What was intended as a temporary solution in the face of unrest, violence, and rebellion is still in effect a century later, as Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
According to Stewart Weaver , a professor of history at the University of Rochester , over time both sides developed two very different and incompatible conceptions of what it means to be Irish: One Catholic, republican, and nationalist, and the other Protestant, loyalist, and unionist. Northern Ireland is made up of six of the nine counties of the traditional Irish region of Ulster.
This is where I start on the topic of Irish partition in my course. Ulster has always been, in some ways, culturally distinct from the rest of Ireland, even before the Protestant Reformation. Ironically, it was in some ways the most Gaelic of Irish regions; before and after the Reformation it was the most resistant to English rule, which is ironic considering that Ulster is now the most loyalist, unionist region of Ireland.
The whole conflict that led to partition reduces fundamentally to the failure of the Reformation in Ireland and the fact that it threw up a confessional divide between the British generally: between the English, the Welsh, the Scots—and the Irish, who remained largely Catholic.
The event known as the Flight of the Earls —when Gaelic lords of Ulster fled in —left the region open and vulnerable to English and Scottish settlement. Under the Stuart monarchs, starting with James I, land ownership in Ulster was transferred from native Ulster Catholics to mostly Scottish Presbyterians, as well as some English Protestants, over the course of the 17th century. But in the south, it was mostly English Anglican Protestants who had a lot more in common with Catholicism, and with the Catholic peasantry, than did these Calvinist Presbyterians of Ulster.
So that made Ulster culturally and confessionally distinct. At the same time, even though the north of Ireland was majority Protestant, they too had come to think of themselves as Irish. All of these factors hardened Protestant suspicion in the north and their reluctance to be drawn into an independent Ireland in the south. The war intensely complicated the situation. Most of Ireland at the outbreak of war in remained loyal to the United Kingdom. But the Easter Rebels did.
This was the Easter Rising —famously the moment in when the most intransigent, the most committed, the most culturally Republican and Catholic nationalists chose to rise up in Dublin in rebellion against English rule. The General Post Office in Dublin—the headquarters of Irish nationalists of the Irish Republican Brotherhood during the Easter Rising—was gutted by British forces in a swift military response to the rebellion. Their subsequent execution and martyrdom intensely complicated the situation.
In the south, the once-unpopular Easter rebels immediately became national heroes. But in the north, their rebellion was regarded as a profound act of betrayal against Great Britain in its time of desperate need, and it heightened the resolve of protestants—who, of course, had been deeply loyal to the United Kingdom during World War I—not to be drawn into a united and independent Ireland.
The Government of Ireland Act was designed to create two separate Home Rule territories, both of which would remain in the United Kingdom—a Northern Ireland and a Southern Ireland—that would both be quasi-autonomous, self-governing entities of the United Kingdom.
But Irish nationalists had unilaterally declared an independent Ireland and launched a guerrilla campaign—the Irish War of Independence, or Anglo-Irish War —21 and refused to recognize the act; they refused to reconcile themselves to remaining within the United Kingdom.
More than 3, people, a majority of them civilians, were killed in bombings and shootings over the three decades of conflict. The bloodshed largely ended in with the Good Friday accord that saw the paramilitaries lay down their arms and established a Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government for Northern Ireland.
Last month, dozens of police officers were injured in successive nights of violence across parts of Northern Ireland, drawing comparisons to the early days of the Troubles. The peace process relies on an open Irish border allowing the free flow of goods and people. Both the UK and the EU agreed that the border could not be in Ireland because of the risk that would pose to the Good Friday agreement.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson "lied saying there wouldn't be any practical consequences for Northern Ireland, that there wouldn't be a border in the Irish sea. There is a border in the Irish Sea," O'Halpin said. Moore told Euronews that the importance of the recent clashes should not be overstated.
Besides Brexit, another thing that has changed in Northern Ireland in recent years is the demographics. Now Protestants and Catholics are almost at the same levels in Northern Ireland.
So there definitely is a move towards people who would support a united Ireland as opposed to staying in Britain," Moore told Euronews.
O'Halpin also said the pandemic was "good news in terms of the politics of commemoration because you can't have huge parades like Mayday parades or Bastille day in Paris. Commemorations organised by the state are "only going to cause friction, especially in Northern Ireland" where "things could escalate very quickly," O'Halpin said.
In Northern Ireland, "the two leading parties have very different viewpoints on commemorations. Meanwhile, the British government will focus on peace and reconciliation. One thing that is unusual about the Irish partition is that "even though there was a political partition, there was not a social and cultural partition," Moore told Euronews, contrasting for instance with eastern and western Germany before reunification.
Most sporting organisations are all-Ireland bodies, as well as trade associations and trade unions," the historian noted. Download the Euronews app to get an alert for this and other breaking news. It's available on Apple and Android devices. This content is not available in your region. Text size Aa Aa. A century after the boundary of Northern Ireland was defined in the Government of Ireland Act, the route of the border remains unchanged.
However, the area around the border has seen many changes. In the later part of the 20th century, it became a heavily-militarised zone during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. During more than 30 years of violence, the border became studded with British Army checkpoints and was the scene of regular IRA attacks. In , customs posts were removed as the European Single Market came into effect.
After the Good Friday Agreement Army checkpoints were gradually dismantled, with the last military watchtowers coming down in In order to avoid re-imposing a "hard border" with customs posts on the island of Ireland, the British government agreed to the Irish Sea border instead.
The Brexit debate has galvanised nationalist calls for a referendum on the reunification of Ireland - but the power to call a border poll rests with the UK's secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Unionists oppose any such move and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he could not see any Northern Ireland secretary considering a border poll for a "very, very long time to come".
As things stand, opinion polls do not suggest that a majority of people in Northern Ireland support the removal of the border that came into being a century ago. There are special reports on the major figures of the time and the events that shaped modern Ireland available at bbc.
The violence that marked Northern Ireland's birth. Northern Ireland emerges from a tumultuous decade. Who were the major players in ? Marking years of Northern Ireland. Why did partition happen? Why was the border drawn where it was? Image source, Getty Images.
Northern Ireland consists of six counties in the north east of the island of Ireland. Sir James Craig was Northern Ireland's first prime minister, a post he held for almost 20 years. How did people feel about the border? Was the border frontier permanently fixed?
Image source, National Library of Ireland. Why did changes to the border not happen? A truck returning from Northern Ireland is stopped at the border by Irish Free State customs officers How did Boundary Commission make its decisions? Image source, Newry and Mourne Museum. Newry was an important port town in the early part of the 20th Century photo circa
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