Northern Ireland

a political division of the United Kingdom, in the NE part of the island of Ireland. 1,537,200; 5238 sq. mi. (13,565 sq. km). Cap.: Belfast.

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Part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland occupying the northeastern portion of the island of Ireland.

Area: 5,461 sq mi (14,144 sq km). Population (2001): 1,685,267. Capital: Belfast. It is bounded by the republic of Ireland, the Irish Sea, the North Channel, and the Atlantic Ocean. Northern Ireland is often referred to as the province of Ulster. The people are descended from indigenous Irish and immigrants from England and Scotland. Language: English (official). Religions: Protestantism (the majority) and Roman Catholicism (a minority). Currency: pound sterling. Northern Ireland's industries include engineering, shipbuilding (which has been in severe decline), automobile manufacturing, textiles, food and beverage processing, and clothing. The service industry employs about three-fourths of the workforce, and manufacturing employs less than one-fifth of workers. Agriculture is important, with most farm income derived from livestock. Northern Ireland shares most of its history with the republic of Ireland, though Protestant English and Scots immigrating in the 16th–17th centuries tended to settle in Ulster. In 1801 the Act of Union created the United Kingdom, which united Great Britain and Ireland. In response to mounting Irish sentiment in favour of Home Rule, the Government of Ireland Act was adopted in 1920, providing for two partially self-governing units in Ireland: the northern six counties constituting Northern Ireland and the southern counties now making up the republic of Ireland. In 1968 civil rights protests by Roman Catholics sparked violent conflicts with Protestants and led to the occupation of the province by British troops in the early 1970s. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) mounted a prolonged campaign of violence in an effort to force the withdrawal of British troops as a prelude to Northern Ireland's unification with Ireland. In 1972 Northern Ireland's constitution and parliament were suspended, bringing the province under direct rule by the British. Violence continued for three decades before dropping off in the mid-1990s. In 1998 talks between the British government and the IRA resulted in a peace agreement that provided for extensive Home Rule in the province. In 1999 power was devolved to an elected assembly, though the body was hampered by factional disagreements. Sporadic sectarian strife continued in the early 21st century, as the IRA gradually carried out decommissioning (disarming).

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▪ constituent unit, United Kingdom

Introduction

Northern Ireland, flag of   part of the United Kingdom, lying in the northeastern quadrant of the island of Ireland, on the western continental periphery often characterized as Atlantic Europe. Northern Ireland is sometimes referred to as Ulster, although it includes only six of the nine counties which made up that historic Irish province.

      In proximity to Scotland and to sea channels leading to England and Wales, Northern Ireland has long witnessed generations of newcomers and emigrants, including Celts from continental Europe and Vikings, Normans, and Anglo-Saxons. In the 17th century, the period of the so-called Ulster plantation, thousands of Scottish Presbyterians were forcibly resettled and English military garrisons built, arrivals that would institutionalize the ethnic, religious, and political differences that eventually resulted in violent conflict.

      Since the 1920s, when Northern Ireland was officially separated from Ireland, it has been tormented by sectarian violence. Notwithstanding the peacemaking efforts that began in earnest in the mid 1990s, Northern Ireland is still best navigated by those who are skilled in the shibboleths and cultural codes that demarcate its peoples, governing which football (soccer) team to cheer for, which whiskey to drink, and which song to sing. The complexity of these political markers is captured in the graffito once scrawled on Belfast walls that read “If you are not confused you don't understand the situation.” But, more recently, Northern Ireland's political fortunes have changed for the better, and with that change has come a flourishing of the arts, so that increasingly outsiders associate the country not with violent politics but with the poems of Seamus Heaney (Heaney, Seamus), the music of Van Morrison (Morrison, Van), and other contributions to world culture.

      The capital is Belfast, a modern city whose historic centre was badly damaged by aerial bombardment during World War II. Once renowned for its shipyards—the Titanic was built there—Belfast has lost much of its industrial base. The city—as with Northern Ireland's other chief cities Londonderry (known locally and historically as Derry) and Armagh—is graced with parks and tidy residential neighbourhoods. More handsome still is the Northern Irish countryside—green, fertile, and laced with rivers and lakes, all of which have found lyrical expression in the nation's folk and artistic traditions. Area 5,242 square miles (13,576 square km). Pop. (2004 est.) 1,710,322.

Land (Northern Ireland)

      Northern Ireland occupies about one-sixth of the island of Ireland and is separated on the east from Scotland, another part of the United Kingdom, by the narrow North Channel, which is at one point only 13 miles (21 km) wide. The Irish Sea separates Northern Ireland from England and Wales on the east and southeast, respectively, and the Atlantic Ocean lies to the north. The southern and western borders are with the republic of Ireland.

Relief

  Northern Ireland can be thought of topographically as a saucer centred on Lough (lake) Neagh (Neagh, Lough), the upturned rim of which forms the highlands. Five of the six historic counties— Antrim, Down, Armagh, Tyrone, and Londonderry—meet at the lake, and each has a highland region on the saucer's rim. To the north and east the mountains of Antrim (physiographically a plateau) tilt upward toward the coast. They reach an elevation of 1,817 feet (554 metres) at Trostan, with the plateau terminating in an impressive cliff coastline of basalts and chalk that is broken by a series of the glaciated valleys known as glens, which face Scotland and are rather isolated from the rest of Northern Ireland. The rounded landscape of drumlins (drumlin)—smooth, elongated mounds left by the melting ice of the final Pleistocene glaciation—in the southeast is punctuated by Slieve Croob, which rises to 1,745 feet (532 metres), and culminates in the Mourne Mountains, which reach an elevation of 2,789 feet (850 metres) at Slieve Donard (Northern Ireland's highest point) within 2 miles (3 km) of the sea. This impressive landscape of granite peaks is bounded by Carlingford Lough to the south.

      The scenery to the south of Lough Neagh is gentler, but the land rises to 1,886 feet (575 metres) in Slieve Gullion near the border with Ireland. West of Lough Neagh the land rises gently to the more rounded Sperrin Mountains; Sawel, at 2,224 feet (678 metres), is the highest of several hills over 2,000 feet (610 metres). The far southwest, the historic County Fermanagh, is focused geographically on the basin of Lough Erne (Erne, Lough), in a drumlin-strewn area ringed by hills more than 1,000 feet (300 metres) high.

Drainage

      Much of the landscape of Northern Ireland is gentle, and in most low-lying areas it is covered with swarms of drumlins that have played havoc with the local drainage and are interspersed with marshy hollows. Glaciation also gave the land its main valleys: those of the River Bann (Bann, River) (which drains Lough Neagh to the Atlantic Ocean) in the north, the River Blackwater (Blackwater, River) in the southwest, and the River Lagan in the east. All these valleys have been important routeways, but none have been more important than the Lagan, penetrating from Belfast Lough to the very heart of Ulster.

Soils

      Soils are varied. Although much glacially transported material covers the areas below 700 feet (215 metres) in elevation, the nature of the soil is predominantly influenced by the underlying parent rock. Brown earth soils, forming arable loams, are extensive and are derived from the ancient Silurian rocks of the southeast—some 420 million years old—and from the more recent basalts of the northeast. There are peaty gleys and podzols in the Sperrins, and the impeded drainage of much of the southwest gives rise to acidic brown soil. Peat soils are common, particularly in the hollows lying between the drumlins, and hill peat is widespread throughout Northern Ireland. Although it is of no great commercial value, peat traditionally has been a source of fuel for the peasant farmer and is still cut extensively.

Climate

      Northern Ireland's climate is temperate and maritime; most of its weather comes from the southwest in a series of low-pressure systems bringing the rain and clouds that often lend character to the landscape. Because Northern Ireland is near the central track of such lows, it often experiences high winds. In the north and on the east coast, particularly, severe westerly gales are common. Above the 800-foot (245-metre) level, distorted trees and windbreaks testify to the severity of the weather. Annual rainfall decreases from west to east, although the hills accentuate the amount to some 80 inches (2,000 mm) in parts of the west, and there is as little as 32.5 inches (825 mm) at Lough Neagh and the extreme southeast. A relatively dry spring gives way to a wet summer and a wetter winter. Daily conditions generally are highly changeable, but there are no extremes of heat and cold. The region is exposed to the ameliorating effects of the North Atlantic Current, a northeastward extension of the Gulf Stream. Average January temperatures vary from 38 °F (3.3 °C) on the north coast to 35 °F (1.7 °C) in the east; in July temperatures of 65 °F (18.3 °C) are common. In late spring and early summer the east has slightly lower temperatures accompanied by coastal fog. These mild and humid climatic conditions have, in sum, made Northern Ireland a green country in all seasons.

Plant and animal life

      The general features of the vegetation of Northern Ireland are similar to those in the northwest of Britain. The human imprint is heavy on the landscape and is particularly evident in the absence of trees (deforestation). Most of the land has been plowed, drained, and cultivated for centuries. Above the limit of cultivation, rough pastures are grazed extensively, and beyond them lies a zone of mountain vegetation. Only about 5 percent of the land is now under forest, and most of this has been planted by the state. Young trees in these plantations are economically unimportant, but locally they help to diversify the landscape.

      The fauna of Northern Ireland is not very different from that of Great Britain. There are, however, fewer species of mammals and birds. Only two mammals—the Irish stoat and the Irish hare—and three species of birds are exclusively Irish. The region is rich in fish, particularly pike, perch, trout, and salmon; the first is the only fish introduced in historic times.

