With the passions they ignite today through the GAA and so on you would think that counties where something intrinsically Irish, but in reality the manner in which they came about reflects the development of English colonialism over a period of about four centuries. The counties where created in two distinct phases in the 13th and 16th centuries, this being the two periods of really sustained English expansion in Ireland. Essentially their creation marks the process by which the English state hoped to reshape the organisation of land in Ireland in order to facilitate the colonial administration.

This process was began around the 1190s with the shiring of Dublin. Over the next few decades other areas were also shired - Waterford and Cork by 1207-08 (initially functioning as a single county); Munster by 1211-12 (split into Limerick and Tipperary between 1251 and 1254); Louth and Kerry by 1233; Connacht by 1247 and Roscommon by 1292. Each county was ruled by a Sheriff, whose authority was such that they acted as a governor, general and chief justice all in one. As noted the creation of counties through shiring was a tool of the English administration for governance of Ireland.

However in the earliest stages of English conquest the level of control remained uneven. Subduing the entire country would have been costly and time consuming at a time when the Crown had other concerns, so in addition to the creation of counties (which were not necessarily set in stone) English conquest and administration was also carried out by way of delegation - the creation of large areas known as Palatinates (or Liberties) in which a single Anglo-Norman Lord enjoyed special privileges and a large degree of autonomy. This could apply either to the individual in particular or to his descendants as well.

The first of these liberties or palatinates were Leinster and Meath, created for Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy respectively in 1172 (corresponding to roughly the southern and northern halves of the modern province of Leinster). John de Courcy was granted Ulster later in the 1170s (an area roughly of modern Antrim, Down, and some of northern Derry). Thomas de Clare was also granted the liberty of Thomond, but only for his lifetime. This corresponded roughly to the modern county of Clare to which he gives his name.

Over the following decades some of these liberties/palatinates were partitioned or destroyed as a consequence of marriage or succession. For one example Leinster passed to the Marshal family and upon their extinction the area was split into four liberties - Wexford, Carlow, Kildare and Kilkenny. This happened elsewhere too. The process by which these areas became counties could be long and drawn out. One area might be shired as a county, become a liberty again for several decades, only to be finalised as a county later on. The longest lasting of these palatinates were Tipperary and Kerry which had been created in the late 1320s. Tipperary has been created for the Butlers, earls of Ormond while Kerry was to be the domain of the Fitzgeralds, earls of Desmond.

The 14th and 15th centuries saw the further collapse of many of these liberties and counties as lands fractured and once again passed into the control of the Gaelic Irish. Until the 16th/17th centuries many areas of the country thus remained under de facto control of powerful Gaelic lords such as the Uí Néill in Ulster, whatever the theoretical organisation of the Lordship of Ireland. By 1520 only the area known as The Pale (counties of Dublin, Louth, Kildare and Meath), Limerick, along with the liberties of Kerry, Tipperary and Wexford, still functioned as intended. The rest of the country was still controlled by the Gaelic Irish. The medieval Palatinates enjoyed by the Earls of Ormond and Desmond where increasingly viewed in the Tudor period as anachronistic, outdated and inimical to good government. When the Desmond Rebellion was put down in 1579 these privileges where abolished and the palatinate of Kerry was converted into a county. The same would eventually happen to Tipperary much later following the Jacobite rebellion in 1715.

The Tudor Conquest of Ireland (1534-1603) saw a renewed attempt on the part of the English crown to establish it's authority in Ireland, intending to rule in practice what it claimed in theory. This period saw the second sustained wave of county creation in Ireland (shiring) as one method of achieving this. Firstly the 12 counties that had been created in the Medieval period - Dublin, Louth, Meath, Kildare, Carlow, Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Kerry) where either revived or reinvigorated. 20 new countries where also created. In 1541-42 Westmweath was split off from Meath. The plantation of the midlands in the 1550s then saw the establishment of King's County (Offaly) and Queens County (Laois) in 1557. This process accelerated after the 1570s. In 1570 the obsolete county of Connacht was split into Galway, Mayo and Sligo and Roscommon was revived; in 1583 Leitrim was separated from Roscommon. Longford was established in 1586. The Ulster counties where shired in 1585, with effective control established following the Nine Years War and the Flight of the Earls. The last county to be created was 1606.

The establishment of a county did not necessarily equate to the effective rule of English law in a given area, but through the Tudor conquest and into the 17th century with the so-called 'Cromwellian' conquest and subsequent land settlement, English rule was finally imposed in all of Ireland. There would be further rejigging of county boundaries, divisions and creations over the next number of centuries. But basically the Irish counties came about as a consequence of English attempts to exert their control in Ireland. They were quintessentially English constructions in their origin and we only arrived at the modern 32 counties today as a result of a long and complex historical process.