of over 8 million in the early 1800s, prior to the Great Famine. The name Ireland comes from the name of the Celtic goddess Ériu with the suffix of the Germanic word land. Most other European names for Ireland derive from the same origin.
     Traditionally, the island of Ireland is divided into four separate provinces: Connacht, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. These provinces consist of thirty-two counties. Twenty-six of these counties are in the republic, and the six others are in Northern Ireland. Ulster is often used as a simple meaning for Northern Ireland, although Ulster and Northern Ireland are not synonymous, according to boundaries set up in the early modern period, as three counties of Ulster are actually a part of the republic. Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Tipperary have been split up into smaller regions, but are still considered to be official counties. The counties in Northern Ireland are no longer used for local government, although their acknowledged boundaries are still used in sports and in other cultural and ceremonial lexicon.
     The Anglo-Irish Treaty was made official by the Dáil in January 1922 by a vote of 64 to 57. The minority did not want to accept that outcome and this caused the Irish Civil War, which lasted until 1923. In December of 1922, in the midst of that Civil War, the Irish Free State was born. During its younger years the new state was governed by the winners of the Civil War. However, in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of those who opposed the treaty, was elected into power. The party suggested, and the electorate agreed - in a referendum in 1937, a brand new constitution which renamed the state Ireland. The state was impartial during World War II, which was known by the Irish as The Emergency. It offered some help to the Allies, primarily in Northern Ireland. It is approximated that around 50,000 volunteers from Ireland accompanied the British armed forces during the Second World War. In 1949, Ireland declared itself to be a republic.
     Ireland experienced large-scale emigration in the 1950s and again in the 1980s. From 1987 the economy began to improve and the 1990s witnessed the beginning of large economic success, in an event known as the "Celtic Tiger". By 2007 it was the fifth wealthiest country in the world, and the second richest in all of Europe, moving from being a recipient of the budget to becoming a net contributor during the next budget go round, and from a country of mostly emigration to one of immigration. In October 2006, there were discussions between Ireland and the U.S. to work out a new immigration policy between the two countries, in response to the improvement of the Irish economy and the wish of many United States citizens who sought to relocate to Ireland for employment.