      As the result of an increasing concern with conservation, there are some 40 nature reserves and several bird sanctuaries controlled by the Ulster Trust for Nature Conservation and by the Department of the Environment.

People (Northern Ireland)

Ethnic groups and languages

      The cultural differences that underlie many of Northern Ireland's contemporary social problems have a long and troubled history. The region has had lasting links with parts of western Scotland, strengthened by constant population movements. After the Tudor invasions and particularly after the forced settlements, or plantations, of the early 17th century, English and Scottish elements were further differentiated from the native Irish by their Protestant faith. Two distinct and often antagonistic groupings—the indigenous Roman Catholic Irish and the immigrant Protestant (Protestantism) English and Scots—date from that period, and they have played a significant role in molding Northern Ireland's development. The settlers dominated County Antrim and northern Down, controlled the Lagan corridor toward Armagh, and also formed powerful minorities elsewhere.

      This situation contributed to the decline of spoken Irish (Irish language) (Gaelic), and it is reflected in the contemporary distribution of religions. The accents with which Northern Irish people speak English (English language) are regionally distinctive. The northeastern dialect, dominating the historic counties of Antrim and Londonderry and parts of Down, is an offshoot of central Scottish dialect. The remainder of the area, including the Lagan valley, has accents derived from England, more particularly from Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and southern Lancashire, as well as the West Country counties of Gloucestershire, Avon, Somerset, and Devon. The towns show more of a mixture and an overlay of standard English.

      Northern Ireland's political divisions are partly reflected through language. Although English is near-universally spoken by everyone in the six counties, Irish also is spoken by a small but significant and growing proportion of the population and is an important element of the cultural identity for many northern nationalists (Roman Catholics who support unification with Ireland)—even those with limited knowledge of the language. Unionists (Protestants who support Northern Ireland's status as a constituent element of the United Kingdom), on the other hand, tend to distrust and dismiss Irish as a cultural expression of political divisiveness.

Religion

      The demographic balance between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland is becoming increasingly delicate. Catholics now make up about two-fifths of the population, and their slightly higher birth rate has led to speculation that they eventually will become the larger of the “two communities.” Although Protestants continue to be a majority, they are perhaps best thought of as a “majority of minorities,” in that the Protestant community comprises a mosaic of distinct denominations that vary enormously in size. The most substantial Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland, the Presbyterians, makes up more than one-fifth of the population. About one in six people belong to the next biggest Protestant denomination, the Anglican Church of Ireland. The remainder of the Protestant population is fragmented among dozens of smaller religious groupings.

      Protestant and Catholic communities are not distributed evenly. During the political violence of the last third of the 20th century, many Protestants moved away from western and border areas of Northern Ireland. As a result, the historic counties of Londonderry, Fermanagh, and Tyrone now have marked Catholic majorities, while the traditional concentration of Protestants in the eastern reaches has increased. One important exception to this rule is Belfast on the eastern seaboard, where Catholics have become the majority. During the “Troubles”—the term used euphemistically to describe the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland—many wealthy Protestants from Belfast relocated to the pastoral environs of northern Down while their less privileged counterparts moved to the bleak estates that sprung up in the satellite towns that ring the city.

      Northern Ireland is also marked by stark patterns of residential segregation. Even when Catholics and Protestants reside in the same part of the region, they tend to live separately from one another. Indeed, about half the Northern Irish live in districts in which nine-tenths or more of residents are drawn from one of the two communities. This segregation, especially evident in Belfast, is even more pronounced in poorer neighbourhoods. The hostilities between adjacent working-class districts composed of different ethnoreligious communities have led to the creation of “peace lines,” essentially permanent structures aimed at keeping the warring factions apart. The complex sectarian geography of Northern Ireland places often severe constraints upon the physical mobility of working-class residents in particular and has an important impact upon the manner in which everyday life is organized and experienced. In the interest of self-preservation, young people learn early to recognize the various cues that indicate ethnoreligious identity.

Settlement patterns

      The traditional regions of Northern Ireland correspond closely to the main topographic elements, although they are also the outcome of the cultural evolution of the area. In the north and east the influence of the Scots and English has been paramount. West of Lough Neagh and in the fastness of the Mourne Mountains and of Slieve Gullion, as well as in the more distant Lough Erne region, indigenous elements have maintained a distinctiveness. Such relatively isolated pockets as the glens of the northeast coast and Kilkeel on the southeast coast retain a local consciousness that gives colour and interest to the human geography of Northern Ireland.

      The predominant impression of Northern Ireland's landscape is of scattered and isolated farms. Occasional relics of tiny hamlets, or clachans, show that peasant crofts once were huddled together and worked by kinship groups in an open-field system. Between the end of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century, most of the land was enclosed and the scattered strips consolidated, partly as a policy of the landlords but finally because of the decline in rural population after the Potato Famine of the 1840s. The end result was the orderly, small square fields that dominate the contemporary landscape. Some landlords rearranged their tenants' land in narrow ribbons, from valley bottom to mountain pasture, giving a characteristic ladder of fields with the farms strung along the road on the valley side. Drumlins also have had an effect on siting; houses are found away from the peaty bottomlands but below the windswept skyline. Most farmhouses are small, and a few are still thatched. The occasional larger farm often has a Georgian house—simple and dignified, a reflection of the age of consolidation.

      Small market towns rather than villages are common. Built by the English and Scottish planters or by the landlords of the 18th century, they have a foreign touch of orderliness and urbanity. Many are grouped around a “diamond” (meeting place), which is used as a marketplace. Some of these towns acquired a mill in the 19th century, but in few cases has this changed the essentially rural context.

 Few of the market centres have grown into substantial towns. In the western half of Northern Ireland, regional services and administration have enlarged Omagh and Enniskillen. Some towns have grown with the introduction of industry, particularly Dungannon, which specializes in fabrics, and Carrickfergus, now noted for aluminum castings and telecommunications cables. Armagh is an ecclesiastical centre with two cathedrals, while Lisburn, Lurgan, and Portadown, all in the Lagan valley, form an extension of the Belfast industrial complex, their size a product of the textile industry. Bangor is a resort and a residential outlier of Belfast. Londonderry, a centre for shirtmaking, was the heart of the Lough Foyle lowlands until the hinterland that it served was split by the partition of Ireland, but it remains the main focus of the west. The size of Belfast, at the head of Belfast Lough on the northeast coast, underlines its dominance of the region, as well as its significance as an industrial centre and major port. Shipbuilding, linen manufacturing, and engineering have declined in Belfast, but shipping remains a major employer, and the aircraft industry has gained in importance. The city is also the centre of government, finance, education, and culture. Reflecting Belfast's 19th-century origin, most of the streets are inextricably and bleakly mixed with mills and factories, while the reclaimed land at the head of Belfast Lough is given over entirely to industry.

Demographic trends

      In terms of population, Northern Ireland is the smallest part of the United Kingdom, and its demographic profile differs from that of Great Britain in a number of ways. Although the Northern Irish birth rate declined over the last two decades of the 20th century, it remains relatively high by British standards. Since partition, emigration from Northern Ireland has tended to outpace immigration; however, the net outflow of people from the region has been relatively small, especially when compared with the mass emigration that has typified Ireland in various periods. The combination of a relatively high birth rate and negligible out-migration has contributed to a gradual rise in the population of Northern Ireland. During the 1990s the rate of population growth was twice the average for the United Kingdom as a whole. The population of Northern Ireland is also comparatively young in relation to the rest of the United Kingdom.

Economy

      Northern Ireland's economy is closely bound to that of the rest of the United Kingdom. Although historically the economic links between Northern Ireland and its closest neighbour, the republic of Ireland, were remarkably underdeveloped, trade between the two has grown substantially. Compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, the economy of Northern Ireland has long suffered, largely a result of political and social turmoil. To spur economic development, in the 1980s the British and Irish governments created the International Fund for Ireland, which disburses economic assistance to the entire island, with significant resources going to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland also receives economic assistance from the European Union.

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing

      While agriculture historically played an important part in the economy of Northern Ireland, its significance has declined greatly over recent decades. As in other developed societies, the introduction of new technologies has accelerated a process of consolidation, and there are now fewer but substantially larger and more productive farms. In the process, agriculture has become a relatively insignificant source of employment. At the beginning of the 21st century, less than 5 percent of people in Northern Ireland earned a living from the land, though about three-fourths of the total land area was used for agriculture, forestry, and livestock.

 Northern Ireland's frequent rainfall, humidity, and prospect of wet harvests discourage arable farming, but local conditions produce good grass and rich pasture. Nearly all grassland is plowed, and there is little “rough grazing.” Mixed farming was traditionally universal, but there has been a considerable movement toward specialization. Nearly half the farms concentrate on sheep and beef, and about one-fifth specialize in dairying. Principal crops include potatoes, barley, wheat, and oats; turnips are grown to feed livestock. The production of grass seed and seed potatoes for export is also important. To the south of Lough Neagh lies a rich orchard country, and apple growing and market gardening are constant features of the landscape. Most of the agricultural land is held by the occupiers in fee simple, but there persists the peculiar feature of conacre, a system of short (11-month) lets, on a portion of the agricultural land. About two-thirds of the farmers are “working owners.”

      Forestry is not an important industry in Northern Ireland, as much of the native forests were cleared by the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, with about 1 percent of the land forested, the government encouraged reforestation. In 1919 the Forestry Commission was established to develop policy, and afforestation efforts occurred throughout much of the 20th century. By the end of the century, about 200,000 acres (81,000 hectares) were forested, with about three-fourths of the woodland administered by the Forestry Service. Most of the limited timber production, which accounts for a tiny fraction of employment and gross domestic product (GDP), occurs on state-owned lands.

