What was it about the 6 northern Irish counties that made them more aligned with Britain than the rest of Ireland? Did they have more economic ties with the UK than in the south? I know there was a lot of industry there and shipyards, but why did people in Northern Ireland feel akin to those living in Britain while the majority of Irish as a whole didn’t feel that way?
Well here’s a worthy distraction from Covid-19 … the SDMB seek to resolve the Irish Question.
It predates the industry and the shipyards of which you speak, indeed predates the Industrial Revolution.
The six counties; Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone date from the Kingdom of Ireland; five were created between 1570 and 1591 in the Tudor conquest of Ireland.
Then there was the colonisation, primarily by Scottish colonists, of the Plantation of Ulster beginning 1606 during the reign of King James I.
Then there is the minor issue of religion.
So it has to do with their formation, and an alignment with England and Scottish Colonists? So the South had none of that and remained distrustful of London while the North was “comfortable” with English rule? Yes, I realize the South was solidly Catholic while the north was solidly Anglican.
NI was Presbys aligned with the Anglican imperialists for the common goal of keeping down the Catholics.
The “six counties” were an administrative holdover from the UK’s home rule plan for Ireland. There were going to be two unicameral home parliaments (one in the majority Protestant-Unionist North and one in the Catholic-Home Rule South) similar to that in modern Scotland. During and after WWI the South was no longer content with home rule and opted for full independence.
It goes back even before systematic colonisation. The north-east of Ireland is very close to Scotland, and pretty much from the dawn of history had closer social, cultural, trading, etc links with Scotland than the rest of Ireland did. There was population exchange, there was a high degree of shared culture, etc, etc. This was then reinforced by systematic colonisiation of certain areas but, to be honest, this was a minor contributor to the overall pattern.
In the 18th century, this did not lead to NI being notably more loyal to the British crown than the rest of Ireland. The Kingdom of Great Britain, formed in 1708 by the union of England and Scotland, was notably Anglocentric, and the loyalty of the Scots was always somewhat in question. In so far as people in the north east of Ireland say themselves as having much in common with the Scots, this wouldn’t make them particularly loyal to the crown. Plus, the British administration in Ireland was also very anglocentric. It was, for example, the (English-type) Anglican church that was established by law in Ireland, and (Irish) Catholics and (Scots-Irish) Presbyterians both suffered from legal, social and administrative discrimination.
So, with the rise of enlightenment ideals in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the advent of political republicanism in Ireland, republican separatism found significant support in the north east of Ireland.
It’s only in the nineteenth century, when English pro-Anglicanism increasing became simple anti-Catholicism, that things started to change. Discrimination against Presbyterians in Ireland was dismantled; discrimination against Catholics endured longer. This led to a growing political nationalism in Ireland which increasing linked Irish and Catholic issues and identities. At the same time the horrors of the Terror taught the middle classes everywhere to fear too much democracy, often imagined as mob rule. Surprisingly quickly, the Presbyterian Scots-Irish came to see their interests as aligned with those of the Protestant British establishment in Ireland, and as opposed to those of the largely Catholic people. The more democratic government in Ireland became - e.g. with the granting of the vote to (some) Catholics in 1829, and the progressive widening of the franchise in the course of the nineteenth century - the more assertive became the newly-confident Catholic middle classes in Ireland, and the more the Presbyterians of Ulster came to fear the prospect of “Rome Rule”. By the second half of the nineteenth century they stereotype of the Ulster Loyalist was firmly established.
The Anglican foot stomping on the Catholic neck wore a Presbyterian boot.
As others have said, it goes back mainly to the wars of the 17th century, and the influx of fundamentalist Protestant settlers. It has always been a religious issue more than anything else.
Look up Cromwell’s wars in Ireland, the Williamite War that established the Protestant Ascendancy for the next couple of centuries, and the Plantations of Ireland.
All of the above skates over the importance of Oliver Cromwell who, after winning the English civil war, proceeded to re-conquer the island of Ireland after The Irish rebellion of 1641 when the Irish Catholic upper classes and clergy formed the Catholic Confederation.
The reconquest of Ireland was brutal, even by the standards of the day. Cromwell is still a hated figure in Ireland and the impact of the war was pretty devastating. Although there is much debate over the details, worsened by an outbreak of plague may have reduced the Irish population by up to 80% (Note that COVID 19 has an estimated death rate of 1%). Add in the transportation of around 50,000 people as indentured labourers (slaves?), mostly to The Americas, and you might understand the depth of feeling that still exists today. Cromwell was an intensely religious man, who saw himself as Puritan Moses, Catholics had supported the King during the Civil War so religion played a highly significant part in subsequent history.
