History of Cork
The Cork municipal government was dominated by about 12–15 merchant families, whose wealth came from overseas trade with continental Europe – in particular the export of wool and hides and the import of salt, iron and wine.
The former mayor of Cork John Atwater and several important citizens went with Warbeck to England but when the rebellion collapsed they were all captured and executed.
Cork suffered from the warfare involved in the reconquest, particularly in the Second Desmond Rebellion in 1579–83, when thousands of rural people fled to the city to avoid the fighting, bringing with them an outbreak of bubonic plague.
[22] As a "centre of English administration" in the area,[22] Cork by and large sided with the Crown in the conflicts of the period, even after a Spanish expeditionary force landed at nearby Kinsale in 1601 during the Nine Years War.
In 1603, the citizens of Cork along with Waterford and Limerick rebelled, expelling Protestant ministers, imprisoning English officials, seizing the municipal arsenals and demanding freedom of worship for Catholics.
They refused to admit Lord Mountjoy's English army when it marched south, citing their charters from the twelfth century.
In 1644, Murrough O'Brien, Earl Inchiquinn, the commander of English forces in Cork, expelled the Catholic townsmen from the city.
[25] In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries French Protestants (Huguenots) arrived in Cork fleeing from religious persecution at the hands of Louis XIV of France.
Cork merchants exported large amounts of butter and beef to Britain, France and the Caribbean, where it was used to support the development of sugar plantations and slavery.
However, in the later nineteenth century the population of Cork declined slightly due to emigration, principally to Britain or North America.
In 1825, over 1,800 Irish residents departed from Cork to emigrate to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada assisted by Peter Robinson (who organised the scheme on behalf of the British Government).
During the nineteenth and early twentieth century important industries in Cork included brewing, distilling, wool and shipbuilding.
[29] Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914 many of Cork's National Volunteers enlisted to serve with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, suffering heavy casualties both in Gallipoli and on the Western Front.
In 1916, during the Easter Rising as many as 1000 Irish Volunteers mobilised in Cork for an armed rebellion against British rule but they dispersed without fighting.
On 20 March 1920, Thomas Mac Curtain, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork was shot dead, in front of his wife at his home, by policemen.
[32][33] The local IRA units, for the most part, did not accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiated to end the war -ultimately repudiating the authority of the newly created Irish Free State.
There was fighting for three days in the hills around Douglas and Rochestown, in which roughly 20 men were killed and about 60 wounded as the anti-Treaty IRA contested the National Army's advance into the city.
Michael Collins, commander in chief of the National Army, was killed in an IRA ambush at Beal na mBlath, west of the city on 22 August 1922.
Guerrilla warfare raged in the surrounding countryside until April 1923, when the Anti-Treaty side called a ceasefire and dumped their arms.
Cork, like other cities in Ireland benefited somewhat from the Celtic Tiger economic boom, with growth in industries such as information technology, pharmaceuticals, brewing, distilling and food processing.