      Ocean fishing is more or less confined to the northern Irish Sea and is limited to trawlers that operate primarily from the ports of Kilkeel, Ardglass, and Portavogie. Prawns, cod, whiting, and herring are among the main catches. There has been increasing development of marine farming, particularly for oysters. Inland, salmon and eel fishing is traditional, the latter concentrated where the River Bann leaves Lough Neagh.

Resources and power

      Northern Ireland is not rich in minerals, and mining contributes little to the economy. Less than 1 percent of workers are employed in mining. Among the minerals found are basalt, limestone, chalk, clay, salt, and shale, and there is some iron ore, bauxite, and coal. Hydroelectric resources are not significant, and peat is used as a domestic source of fuel. There are also limited petroleum and natural gas reserves. In the early 21st century an electrical interconnector with Scotland was built to connect Northern Ireland to the European grid, and the interconnector with the grid in the Irish republic has been restored. The commissioning of a gas pipeline to Scotland has opened up a new industrial and domestic energy source. There are also plans to connect with the natural gas grid in the Irish republic.

Manufacturing

      During the 19th century the counties that would eventually form Northern Ireland underwent a rapid process of industrialization. In the decades before World War I, the Lagan valley formed with Merseyside and Clydeside a network that was the heart of the British imperial economy. Belfast became the site of many linen mills, rope factories, and heavy engineering concerns. For a time the city produced a greater tonnage of shipping than any other port in the world.

      The 20th century, in contrast, was marked by a slow though inexorable industrial decline. Although this trend was reversed somewhat by the outbreak of World War II, the structural weakness of Northern Irish manufacturing became increasingly apparent in the decades that followed. In the mid 1960s the government offered inducements to multinational corporations to invest in Northern Ireland, but, while many foreign companies agreed to establish factories there, the new approach failed to stem the collapse of the manufacturing sector in the last decades of the century.

      Two principal factors are responsible for the deindustrialization of Northern Ireland. First, the sustained political violence that overtook the region in the late 1960s has undermined local manufacturing. Ultimately, the executives of multinational corporations have proved reluctant to establish branch plants in a part of the developed world that has become synonymous with political upheaval. Second, the industrial collapse of Northern Ireland must be seen in the wider context of the reconstruction of the global economy. Since the oil price rises of the early 1970s, Western corporations have systematically closed factories in developed societies and transferred production to low-wage economies in the less-developed world. Like the economic life of many other developed countries, that of Northern Ireland has essentially become postindustrial. Indeed, many of the factories that drove Northern Ireland's industrial economy at its height now stand idle or await conversion to luxury apartments. The shipyards in Belfast stumble from one threatened closure to the next. At the end of the 20th century the manufacturing sector that once employed more than half the Northern Irish workforce provided work for less than one in five.

Finance

      Unified fiscally with the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland's official currency is the British pound sterling. The three primary revenue sources include a share of the United Kingdom's revenue from customs and excise, income, value-added, and capital gains taxes, as well as the national insurance surcharge; nontax revenue collected locally, such as rates (contributions toward the cost of government services) and property taxes; and specific and nonspecific payments from the United Kingdom, which have become increasingly important since the onset of political unrest in the late 1960s. At the end of the 20th century, subsidies from the British Treasury accounted for about two-fifths of Northern Ireland's GDP.

Trade

      Most of Northern Ireland's imports come from, and exports go to, other parts of the United Kingdom. The republic of Ireland is Northern Ireland's primary external trading partner and its leading export market. However, Northern Ireland has consistently run a trade deficit with its southern neighbour. Other major trading partners include Germany, France, and the United States. Among the country's principal exports are textiles, transport equipment, and electrical and optical equipment.

Services

      As manufacturing dwindled in significance, the service sector emerged as the linchpin of the Northern Irish economy and now provides about three-fourths of jobs. Retailing, financial services, and real estate are particularly important sources of local private employment; however, the growth of the tertiary sector is also largely due to the expansion of public services that began in the early 1970s. Indeed, it has been suggested that as many as two out of three in the Northern Irish workforce are employed directly or indirectly by the state, especially in the fields of health, education, administration, and security. Because of the political violence that plagued Northern Ireland, for much of the late 20th century the tourist industry was virtually nonexistent. With the signing of the peace agreement between nationalists and unionists in the late 1990s, however, the tourist industry became an important job creator and revenue generator, though the sector accounted for less than 5 percent of GDP and continued to suffer because of intermittent violence. The vast majority of tourists come from other areas of the United Kingdom.

Labour

      Local trade unions are affiliated with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions through its Northern Ireland Committee. Most union members belong both to unions associated with this organization and to British-based unions affiliated with the Trades Union Congress.

Transportation

      One of the more noteworthy features of the countryside of Northern Ireland is a close network of well-maintained roads that connects all parts of the region. Public road transport outside the Belfast municipal service has been nationalized since 1935, and since 1968 the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company (formerly the Ulster Transport Authority) has also controlled the railways, bus companies, and Belfast airport. The railways diminished rapidly—from 824 miles (1,326 km) to about one-fourth that figure—in the economic reorganization following nationalization. Inland waterways have almost disappeared, although a little commercial traffic still uses the Lower Bann Navigation to Coleraine, and there is some recreational sailing.

      Northern Ireland is well connected to the other regions of the United Kingdom by both sea and air. Belfast is one of the major ports in Britain and Ireland and has several miles of quays with modern container-handling facilities. Larne and Derry are the other ports of significance. Coleraine and Warrenpoint handle some freight, and Larne and Belfast handle passenger transport. The Belfast International Airport, near Aldergrove, has regular air service to major cities in Britain, Europe, and North America. A more recently built, though smaller, airport located in Belfast has become increasingly popular with commuters traveling to Great Britain and elsewhere.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

      Because Northern Ireland is a constituent element of the United Kingdom, its head of government is the British prime minister, and its head of state is the reigning monarch. Although the 1920 Government of Ireland Act envisaged separate parliaments exercising jurisdiction over southern and northern Ireland, the architects of the partition anticipated that the new constitutional entity to be known as Northern Ireland would prove too small to be viable and would be rapidly absorbed into a united Ireland. However, because the northern Protestants staunchly opposed the idea of being governed from Dublin, the Irish border has persisted into the 21st century.

 The political powers devolved to the new legislature in Belfast by the act of 1920 were considerable (including control of housing, education, and policing), but the new government had little fiscal autonomy and became increasingly reliant upon subsidies from the British government. The form and practice of the new parliament in Belfast mirrored that of Westminster in many respects; for example, the legislature consisted of a Senate and a House of Commons. Under the terms of the partition settlement, London retained control in matters relating to the crown, war and peace, the armed forces, and foreign powers, as well as trade, navigation, and coinage.

      When the Irish Free State formally seceded from the British Empire and constituted itself as an independent state in 1949, the British government sought to allay the fears of Protestants in the north by passing legislation stating that Northern Ireland was and would remain an integral part of the United Kingdom. The Act of Union (Union, Act of), which entered into force in 1801, abolished the Irish Parliament and provided for Irish representation in the British Parliament. After the partition of Ireland in 1922, Northern Ireland continued to send representatives to Westminster. Over the years the number of members of Parliament (MPs) elected in Northern Ireland has grown to 18. Northern Ireland also elects delegates to the European Parliament (the legislative branch of the European Union).

      In response to a deteriorating political climate in Northern Ireland and to years of horrific levels of communal violence, in March 1972 the British government of Edward Heath (Heath, Sir Edward) suspended the Belfast parliament and Home Rule and began governing the region directly through the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. From the outset the British government sought political settlements that would foster stability and enable the restoration of a revised version of devolved power in the region. However, for more than 25 years a series of attempts to introduce either a power-sharing executive or a new assembly proved unsuccessful.

      Nevertheless, political settlements continue to be proffered. On April 10, 1998, the Belfast Agreement (or Good Friday Agreement) was signed by representatives of various political factions in Northern Ireland, paving the way, many thought, for the end to the theretofore intractable Troubles. Moreover, referenda based on the agreement were passed overwhelmingly on both sides of the Irish border, with about 95 percent of Irish voters and 70 percent of Northern Irish voters endorsing the agreement. While the Belfast Agreement envisaged changes on many fronts, its central concern was political accommodation between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

      Under the terms of the initiative, the 108-member assembly established in Belfast is obliged to operate along consociational lines, and the executive includes both unionists (Protestants who support continued British rule of Northern Ireland) and nationalists (Catholics who support a united Ireland). The legislature selects a first minister and a deputy first minister, both of whom need the support of a majority of unionist and nationalist legislators. Moreover, legislation can be passed in the assembly only if it has the support of a minimum proportion of both unionist and nationalist members.

      Initially at least, the powers exercised by the new assembly were slated to be relatively minor. Control over key issues such as taxation, policing, and criminal justice were retained by Westminster. Further devolution of authority was dependent on the success of the initiative. While opposition to the agreement existed on both sides, it was especially strong among unionists. The future success of the peace process seemed to hinge on whether the issue of “decommissioning” of paramilitary weapons, particularly by the Irish Republican Army, could be resolved. Although considerable progress was made toward decommissioning, there continues to be significant opposition to the peace process by some segments of the unionist community. In 2002 devolved power was suspended, and Northern Ireland was ruled from London. In subsequent years the more moderate parties that negotiated the Belfast Agreement were supplanted as Northern Ireland's leading parties, making it more difficult to achieve compromise and the return of power to Northern Ireland. In 2007, however, the more hard-line Roman Catholic Sinn Féin and the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)—the latter having previously refused even to meet with representatives of Sinn Féin—reached a historic settlement to form a power-sharing government, thereby allowing the return of devolved power to Northern Ireland.

