As you know, the majority of Irish people are proud, albeit a little annoyed about Irish history. I've always been enthusiastically told by family that while the rest of Europe was in the 'Dark Ages' (I know you hate that term, I just don't know any other word to describe it), Irish monks were copying books to save the information in them, and when Europe was safe, they'd send it back.
I get that this probably did happen to some extent, but how much, and did they really make a difference.
Again, sorry about using 'Dark Ages', and thanks in advance.
Thomas Cahill wrote a book on this topic in 1995. It was part of Random House Publishing "Hinges of History" series. It was also offered by History Book Club and made it briefly to the New York Times best sellers list. It is History Lite, meaning there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the book, but Cahill omits a lot history to embellish the role of Irish missionaries. The experts in the field published many articles poking holes in the book over the next five years.
"How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill.
My suspicion is that there is no ground to this. (Sorry Irish patriots).
Argument is really simple: In the British isles (i.e. not just Ireland, but also England, Scotland, Wales), 81 manuscripts were published in 6th C, 1026 in 7th C, 5474 in 8th C, 7926 in 9th C.
But it was an order of magnitude higher in France - 1682 in 6th C, 2441 in 7th C, 15920 in 8th C, 74190 in 9th C. Likewise for Italy - 10194 in 6th C, 4478 in 8th C, etc.
At most, the British Isles only produced a bit more than 10% of all the manuscripts produced in Western Europe in the Dark Ages in any one century (the 8th, to be precise). More typically, just 5% or so. And again, I should stress, that's the British Isles as a whole; I'm sure that England's output was far higher than Ireland's.
Source: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5594064