Ulster

The northern province, remade by a plantation whose consequences are still being negotiated. Ulster was the most Gaelic and most resistant part of Ireland, and after the defeat of Hugh O'Neill and the Flight of the Earls in 1607 the Crown confiscated the land and settled it with Protestant colonists from Lowland Scotland and northern England - a deliberate demographic project rather than an incidental migration. The result was two communities on the same ground with different churches, land tenure and loyalties, and the pattern of massacre and counter-massacre from 1641 onward set memories that are still commemorated. Belfast industrialised on linen and then shipbuilding, becoming the only heavily industrial city in Ireland, which is part of why partition in 1921 followed economic lines as well as sectarian ones. Six counties became Northern Ireland with a permanent unionist majority and a Catholic minority excluded from housing, employment and local government, and the civil rights campaign of the 1960s preceded thirty years of conflict that killed around three and a half thousand people. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 built institutions requiring both communities to govern together. Ulster Scots is recognised. The border is now an economic question again. The historic province has nine counties, six of which form Northern Ireland. Belfast built the Titanic. The Giant's Causeway is a World Heritage site. Around two million people live in Northern Ireland. Both Irish and Ulster Scots have official recognition under the 1998 agreement. Irish-medium schooling has grown steadily since, on both sides of the border.

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