Local government

      The former two-tier system of local government—6 counties and a county borough, 24 urban and 26 rural districts—was replaced in 1973 by a single-tier system, paralleling similar changes in the remainder of the United Kingdom; this structure remained unaffected by the local government reorganization in the rest of the United Kingdom in 1996–98. There are now a total of 26 districts, each with an elected council. The status of Belfast and Derry was maintained in their designation as city councils, and 13 other councils— Antrim, Ards, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Carrickfergus, Castlereagh, Coleraine, Craigavon, Larne, Limavady, Lisburn, Newtownabbey, and North Down—have borough status. The councils are responsible for licensing, parks and recreation, environmental health, waste collection, arts and cultural events, local tourism, and economic development. They have an advisory role on regional services such as planning, education, housing, and health and social welfare.

Justice

      In most respects the administration of justice parallels the system in the United Kingdom as a whole and is administered by the Crown Court, the High Court, and the Court of Appeal, with final recourse to the House of Lords. Minor offenses are dealt with by a magistrates' court, and others in county courts supervised by a judge and subject to a jury. The exception is politically motivated crimes (“terrorist offenses”), which are heard by a single Crown Court judge with no jury. In 1995 the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission was created to examine convictions and sentencing as part of the appeal process.

Political process

      All citizens 18 years of age or older are eligible to vote. For elections to the House of Commons in London, members are elected by plurality vote in single-member geographic constituencies. In contrast, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and to the European Parliament are conducted by the single-transferable-vote formula, a form of proportional representation that virtually guarantees representation for the various sectarian parties.

      From the outset the political culture of Northern Ireland has been dominated by the “border question,” with political aspirations in the region often closely associated with ethnoreligious background. The overwhelming majority of Protestants prefer that the union with Great Britain continue, and they most often vote for those parties dedicated to that end. Political attitudes within the Catholic community tend to be more complex. Opinion polls conducted in Northern Ireland indicate that a substantial minority of Catholics are essentially indifferent to the constitutional future of the region, and it seems likely that those Catholics who have secured significant material gains since the introduction of “direct rule” from Westminster tend to be disinterested in the border question. Most Catholics, however, aspire to a united Ireland and vote accordingly. As a result, the Catholic community as a whole is generally characterized as nationalist. The proportion of representatives from unionist parties in the House of Commons generally has been greater than the overall share of Protestants in Northern Ireland.

Unionist parties

      The finer details of party political life in Northern Ireland tend to reflect the divisions that exist within the two main communities. For most of the 20th century, unionist politics in Northern Ireland was dominated by the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), but during the unrest that began in the 1960s the monolith of unionism disintegrated into a bewildering array of parties. Consequently, contemporary Ulster unionism has been defined by its accommodation of a host of competing, often contradictory voices. Indeed, in recent elections unionist voters have been faced with the choice of no fewer than six parties, as well as an endless stream of independents.

      Nevertheless, since the 1970s, unionist politics in Northern Ireland has been dominated by two main parties: the UUP, whose support declined in the last decades of the 20th century, and its principal competitor, the DUP, which opposed the Belfast Agreement and traditionally tends to be less open to political compromise than the UUP, perhaps partly because it is supported by more fundamentalist Protestant denominations; following the 2007 elections, however, the DUP agreed to form a power-sharing government with the nationalist Sinn Féin. Another “loyalist” party, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), has ties to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force.

Nationalist (nationalism) parties

      The political allegiances of nationalists are divided between two rather different parties: the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the principal voice of Irish nationalism since the 1970s; and Sinn Féin, often characterized as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Appealing primarily to the Catholic middle class, the SDLP has insisted that a resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland is dependent on dialogue and compromise. Its strategy—centred on unionists and nationalists sharing power and on closer ties between Belfast and Dublin—has proved persuasive to key players in the peace process outside Northern Ireland. Indeed, many terms of the Belfast Agreement reflect measures the party has long advocated.

      In contrast, Sinn Féin traditionally has argued that the Troubles are merely another example of the problems that British imperialism has visited upon Ireland and that the only solution is departure of the British and unification of the island. The IRA's 1995 cease-fire was a historic move away from its traditional commitment to a military solution to end Britain's sovereignty over Northern Ireland. Subsequently Sinn Féin scored electoral gains, even becoming the largest nationalist party (albeit by a small margin) in national and local elections in 2001.

The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (Alliance Party of Northern Ireland)

      Of the political parties that have sought to attract voters from both unionist and nationalist communities, only the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) has had meaningful impact, though despite its success at the polls it has never become a major player in the political affairs of the region. Although formally supportive of the union, it has drawn backing from roughly equal numbers of unionists and nationalists, largely among middle-class liberals. Ironically, the advancing peace process appears to have eroded support for the APNI, one of the few local parties that has consistently championed negotiation and tolerance. Despite its attempt to remain outside either the nationalist or unionist camps within the Northern Ireland Assembly, in 2001 the APNI registered as a unionist party in order to provide a unionist majority for the first minister, saving Northern Ireland from even greater political turmoil.

Security

      Policing is a politically contentious matter. After partition, policing in Northern Ireland was the responsibility of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), whose officers are overwhelmingly drawn from the unionist community, prompting deep distrust of the force by many nationalists. The Belfast Agreement called for a reformed and smaller police force able to engage the support of the nationalist community. Published in December 2000, the report of the Patten Commission on policing recommended comprehensive reform of policing practice and structures. Many of its recommendations, including changing the RUC's name to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, have been implemented.

      Security forces in Northern Ireland (and the rest of the United Kingdom) have long had extensive powers to combat terrorism. In particular, they have special powers to arrest and interrogate individuals suspected of terrorist offenses. The number of people charged with terrorist or other serious offenses to the public order peaked at more than 1,400 in the early 1970s but had declined by about four-fifths that number by the beginning of the 21st century, as loyalist and IRA prisoners were released under provisions of the Belfast Agreement.

      In August 1969 sustained civil unrest led to the introduction of British troops onto the streets of Londonderry and Belfast, and the British army played a central and controversial role in the political tragedy that unfolded. (Significantly, the army recruited a regiment specifically composed of people from Northern Ireland; initially known as the Ulster Defence Regiment, this force merged with the Royal Irish Rangers in 1992 and was renamed the Royal Irish Regiment.) At the height of the Troubles, heavily armed soldiers and police officers were a common sight in Northern Ireland, with a peak of about 27,000 British troops garrisoned there. As the possibility of a settlement increased, however, the security forces became a much less visible presence, and in 2007 the army contingent was reduced to 5,000 troops, with the responsibility for security transferred completely to the police.

      Throughout the Troubles, the Maze prison, located 10 miles (16 km) west of Belfast at a former Royal Air Force airfield, was a symbolic centre of the struggle between unionists and nationalists. The prison sometimes housed up to 1,700 prisoners, including many of the most notorious paramilitary offenders. The prison population was divided along paramilitary lines, with each prisoner responsible to his “commanding officer.” As a result, the prison was the site of many protests and violent activities, including hunger strikes, attempts at mass escape, and murder; it was considered by some to be a “university of terror,” where both unionist and nationalist prisoners learned how to commit deadlier terrorist offenses after their release. Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, most prisoners—including many who were convicted of murder—were released, and the prison was closed in 2000.

Health and welfare

      In Northern Ireland the provision of health care is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Services. The Queen's University has a large medical faculty that supports the health service. Northern Ireland is also known for its export of doctors and nurses.

      Because it has traditionally been the most underdeveloped region of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has had a comparatively high incidence of socioeconomic problems. Although joblessness declined in the 1990s, unemployment has remained high relative to the rest of the United Kingdom, and at the beginning of the 21st century only London, North East England, and Scotland had higher levels of unemployment. Moreover, wages are often lower and working conditions worse in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. The coincidence of relatively high unemployment and comparatively poor wages has meant that the Northern Irish are more likely than British citizens in general to be dependent upon the state.

      As in a number of other Western societies at the end of the 20th century, the gap between the rich and poor in Northern Ireland has widened. In 1979 one-tenth of the population of Northern Ireland resided in households earning less than 50 percent of the national average income; by 1999 this proportion had grown to one in four. As the number of relatively poor people has grown, so, too, has the number of comparatively wealthy, partly because of the rise in the number of management and professional positions in the public sector. Moreover, because housing prices are appreciably lower than the British average, the “new middle classes” in Northern Ireland are able to enjoy lifestyles that would be beyond their means if they lived in most other regions of the United Kingdom.

Housing

      Substandard housing for the Catholic community was one of the grievances that led to protests by Catholics during the 1960s. At that time, less than two-thirds of Catholic homes—compared with about three-fourths of Protestant homes—had hot water. Moreover, the allocation of public housing units was under the control of Protestant-dominated local councils, which were accused of discriminatory practices. Over the last quarter of the 20th century, significant investments were made in housing, eliminating most inequities. Rates of home ownership increased significantly, especially because of policies implemented by the British government that allowed the sale of public housing units to their tenants. Whereas less than half of all homes were owned by their tenants in the early 1970s, by the end of the century more than 70 percent of homes were owner-occupied.

