The Northern Ireland - Irish Republic Boundary

Origin

Two major socio-economic events underlie the Partition of Ireland and the associated boundary delimitation in 1920. The first came with the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th Century. Although the movement of people into Ireland was not new, this Plantation settled for the first time, in the North-East of Ireland a significant non- Irish cultural element. The «Planters» of predominantly Scottish Presbyterian origin were not unlike the native Catholic Irish in material wealth but they differed in religious affiliation and cultural heritage (Robinson 1984). These differences led to a history of turbulent conflict and a lack of any significant assimilation. The second major differentiating force emerged from the Industrial Revolution. In the first decades of the 19th Century the seeds of modern industrial capitalism took root and flourished in North-Est Ireland. Centred on Belfast and focussed on linen manufacture, shipbuilding and engineering the associated economic changes brought to that part of Ireland the processes of modernisation and urbanisation which were scarcely felt through the rest of a predominantly rural and agricultural

island. To the established cultural differences of two centuries were added distinctive economic needs and priorities which tied North-East Ireland to the capital and markets of Britain and the raw materials of the British Empire. In this context it is not surprising that as Irish Nationalism and Republicanism, broadly associated with Catholicism, grew, the desire to maintain the Union emerged in the largely Protestant North-East of Ireland. Thus Unionism grew to oppose the independence movement, and different group values and aspirations matched each other in increasing intensity on the march toward political polarity. Violent Unionist reaction to the Home Rule Bill of 1912 convinced the Government when it returned to the «Irish problem» after World War I, that Parition provided the only solution to implacable national and political contradictions. Somehow the Unionist population concentrated in the North-East of Ireland would have to be separated from Irish Nationalists who predominated in and controlled the rest of the island. Although controversial, Partition would reflect the geography of