The Ire in Northern Ireland: A History of Ulster
King Henry’s Bull
In 1155, England’s King Henry II claimed to have obtained a bull from Pope Adrian IV authorizing him to seize control of Ireland. Some scholars believe the bull was, well, bull – a forgery designed to give Henry cause to expand his kingdom. Others think the pope wanted to expand his own power in Ireland. Either way, Henry soon supported a series of attempts by Anglo-Norman nobles to take control of parts of the island.
By the early 13th century, English law ruled most of the Emerald Isle. During the 14th century, however, local Irish lords reasserted themselves. In time, they reduced the English crown’s control to a small area around Dublin, “the Pale,” which expanded and contracted for 200 years. The English treated lands “beyond the Pale” as savage. And among the most “savage” were lands in the northern province of Ulster – most of which is now Northern Ireland.
The Ulster Plantation
During the 16th century, England officially converted to Protestantism while most of Ireland remained Catholic. At the same time, the English greatly expanded the Pale and put down a series of Irish rebellions. In 1598, Irish forces under an Ulster earl, Hugh O’Neill, annihilated an English army in the north. But by 1603, a beaten O’Neill had surrendered, and by 1607, many of Ulster’s former lords had fled the country.
The British confiscated their lands and launched “the Ulster Plantation,” an organized effort to resettle British subjects in Ulster. Over the next several decades, Protestant immigrants from England and Scotland began to supplant Ulster’s native Catholics – first the landlords, then the common folk.
In 1641, Ulster’s Catholics revolted, and thousands of settlers were killed or forced to flee. For a time, the entire plantation project collapsed, but it was revived in the 1660s. By the end of the 17th century, Protestants in Ulster outnumbered Catholics. In 1690, the Protestant William of Orange (later King William III) even used the region to defend his claim to the English throne against the Catholic James II.
Secret Societies and Self-Government
Most of the 18th century passed in relative peace and calm, but Protestant-Catholic tensions in Ulster persisted. By the 1790s, Protestant fears about economic competition and a growing Catholic population helped spur the formation of secret societies like the “Orange Order,” dedicated to protecting Protestant interests. Catholics responded in kind, forming their own self-protection societies.
Meanwhile, a different group, the Society of United Irishmen, tried to bring the ideals of the American and French revolutions to Ireland. In the summer of 1798, the Society instigated a rebellion, espousing Irish independence and religious tolerance. The British crushed the uprising. Two years later, Parliament put an end to what remained of Irish autonomy. The Act of Union of 1800 officially made Ireland part of the United Kingdom.
UK membership wasn’t good for Ireland. The first half of the 19th century saw economic decline culminating in the Irish potato famine of 1845-50, in which a million people died and many more emigrated. During the second half of the 19th century, Catholics in the south launched a nationalist movement, and in 1886, their representatives in Parliament convinced the government in London to propose Irish home rule. The bill failed, but the movement rolled on.
Whose Home Rule?
Ulster’s Protestants surmised that home rule for Ireland would mean Catholic-dominated rule from Dublin, and many were determined not to let that happen. They preferred to remain in the Union – so much so that, when a new Home Rule Bill surfaced in the early 20th century, they drummed up massive political opposition to it. More ominously, they began to organize a paramilitary force, the Ulster Volunteer Force.
Before long, the UVF had signed up 90,000 men. Meanwhile, Catholics began enlisting men into their own paramilitary organization, the Irish Volunteer Force (precursor to the Irish Republican Army). When Parliament passed a Home Rule Bill in 1914, civil war seemed inevitable. It might have happened, too, except that World War I broke out first.
Faced with large-scale war on the continent, Parliament set aside action on Ireland – and so, for the time being, did most of the Irish. Then, in 1916, around 1,000 nationalists seized buildings in downtown Dublin in the so-called “Easter Rising.” Within a week, 20,000 British had arrived to crush the rebellion, and 450 people were killed. Harsh British reaction fanned the nationalists’ cause in the south. Meanwhile, the UVF, which had become a division of the British Army, was taking heavy casualties for Britain in France.
Two-State Solution
When World War I was over, most of the Irish wanted home rule – and, ultimately, independence. But Ulster’s unionists, who had proven themselves loyal subjects during the war, wanted none of it. The British proposed creating two self-governing units: one consisting of the six Ulster counties that now make up Northern Ireland (roughly 1/6 of the Emerald Isle), the other consisting of Ireland’s remaining 26 counties.
The unionists accepted the offer, while the nationalists rejected it, not wanting to split one island in two. After a brief war with Britain, however, the provisional government in the south accepted the partition as part of a 1921 treaty that created the Irish Free State. Some refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the split, and continued a clandestine struggle for a unified, independent Ireland.
For the next five decades, Protestants ran the show in Northern Ireland. At first, the Catholic minority showed its contempt for the new state by refusing to participate in politics, which only strengthened Protestant control. Then, in the 1960s, northern Catholics mounted a civil rights campaign modeled in part on the American civil rights movement.
Catholic-Protestant tensions increased, bringing Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war. British troops – ostensibly sent to keep the peace, but often regarded as occupiers – wound up killing 13 Catholic protesters (a 14th died later) on “Bloody Sunday,” January 30, 1972. The ranks of the IRA swelled in response. The ranks of Unionist paramilitary groups swelled in response to that. It’s been “troubles” ever since.