Education

      While education policy in Northern Ireland has been strongly influenced by trends elsewhere within the United Kingdom, the region's schools remain distinctive. Notably, the model of education practiced in Northern Ireland continues to be very selective. At around age 11 most children still take intelligence tests that determine the type of second-level institution they will attend. However, these “ eleven-plus” examinations have been eliminated in most of the rest of the United Kingdom, and a report issued in 2001 recommended that they also be abolished in Northern Ireland and replaced by a transfer procedure, which would be based on parental choice of school in consultation with the staff of the child's primary school. However, there was considerable opposition from grammar schools to the proposed changes. Grammar schools in Northern Ireland cater to pupils deemed capable of appreciating an academic education; secondary intermediate schools offer more general and vocational training. Northern Irish schools are also segregated along ethnoreligious lines. Although formally open to all, the state-run schools tend to attract Protestant children. Pupils from nationalist backgrounds typically attend schools effectively under the control of the Catholic church. While there are schools that draw more or less equally from both communities, they are few in number.

      Northern Ireland has two universities. The Queen's University of Belfast, established in 1845 as one of three in Ireland, has had a charter since 1908. The University of Ulster was established in 1984 by the merger of the New University of Ulster (at Coleraine) and the Ulster Polytechnic. It has campuses at Coleraine, Jordanstown, Derry, and Belfast.

Cultural life

      Cultural life in Northern Ireland tends to follow the contours of political and sectarian differences and to be marked by any number of shibboleths. For example, Roman Catholics and Protestants may listen to the same song but call it by different names; however, age, gender, and class play at least as large a role as religion in explaining many variations in music, drinking, and social life. Although there is a shared participation in global culture, such as Hollywood movies, football (soccer), and popular music, both the nationalist and unionist communities maintain their own cultural practices. Irish music and dance and the Gaelic games (football and hurling) form a cultural focus in nationalist communities, along with an interest in the Irish language that has led to the establishment of a network of Irish-language schools. In the unionist community, attempts to establish Ulster-Scots as a language have not been successful, and cultural life has been more influenced by trends in the rest of the United Kingdom. Much cultural activity in Protestant working-class communities has centred on the Orange Order and the tradition of marching bands. Both communities have produced internationally known writers, poets, actors, and musicians, many of whom have spoken out forcefully against sectarian violence. Government, through its various agencies, takes a keen interest in promoting cultural practices that transcend sectarian divisions. Cultural life in Northern Ireland tends to be public and oral. Outsiders are struck by the lively social life, the importance of conversation and the witty remark, and the abiding interest in music.

Daily life and social customs

      Northern Ireland is in many ways a traditional society. Church attendance is high (but steadily declining), family life is central, and community ties are strong. The daily interactions of most people are confined to members of their own community, whether in urban neighbourhoods or country villages. Dancing, music, and cultural and community festivals proliferate in Catholic communities, particularly in the months following St. Patrick's Day (March 17). Easter and the ancient Celtic Halloween are celebrated by both communities, albeit separately. Poitín (illegal homemade whiskey) is sometimes drunk at weddings and funerals.

      The centrepiece of Protestant celebrations is the marching season commemorating the Battle of the Boyne (Boyne, Battle of the), which marks William III's victory in 1690 over the deposed Catholic king James II. A colourful, boisterous tradition, the marches begin about Easter and reach a climax on July 12. They often wind their way into now majority-Catholic communities, and, because of their political overtones, the marches have engendered significant hostility from the Catholic community and regularly embroil the British government in political controversy. Violent clashes between Protestants and Catholics are not uncommon during the marching season.

      Everyday life is permeated by political divisions. Complex linguistic codes govern interactions between people, particularly those with strangers in public places. Public space is generally defined as Catholic, Protestant, or mixed—by far the smallest category—and forays across sectarian boundaries are often avoided. Apart from some middle-class and student areas, most neighbourhoods are religiously homogeneous and are often defined by “peace walls,” which separate the two communities. These walls are festooned with lively murals and graffiti that represent some of the country's most visible public art. It is in areas where boundaries are fluid and contested and where poverty and deprivation abound, such as North Belfast, that most sectarian conflict occurs. In rural areas there is little direct confrontation, but the bitterness remains; indeed, some of the worst atrocities of the late 20th century took place in the countryside.

      As primary and secondary school education remains predominantly parochial, there is little contact between Catholic and Protestant children. The schools have become a focal point for attacks, especially against Catholic children on their way to and from school in North Belfast. These attacks attest to the continued deep sectarian divisions that pervade daily life in Northern Ireland.

The arts

      Northern Ireland's Arts Council, a semiautonomous body, is officially charged with encouraging all aspects of the arts, and the establishment of a government ministry has provided further impetus for artistic development. Local councils also devote a proportion of their budget to the arts. Funds from the National Lottery have been disbursed to build new theatres and arts centres, notably in Londonderry and Armagh. The reopening of the Grand Opera House in 1980 marked an important moment in the revival of the performing arts in Belfast. A new concert venue, the Waterfront Hall, opened in 1998, and a cultural quarter near the city centre has been developed. The city has a number of other theatres and arts centres, and there is also a touring company based at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. Classical music is mainly imported, but Belfast has a symphony orchestra and a youth orchestra and has fostered one of the largest festivals (ranging from classical to pop music) in the United Kingdom.

      The sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants has left a distinct imprint on the arts; few art forms were untouched by the conflict. The troubled reality of Northern Ireland has been central to drama, poetry, fiction, and the visual arts. The most focused impact of the Troubles was on the visual arts, however. During most of the 20th century, the small and conservative visual art world was dominated by the landscape tradition, and ambitious artists moved to either Dublin or London. From the 1980s, younger artists (along with some of the earlier generation) began to produce a body of art concerned with problems of identity, conflict, and place. During the last two decades of the 20th century, there was a dramatic expansion in the visual arts, as the newer generation explored installation, video, and digital art forms. Lacking a developed art market, however, many artists continued to move to the republic of Ireland, where state support for artists is well established.

 A number of poets, playwrights, musicians, and writers have achieved international recognition. Among Northern Ireland's most famous writers is Belfast-born C.S. Lewis (Lewis, C.S.), whose Chronicles of Narnia series is a classic of modern children's literature, while the Brontë family, which migrated to England from County Down, is remembered there with a cultural centre. The Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (Heaney, Seamus) and poets such as Paul Muldoon, Tom Paulin, Medbh McGuckian, Derek Mahon, and Michael Longley have well-established reputations; many of these poets have drawn inspiration from Old Irish work such as the 7th–8th-century epic Táin bó Cuailnge (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Cattle Raid of Cooley, The)”), and Heaney has translated the 12th-century Irish epic poem Buile Suibhne (“The Frenzy of Suibhne” or “The Madness of Sweeney”). Playwright Brian Friel (Friel, Brian) and novelists Brian Moore (Moore, Brian), Bernard MacLaverty, and Robert MacLiam Wilson have also gained international acclaim.

      As with the other arts, Northern Ireland's music tends to be classified as either Roman Catholic or Protestant. Drawing on Scottish, French, English, and Austrian sources, the traditional music that most of the world associates with Ireland is largely the preserve of the nationalists and central to the ceilis, the informal musical gatherings that are so much a part of the Scottish and Irish traditions. While there are pockets of this sort of music in the Protestant community, its musical tradition is centred on marching bands, most of which are more enthusiastic than competent. One distinctive component of the Protestant tradition is the Lambeg drum, made of goatskin stretched over an oak shell. While most well-known Catholic musicians tend to perform in traditional idioms, many Protestants have found success blending local traditions into a more cosmopolitan framework.

      The flutist James Galway and pianist Barry Douglas have had tremendous success in classical circles, while the compositions of Elaine Agnew have found a following outside the country. Belfast native Van Morrison (Morrison, Van) is one of rock music's major figures, and the city's Stiff Little Fingers was an influential part of the United Kingdom's punk rock explosion of the late 1970s. Northern Ireland's vibrant musical culture helps to nurture young musicians.

      The film industry has had a growing presence in Northern Ireland. Actors Liam Neeson and Stephen Rea are internationally recognizable, and Kenneth Branagh (Branagh, Kenneth), whose family left Northern Ireland when he was a child, has found success as both an actor and a director. Many films have depicted Northern Irish society and settings, notably Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947) and Cal (1984), directed by Pat O'Connor. Belfast inaugurated an annual film festival in 2000.

Cultural institutions

      Belfast is the site of the Ulster Museum, the national museum and art gallery. Londonderry and Armagh also have galleries with permanent collections. The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra provides a particularly interesting link with the peasant origins of Northern Ireland and includes an open-air folk museum.

      Of other cultural institutions, perhaps the most notable is Armagh Observatory. Founded by Archbishop Richard Robinson (Lord Rokeby) in 1790, it has remained an independently governed institution, though it receives considerable state aid. Along with the separate but related Armagh Planetarium, the observatory offers extensive public programs and has one of the few astronomy libraries in Britain and Ireland. A major collection of Irish literature is housed at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. There also is a major maritime museum, the Harbour Museum, in Londonderry.