It goes back further. In Elizabeth I’s time, Ireland, as a country with a still powerful Catholic gentry and aristocracy, was a potential back-door into England for Spain and the Papacy. Both the fear of that and the greed of conquest led to the imposition of an English Protestant aristocracy in most or all of Ireland; Ulster was the last redoubt of the Catholic aristocrats, which was what led to the Plantation there of middle and lower class small tenant farmers and tradespeople in Ulster under Elizabeth’s successor James I, whose descendants became the Ulster loyalists of later generations.
And in the turmoil of the civil wars, and particularly the revolution of 1688, Ireland’s position as the back-door to gaining/retaining power in England was no less significant.
Note that many of the Scottish colonists to N. Ireland were forced there as a result of the English policies towards suppressing Scottish nationalism.
I.e., the majority of people sent there were victims of English oppression. Not just the locals.
Mrs. FtG descends from one such family, one of whom came to America in the early 1770s. When 1776 rolled around, it was payback time. (This was a common situation.)
It’s telling how much religion influences the politics there. These formerly English hating Scots-Irish would rather align with the Protestant UK than the Catholic RoI.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Cite?
In the 17th century, when the main waves of Scottish immigrants came to Ireland, Scotland was an independent country.
In the late 18th century and early 19th century many Scots emigrated due to the Highland Clearances, but that had nothing to do with England, and emigration was almost entirely to America, not Ireland.
Many Scots-Irish later emigrated to America or Canada, but that had nothing to do with suppressing Scottish nationalism.
You may be confusing Jacobitism with Scottish nationalism, but anyway no Scottish Jacobites were settled in Ireland. So I honestly don’t know what you’re thinking of.
The boundaries of Northern Ireland were drawn large enough to be still economically viable, but small enough to still have a Protestant majority. Although there were complaints from Unionists in adjoining counties who thought theirs should have been included too.
At the time Collins, and many in the south, assumed that the NI statelet would prove economically unviable and would end up having to join the Irish Free State anyway.
After the Norman conquest of England the Normans planted Ireland with their own selection of nobles in the hope that it would ‘Normanise’ Ireland - many married local women and ended up becoming more Irish than the Irish.
Moderator Note
Let’s keep religious jabs out of General Questions. No warning issued.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Jabs aside, religion, as in so many conflicts around the world played a major part in Ireland’s history. Of course, it was really a proxy, like any other sectarian division - black/white, North/South, Prod/Catholic, Christian/Muslim, and many others. It seems to be the case that most people are capable of feeling threatened by some other group and that threat can easily turn to violence.
Hardly. The Plantation was a policy of James VI of Scotland when he became James I of England. As it happens he wanted to unify the two countries under a single Parliament as well as his monarchy, but neither the English nor Scottish parliaments wanted it - they wanted to stay independent of each other. But both were keen on the idea of implanting solidly Protestant (both Anglican and Presbyterian) ordinary citizens in Catholic Ireland.
Thanks, everyone. Ignorance fought.
I am writing a screenplay and one of the storylines takes place in 1921 Belfast at Crumlin Road Gaol actually. I have a character who is catholic and lives in one of the counties abutting what would become Northern Ireland and he tries to support the Catholics against the British Army and gets arrested and sent to prison for sedition. During his incarceration, Southern Ireland becomes a free state and a border is created between the new Irish state and Northern Ireland which remains a part of the UK. I assume travel would be restricted in and out of Northern Ireland to deter the IRA once the Republic of Ireland is created, but I’m having trouble finding a reference that says that. This story based on a letter I have written by a real person in Crumlin Road explaining his situation.
Hardly. The Plantation was a policy of James VI of Scotland when he became James I of England. As it happens he wanted to unify the two countries under a single Parliament as well as his monarchy, but neither the English nor Scottish parliaments wanted it - they wanted to stay independent of each other. But both were keen on the idea of implanting solidly Protestant (both Anglican and Presbyterian) ordinary citizens in Catholic Ireland.
Travel across the border was not restricted. There were customs rules, and there might be formalities and delay and possibly costs if you wanted to bring a car across the border, or a load of goods, but at this time very few people travelled by car. You could cross the border on foot, on a bicycle, on a horse, in a bus or train with no problem at all, in either direction.
Thanks UDS!