Sports and recreation

      The people of Northern Ireland participate in the same sports that are played throughout the United Kingdom. Most athletes in Northern Ireland compete in the Olympic Games as part of the United Kingdom team (though many Roman Catholics join the national team of the republic of Ireland). Northern Ireland fields a separate national team for World Cup football. Arguably, Northern Ireland's most famous footballer was Danny Blanchflower, who starred when the Northern Irish reached the World Cup quarterfinals in Sweden in 1958. In addition to football, Rugby Union football is especially popular, and players from the Ulster team join the Irish team for international matches. Moreover, the Gaelic games—including such traditional sports as Gaelic football, hurling, and handball—have gained significant popularity, though confined primarily to the Catholic community. Sport fishing is among the most popular recreations, and the plentiful bream, roach, salmon, and trout attract fishing enthusiasts from throughout Europe. Northern Ireland's hill-walking courses and excellent beaches might also attract much greater numbers of tourists were it not for the region's political instability.

Media and publishing

      Northern Ireland is serviced by both state and commercial broadcasting. In addition to relaying its national programming, the British Broadcasting Corporation operates two regional radio services (Radio Foyle and Radio Ulster) and has television studios in Belfast. There are numerous independent radio stations and an independent television service (Ulster Television PLC). Northern Ireland shares the British press, but several daily newspapers (e.g., the Belfast Telegraph and the Irish News) are published in Belfast.

      For further discussion, see the cultural life section of the article United Kingdom.

Emrys Jones Colin Coulter Jim Smyth

History

      Out of the 19th- and early 20th-century ferment that produced a sovereign state of Ireland to its south, Northern Ireland emerged in 1920–22 as a constituent part of the United Kingdom with its own devolved parliament. Northern Ireland's early history is the history of the traditional Irish province of Ulster, six of whose nine counties Northern Ireland embraces.

Early Ulster

 Ireland's northernmost provinces have some geographic distinctness. A diagonal line from the northwestern point of Donegal Bay to the southeastern point of Dundalk Bay marks the narrow waist of the island. A belt of hills, lakes, and forests along this line provides a natural border to the north, discouraging access to or from it. During early Christian times (the 5th and 6th centuries), the region had a distinctive culture, known under the Celtic name Ulaid (Latin: Ultonia; English: Ulster). Its political centre was at Emain Macha, or Navan Fort, near the present-day city of Armagh. The most successful Christian missionary in Ireland, the 5th-century Patrick (Patrick, Saint), was predominantly based in the north and associated with its rulers. He established his ecclesiastical centre near Emain Macha, at Armagh, which is still the primatial see of both the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Protestant Church of Ireland.

Mythic (myth) history

      Ulster is of special importance in the mythic history of Ireland because its rulers and their champions played a prominent role in the rich Irish sagas of the Middle Ages. The Ulster cycle of these tales deals with the exploits of a King Conchobar and the prodigious warriors of the Red Branch, the most celebrated of whom was Cú Chulainn. The best-known tale of this cycle is the Táin bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Cattle Raid of Cooley, The)), which recounts the invasion of Ulster by Queen Medb of Connaught (Connacht, the traditional western province; literally, the “descendants of Conn”) in pursuit of a legendary bull. Eventually the men of Connacht are repulsed by the Ulstermen and their spectacular hero, Cú Chulainn.

      The oldest manuscript of the Táin, known as The Book of the Dun Cow (Dun Cow, The Book of the), was compiled in the 12th century and contains language dated to the 8th century. However, it is widely assumed that the story existed in oral form for at least several centuries previously and that it includes descriptions of practices current in Celtic society in Ireland or Britain or in continental Europe as long as several centuries before the birth of Christ. If it is mythic with respect to particular persons and events, the Táin is nevertheless an invaluable source for the early history of Irish society.

Gaelic Irish and Anglo-Normans (c. 600–c. 1300)

      The postmythic history of Ulster dates from the 7th century, when it begins to be available from Latin documents and chronicles created by churchmen. By that time the 100 or more tuatha (clans) of the island had loosely grouped themselves into the five provinces of Ulster (Ulaidh), Meath (Midhe, which later dissolved), Leinster (Laighin), Munster (Mumhain), and Connaught (Connacht). By the 8th century Ulster was dominated by a dynasty called the Uí Néill (O'Neill), which claimed descent from a shadowy figure of the 5th century known as Niall of the Nine Hostages. Divided into a northern and a southern branch, the Uí Néill asserted hegemony as high kings, to whom all other Irish kings owed deference. In the early 11th century the king of Munster, Brian Boru, effectively challenged the high kings of the Uí Néill dynasty and thereby ended Ulster's political dominance in early Irish history.

      Munster's dominance was short-lived. In the mid-12th century an incursion of Norman adventurers from England, South Wales, and continental Europe greatly complicated the island's political pattern. The Norman beachhead was in Waterford in the southeast, but from there they struck out both north and west. By 1177 a force of several hundred men under John de Courci (Courci, John de), advancing north from Dublin, had established itself in northern County Down and southern County Antrim. They built formidable castles at Downpatrick and Carrickfergus and established the northeast coast as the heart of Norman Ulster. De Courci became so threateningly independent that King John of England created an earldom of Ulster in 1205 and conferred it upon the more-submissive Hugh de Lacy, who became known as the earl of Ulster (Ulster, Hugh de Lacy, earl of). The title passed to the Norman family of de Burgo, which was joined in the coastal sections of Down and Antrim in the late 13th century by Anglo-Norman families with names such as Mandeville, Savage, Logan, and Bisset. The hinterland of Ulster remained imperviously Gaelic. (For the subsequent fortunes of the Norman colony and the resurgence of Gaelic society in the 14th and 15th centuries, see 1600] (Ireland).)

Early modern Ulster

English and Scottish plantations

      During the 16th and 17th centuries, the most isolated and undisturbed part of Ireland was transformed by immigration from Britain. The narrow North Channel separates northeastern Ulster from southwestern Scotland. Whereas in the early Middle Ages there had been a significant eastward migration of people from Ulster to Scotland, a pronounced westward flow of Scots to Ulster began in the 16th century. The crucial preconditions of Ulster's transformation were expansion of English ambitions in Ireland from the 1530s, the defeat of Hugh O'Neill, 2nd earl of Tyrone (Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of), and the lords of the north in the opening years of the 17th century, and the determination of King James I to “plant” six of Ulster's nine counties with immigrant English and Scottish colonists.

      A few years after the defeat of the northern earls, an excuse was found to plant the six counties of Ulster, which were judged to have escheated to the crown. Only Monaghan, Down, and Antrim were excepted, the first because it had been subjected to a “native” plantation in the 1590s and the latter two because neither was held by the rebel earls and both were already areas of extensive de facto Scottish settlement. Plantation involved confiscated territory being granted to new landowners on condition that they would establish settlers as their tenants and that they would introduce English law and the Protestant religion. It formalized and encouraged an immigration that had begun before the 17th century and that continued throughout and after it.

Religion and social structure

      Religious differences accentuated the transforming effect of immigration. A halfhearted attempt to propagate Protestantism in Ireland had largely failed by the 1590s among both the Gaelic Irish and the so-called Old English (descendants of the Anglo-Normans). Despite its nominal proscription, the Roman Catholic Church claimed the allegiance of almost the entire population, except the newcomers from Britain. English-born settlers gravitated to the Church of Ireland (Ireland, Church of), a Protestant church modeled on the Church of England. Scottish settlers brought with them the ardent Calvinism that had recently established itself in their homeland. Any affinity that Gaelic Irish and Gaelic Scots might once have shared was offset, in an age of doctrinal extremism and intolerance, by the polarities of their respective religions.

      Ulster became a province dominated by Protestant English and Scottish planters. Its landholding aristocracy was largely English, but beneath it lay a yeomanry of substantial tenant farmers drawn from both Scottish and English immigrants. This represented a significant change in the economics of agriculture in Ireland. As a result, the native Irish were disadvantaged and displaced to less-arable and more-marginal landholdings, though many continued as tenants of the new owners. The most violent reaction to this economic and cultural displacement was the rebellion of 1641, which originated in Ulster and took the form of a surprise attack upon English (and later Scottish) settlers. The plantation temporarily collapsed as colonists fled for their lives, but, with the reconquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell (Cromwell, Oliver) in the 1650s and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, the Ulster plantation was reestablished.

The 18th and 19th centuries

Ulster in the 18th century

      The plantation of the 17th century made Ulster distinct among the provinces of Ireland because its immigrant British (and Protestant) population was larger and more concentrated than that of any other region. When in 1689 the Roman Catholic James II, who had been expelled from England by the Glorious Revolution of the previous year, attempted to recover his fortunes in Ireland, he based his forces in Catholic Dublin. His adversary and successor as king of Great Britain, the Protestant William III, made Protestant Belfast his encampment. When James's forces surrounded the new town of Londonderry, its Protestant inhabitants withstood a long and painful siege rather than capitulate to a Catholic Stuart. At the Battle of the Boyne (Boyne, Battle of the) in 1690, William's forces routed those of James. Although Ulster was the most British and most Protestant part of Ireland, it contained a large population of non-British Catholics and was contiguous with a larger and preponderantly Catholic Ireland.

      In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Ulster, like many predominantly Protestant regions of Europe, became a refuge for Huguenots (Huguenot), Protestants who fled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Nantes, Edict of) in 1685. Many of these refugees brought commercial and industrial skills that contributed to the development of linen cloth manufacture. Although the linen industry remained traditional and small-scale (and existed in other parts of Ireland as well), it established a foundation for the later industrialization of Belfast and the Lagan valley in the 19th century.

      In 18th-century Ulster there were two elite and two lower classes. One group of elites was predominantly “English,” contained the most influential landowners, and was Protestant, affiliated with the Church of Ireland; the other was predominantly “commercial,” contained Scots as well as English, and included Protestants affiliated with various sects, especially Calvinist ones. The two lower classes were divided by religion; one was Catholic, the other Protestant. Among the lower-class Protestants there was substantial emigration to North America in the middle decades of the 18th century. These so-called Scotch-Irish, frustrated by limited economic opportunity in Ulster, became a mainstay of the Middle Atlantic colonies and the Appalachian frontier. The lower-class Protestants who remained in Ulster competed with lower-class Catholics for favourable leases of land and later for favourable jobs. The elites gradually gained the allegiance of the lower-class Protestants by playing upon sectarian fears.

      Late 18th-century Ulster exhibited diverse, contrary tendencies. Belfast was the seat of the Society of United Irishmen (United Irishmen, Society of) (founded 1791), whose Enlightenment-inspired members dreamed of an ecumenical nation freed of corrupt Hanoverian monarchy and religious division. However, conditions in County Armagh gave rise to bitter sectarian strife, and a pitched battle between Protestant and Catholic factions at the Diamond (near Loughgall) in September 1795 led to the founding of the Orange Society (later known as the Orange Order), which was devoted to maintaining British rule and Protestant ascendancy. A series of rebellions (Irish Rebellion) in the summer of 1798—inspired by the United Irishmen but triggering the sectarian passions of the Catholic peasantry, especially in Leinster—attracted ineffectual French support and brutal British repression. Some 35,000 people died, and confidence in the ability of the relatively independent (since 1782) Irish Parliament to maintain stability was profoundly shaken. The result was the Act of Union (Union, Act of) of 1800, which ended such autonomy as existed and transferred Irish representation to the British Parliament at Westminster in London.

      From at least the end of the 17th century, the population of Ulster had been predominantly Protestant and British, a stark contrast from the rest of Ireland. Economic differences between Ulster and southern Ireland widened in the 19th century as the north underwent a process of industrialization and urbanization centred in Belfast and the Lagan valley. Textile manufacture, both cotton and linen, and a shipbuilding industry that was in many respects an extension of that of Clydeside in southwestern Scotland gave Ulster an economy and culture very different from that of the heavily rural and agricultural south. In the 1880s a Home Rule movement gathered force in Ireland and was embraced by the leader of Britain's Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone (Gladstone, William Ewart), portending minority status in a larger self-ruling Ireland to those who were self-consciously Protestant, British, and Ulster and rekindling the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish passions of the Orange Order.

Home Rule

      As prime minister, Gladstone introduced the first Home Rule Bill in Parliament in 1886. Although the measure was defeated in the House of Commons, its mere formulation was sufficient to raise the spectre of the political domination of Irish Protestants, located mainly in the north, by Irish Catholics, spread throughout the island. Orangeism revived explosively and was adroitly exploited by Conservatives (Conservative Party), who made “unionism”—preservation of the union of Great Britain and Ireland—its foremost concern.

      A second Home Rule Bill, also introduced by Gladstone, was defeated in 1893, during a Liberal interregnum in a period of prolonged Conservative rule. When the Liberals finally returned to power in 1905, their victory foretold another effort to establish a measure of self-government for Ireland. In 1912 the third, and final, Home Rule Bill twice passed the House of Commons, but both times it was defeated in the House of Lords. Protestant Ulster, under the leadership of a prominent barrister and member of Parliament, Edward Carson, Baron Carson (of Duncairn) (Carson, Edward Henry Carson, Baron), resisted incorporation into a self-governing Ireland. Oaths were sworn (the Solemn League and Covenant), and paramilitary forces were organized and armed. A civil war in Ireland (between Irish nationalists in the south and unionists in the north) seemed imminent. In 1914 the Home Rule Bill of 1912 passed the Commons for the third time, which, according to the Parliament Act of 1911, made ratification by the House of Lords unnecessary. However, when war broke out in Europe, the British government postponed the operation of the Home Rule Act until after the war, and the Liberal government of H.H. Asquith (Asquith, H H, 1st Earl Of Oxford And Asquith, Viscount Asquith Of Morley) implied that special provision would be made for Ulster. Putting aside their political differences, thousands of Irish Catholics and Protestants joined the British fighting forces in World War I. The situation in Ireland was dramatically inflamed, however, by the Easter Rising of 1916 and its immediate and harsh suppression. The south was becoming radicalized, and it began to appear that, however offensive the third Home Rule Bill was for Protestant Ulster, it was too late and too little to satisfy nationalist sentiment in Catholic Ireland.

      After the war the coalition government of David Lloyd George (Lloyd George, David) was obliged to deal with an almost impossible situation in which most of Ireland rejected the union and most of Ulster rejected everything else. The intended remedy was the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, which created two modestly self-governing units: one comprising six of Ulster's nine counties (later to be known as Northern Ireland), the other comprising the three remaining counties of Ulster together with the 23 counties of the rest of Ireland. Although the Protestant majority of the six counties clearly preferred continuation of the union for all of Ireland, it settled for Home Rule for itself. Paradoxically, the Catholic majority of the 26 counties, for whom Home Rule had originally been intended, rejected it as inadequate and fought a brief war with Britain before agreeing, through its provisional government, to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921–22. The treaty gave the new Irish Free State dominion status within the British Empire, but it also permitted the six counties of Northern Ireland to opt out of the arrangement, which they did. A boundary commission was established to review the borders between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. In 1925 the commission's final report would likely have involved only small territorial adjustments, with parts of Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Armagh being ceded to the Irish Free State and a part of Donegal to Northern Ireland. But these alterations would have been opposed by both Irish nationalists and unionists, and, with the prospect of an outbreak of fighting, a final report was never issued. Instead, a compromise was reached whereby the boundaries of Northern Ireland were confirmed as those marked by the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone.

Northern Ireland since 1922

Precarious coexistence

      The constitutional revisions of 1920–22 succeeded in creating a parliament in Northern Ireland that was acceptable to the approximately one million Protestant unionists of the six counties. However, they did not provide a remedy for the several hundred thousand Protestant unionists who lived elsewhere in Ireland, many of whom eventually moved to Northern Ireland. More important, they did not satisfy the concerns of the half million Roman Catholic nationalists who resided within the six counties. Under the leadership of James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon (Craigavon, James Craig, 1st Viscount), who served as prime minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1940, the Northern Ireland Parliament was dominated by a Protestant majority, which governed in its interest and which was dedicated to maintaining the union with Great Britain. Most Roman Catholics were never reconciled to their status within Northern Ireland, though their opposition was politically ineffective, and they suffered discrimination in employment, public housing, education, and social services. In addition, unionists ensured their political hold over Northern Ireland through the manipulation of electoral boundaries, which minimized the representation of Catholics.

      Balancing these disadvantages for the Catholic minority was the industrial economy of the north, which had no parallel in the south. By the end of the 19th century, Belfast was Ireland's largest city, with a population of nearly 350,000 and with numerous jobs in the textile industries and in shipbuilding. Although Protestants were overrepresented, often unfairly, in skilled jobs and managerial positions, Belfast's economic magnet drew lower-class Catholics from the impoverished countryside. The city experienced sectarian violence; its housing was highly segregated (with Catholics generally occupying much poor housing stock); and religious intolerance was rampant—all of which worsened already-difficult living conditions for Catholics—but its economic appeal endured even through the Great Depression of the 1930s and the doldrums of the 1960s and '70s.

      Several factors help to explain the relatively minor emigration of Roman Catholics from the north. Not only did they fear that they would be economically worse off in the south, but World War II brought a measure of economic revival, especially in ship and aircraft manufacture. Moreover, the social welfare provisions extended to Northern Ireland after the war by far exceeded the supports and protections available to individuals in the socially conservative south. Northern Catholics did not “vote with their feet,” but neither did they accept the stark inequities in Northern Ireland.

Disintegration of stability

      By the mid-1960s the fragile stability of Northern Ireland had begun to erode. The demographic majority that Protestants enjoyed ensured that they were able to control the state institutions, and these powers were more often than not used in ways that disadvantaged the Catholic minority in the region, though the extent and even the existence of discrimination in Northern Ireland remain a matter of heated debate. An active civil rights movement, partly inspired by the achievements of African Americans in the United States, emerged in the late 1960s, and incidents of communal violence increased. The police occasionally used force to disperse demonstrators from the streets. The coincidence of increasingly strident demands for reform and equally fervent insistence that there should be none produced a deadly dynamic that brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war.

      The British government sent troops “in aid of the civil power” at Stormont, Northern Ireland's parliament. Rioting and widespread urban violence had exhausted the Royal Ulster Constabulary and undermined its capacity to secure law and order. In 1969 the Provisional movement of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerged out of this communal disorder. The IRA acquired arms and explosives and initiated a campaign of bombings and shootings in order to protect Roman Catholics, destabilize Northern Ireland's institutions, weaken British resolve to maintain the union, and achieve Irish unity. In response to the violence, the authorities introduced internment without trial in August 1971 (ended 1975), but, rather than weakening the IRA's campaign, it encouraged its intensification. Protestant unionists responded by forming their own loyalist paramilitary brigades. In Londonderry on Jan. 30, 1972, a day that became known as Bloody Sunday, a peaceful but illegal protest by Catholics against the British government's internment policy turned violent, with British troops opening fire and killing 13 Catholic demonstrators (a 14th died several months later). (Bloody Sunday continued to be a matter of considerable controversy—in particular, the army's orders and the role of the IRA in the violence—and in the late 1990s the British government established a commission to determine the facts.) The bloodiest year of the “Troubles”—as the sectarian violence was popularly known—was 1972, when 467 people, including 321 civilians, were killed; approximately 275 people were killed each year in the period 1971–76. The violence diminished in the 1980s, when about 50 to 100 political murders and assassinations occurred each year, but, by the end of the 20th century, more than 3,600 people had been killed and 36,000 injured; of the deaths, more than 2,000 were the responsibility of republicans, 1,000 of loyalists, and more than 350 of the security forces. In the last three decades of the 20th century, more than 1,000 members of the security forces also were killed.

      In March 1972 Conservative British Prime Minister Edward Heath (Heath, Sir Edward) suspended the constitution and parliament of Northern Ireland, which thereby ended Home Rule (which did not return until 1999) and restored direct rule from London. Among several initiatives to restore Home Rule, the first, known as the Sunningdale Agreement, led to the creation in 1973 of a short-lived assembly in which Catholics were given some political authority. The Sunningdale Agreement also provided for a Council of Ireland linking the two jurisdictions on the island. Nevertheless, violence continued, and the power-sharing executive collapsed after only a few months because of a strike organized by the Ulster Workers' Council, a committee backed by Protestant paramilitaries. The British army remained a major presence, and elements of martial law permeated the operations of the government and the courts.

Power-sharing agreements and the establishment of a fragile peace

      An assembly that was intended to reflect the diversity of political opinion was established in 1982; however, it foundered and dissolved in 1986. Nationalists made clear that they would not accept a settlement solely internal to Northern Ireland, and they pushed for a significant, additional all-Ireland arrangement. In response, the British and Irish governments concluded the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), which (to the dismay of unionists) marked the first time that the government of Ireland had been given an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. In the 1990s talks were held between all Northern Ireland's major constitutional parties with the exception of Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, which was excluded on the grounds that the IRA, like the loyalist paramilitary groups, continued to engage in terrorist activity. Frameworks for all-party peace talks—notably the Downing Street Declaration (1993), issued by the British and Irish prime ministers, John Major (Major, John) and Albert Reynolds (Reynolds, Albert), respectively—were put forward. These guaranteed self-determination for the people of Northern Ireland, promised British government recognition of a unified Ireland if a majority of Northern Ireland's people agreed, and committed Ireland to abandoning its constitutional claim to Northern Ireland in the event of a political settlement.

      Both the IRA and the loyalist paramilitary groups announced the cessation of military activity in 1994, though sporadic incidents continued. The major stumbling block to all-party talks was the issue of IRA decommissioning (disarmament). Discussions resumed in June 1996—though Sinn Féin was not immediately a participant because the IRA had ended its cease-fire (reinstated 1997)—and culminated in the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement), signed in April 1998. Under the terms of this accord, responsibility for most local matters was to be devolved to an elected assembly. There were institutional arrangements for cross-border cooperation on a range of issues between the governments of Ireland and Northern Ireland and for continued consultation between the British and Irish governments. In a jointly held referendum in Ireland and Northern Ireland on May 22, 1998—the first all-Ireland vote since 1918—the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and 71 percent in Northern Ireland. However, the wide disparity between Catholic and Protestant support for the agreement in Northern Ireland (96 percent of Catholics but only 52 percent of Protestants voted in favour) indicated that efforts to resolve the sectarian conflict would be difficult.

      In elections to a new Northern Ireland Assembly held the following month, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the mainstream Protestant party, won 28 seats; the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), a moderate Catholic party, won 24; Ian Paisley (Paisley, Ian)'s Democratic Unionist Party, a hard-line Protestant party that opposed the Belfast Agreement, won 20; and Sinn Féin won 18. In July UUP leader David Trimble (Trimble, David) was elected “first minister designate,” and the SDLP's Seamus Mallon was elected Trimble's deputy. Less than two months later, a bombing in Omagh by the Real IRA, an IRA splinter group, killed 29—the deadliest such incident since the start of sectarian violence in the 1960s. The IRA's failure to decommission delayed the formation of the Northern Ireland Executive, in which Sinn Féin was to have two ministers. In December 1999 Trimble agreed, on the understanding that the IRA would fulfill its obligations to disarm, that the Northern Ireland Assembly could begin exercising its power. Nonetheless, it was only in 2001, after intense international pressure following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and several suspensions of devolution, that the IRA began the process of decommissioning. However, in October 2002 devolution was once again suspended amid claims that republicans were gathering intelligence information through a spy network that was operating within the government and contrary to the IRA's cease-fire agreement in 1997.

Karl S. Bottigheimer Arthur H. Aughey  One of the unforeseen consequences of the Belfast Agreement was a political polarization within both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic communities. For example, Sinn Féin and the hard-line Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) began to outpoll the more-moderate SDLP and UUP. Although Northern Ireland has experienced its most peaceful era in a generation, sectarian antagonism remains deep and the future of the new institutions uncertain. Still, there was great optimism following the IRA's announcement in July 2005 that it had ended its armed campaign and disposed of most of its weapons and would pursue only peaceful means to achieve its goals. Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly were held in March 2007, and the DUP captured the most votes, winning 36 seats in the 108-member Assembly; Sinn Féin was second with 28 seats. Later that month Gerry Adams (Adams, Gerry) and Ian Paisley (Paisley, Ian)—the leaders of Sinn Féin and the DUP, respectively—reached a historic agreement to form a power-sharing government. On May 8, 2007, devolution returned to Northern Ireland as Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were sworn in as first minister and deputy first minister, respectively. Further evidence of the changing reality in Northern Ireland came in August of that year, when the British military presence—which for decades had been ubiquitous—was dramatically reduced to 5,000 troops, with all responsibility for security handed over to the police.

Karl S. Bottigheimer Arthur H. Aughey Ed.

Additional Reading

Land

The geomorphology of the island of Ireland as a whole is found in G.L. Herries Davies and Nicholas Stephens, Ireland (1978); and A.R. Orme, Ireland (1970). Emrys Jones, A Social Geography of Belfast (1960, reissued 1965), considers historical and environmental matters.

People and economy

Social and economic conditions are discussed in James H. Johnson, The Human Geography of Ireland (1994). A general introduction to Belfast is R.H. Buchanan and B.M. Walker (eds.), Province, City & People: Belfast and Its Region (1987). The character of one part of Northern Ireland is admirably portrayed in E. Estyn Evans, Mourne Country: Landscape and Life in South Down, 4th ed. (1989). An introduction to the economy is provided in Paul Bew, Henry Patterson, and Paul Teague, Northern Ireland—Between War and Peace: The Political Future of Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (2000).

Government and society

The contemporary political situation is treated in Arthur Aughey and Duncan Morrow (eds.), Northern Ireland Politics (1996); Brendan O'Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, 2nd ed. (1996); Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict, and Emancipation (1996); and Colin Coulter, Contemporary Northern Irish Society: An Introduction (1999).

Cultural life

Youth culture is described in Desmond Bell, Acts of Union: Youth Culture and Sectarianism in Northern Ireland (1990). The visual arts are the subject of Liam Kelly, Thinking Long: Contemporary Art in the North of Ireland (1996). Sporting life is discussed in John Sugden and Alan Bairner, Sport, Sectarianism, and Society in a Divided Ireland (1993).Emrys Jones Jim Smyth

History

General historical surveys include Patrick Buckland, A History of Northern Ireland (1981); A.T.Q. Stewart, The Narrow Ground: The Roots of Conflict in Ulster, rev. ed. (1993); T.W. Moody, The Ulster Question, 1603–1973, 4th ed. (1980); Sean Cronin, Irish Nationalism: A History of Its Roots and Ideology (1980); Maurice Irvine, Northern Ireland: Faith and Faction (1991); and Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster, new updated ed. (2001).Helpful studies of specific historical events and periods include M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (1973, reissued 1999); Philip S. Robinson, The Plantation of Ulster: British Settlement in an Irish Landscape, 1600–1670 (1984, reissued 1994); Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of East Ulster, 1600–1641 (1985); Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), Ulster 1641: Aspects of the Rising, rev. ed. (1997); Patrick Macrory, The Siege of Derry (1980, reprinted 1988); J.C. Beckett and R.E. Glasscock (eds.), Belfast: The Origin and Growth of an Industrial City (1967); David W. Miller, Queen's Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in Historical Perspective (1978); Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (2000, reissued 2002); A.T.Q. Stewart, A Deeper Silence (1993, reissued, 1998); and Nicholas Mansergh, The Unresolved Question: The Anglo-Irish Settlement and Its Undoing, 1912–72 (1991).Extensive discussion of 20th-century problems includes Reginald James Lawrence, The Government of Northern Ireland: Public Finance and Public Services, 1921–1964 (1965); Padraig O'Malley, The Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, 3rd ed. (1997); J. Bowyer Bell, The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967–1992 (1993); and Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes, rev. and updated ed. (2002). The historical roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland are discussed in Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland (1997, reissued 1999).Two good introductions to contemporary politics are Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (2001); and Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change, 2nd ed. (2002). An international mediator's account of the peace negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement is George J. Mitchell, Making Peace (1999). A useful collection of essays on post-Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland is Rick Wilford (ed.), Aspects of the Belfast Agreement (2001). Two views of the IRA's campaign can be found in Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (1997; also published as Behind the Mask: The IRA and Sinn Fein, 1999); and M.L.R. Smith, Fighting for Ireland?: The Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (1995, reissued 1997). The role of Britain's intelligence services in Northern Ireland is the subject of Tony Geraghty, The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence (1998, reissued 2000).Karl S. Bottigheimer Arthur H. Aughey

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