Ulster Protestants

Ulster Protestants are an ethnoreligious group[4][5][6][7][8] in the Irish province of Ulster, where they make up about 43% of the population. Many Ulster Protestants are descendants of settlers who arrived in the early 17th century Ulster Plantation. This was the colonisation of the Gaelic, Catholic province of Ulster by English-speaking Protestants from Great Britain, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England.[9] Many more Scottish Protestant migrants arrived in Ulster in the late 17th century. Those who came from Scotland were mostly Presbyterians, while those from England were mostly Anglicans. There is also a small Methodist community and the Methodist Church in Ireland dates to John Wesley's first visit to Ulster in 1752.[10]

Ulster Protestants
Total population
Total ambiguous
(900,000-1,000,000)
Regions with significant populations
Northern Ireland752,555[1][2] (Self-identified)
(Northern Irish Protestants)
Republic of Ireland201,400[3] (Self-identified)
(Irish Anglicans)
(Irish Presbyterians)
(Irish Methodists)
(Other Irish Protestants)
Languages
Ulster English, Ulster Scots
Religion
Protestantism
(mostly Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, and Methodism)
Related ethnic groups
Ulster Scots, Anglo-Irish people, Irish people, Scottish people, English people, Scotch-Irish Americans, Scotch-Irish Canadians

Since the 17th century, sectarian and political divisions between Ulster Protestants and Catholics have played a major role in the history of Ulster, and of Ireland as a whole. Ulster Protestants descend from a variety of lineages, including Lowland Scots (some of whose descendants consider themselves Ulster Scots), English, Irish and Huguenots.[11][12]

History
Changes in distribution of Irish Protestants, 1861–2011

The Ulster Protestant community emerged during the Plantation of Ulster. This was the colonisation of Ulster with loyal English-speaking Protestants from Great Britain under the reign of King James. Those involved in planning the plantation saw it as a means of controlling, anglicising,[13] and "civilising" Ulster.[14] The province was almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic and rural, and had been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation was also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster's links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland.[15] Most of the land colonised was confiscated from the native Irish. Begun privately in 1606, the plantation became government-sponsored in 1609, with much land for settlement being allocated to the Livery Companies of the City of London. By 1622 there was a total settler population of about 19,000,[16] and by the 1630s somewhere between 50,000[17] and as many as 80,000. Another influx of an estimated 20,000 Scottish Protestants, mainly to the coastal counties of Antrim, Down and Londonderry, was a result of the seven ill years of famines in Scotland in the 1690s.[18] This migration decisively changed the population of Ulster, giving it a Protestant majority.[17] While Presbyterians of Scottish descent and origin had already become the majority of Ulster Protestants by the 1660s, when Protestants still made up only a third of the population, they had become an absolute majority in the province by the 1720s.[19]

Divisions between Ulster's Protestants and Irish Catholics have played a major role in the history of Ulster from the 17th century to the present day. It has led to bouts of violence and political upheaval, notably in the Irish Confederate Wars, the Williamite War, the Armagh disturbances, the Irish revolutionary period, and the Troubles. There were also tensions between the two main groups of Ulster Protestants; Scottish Protestant migrants to Ulster were mostly Presbyterian[20] and English Protestants mostly Anglican. The Penal Laws discriminated against both Catholics and Presbyterians, in an attempt to force them to accept the state religion, the Anglican Church of Ireland. Repression of Presbyterians by Anglicans intensified after the Glorious Revolution, especially after the Test Act of 1703, and was one reason for heavy onward emigration to North America by Ulster Presbyterians during the 18th century (see Scotch-Irish American).[21] Between 1717 and 1775, an estimated 200,000 migrated to what became the United States of America.[22] Some Presbyterians also returned to Scotland during this period, where the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was the state religion. These Penal Laws are partly what led Ulster Presbyterians to become founders and members of the United Irishmen, a republican movement which launched the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Repression of Presbyterians largely ended after the rebellion, with the relaxation of the Penal Laws.[23] The Kingdom of Ireland became part of the United Kingdom in 1801. As Belfast became industrialised in the 19th century, it attracted yet more Protestant immigrants from Scotland.[24] After the partition of Ireland in 1920, the new government of Northern Ireland launched a campaign to entice Protestants from the Irish Free State to relocate to Northern Ireland, with inducements of state jobs and housing, and large numbers accepted.[25]

Present day
Percentage of Protestants in each electoral division in Ulster, based on census figures from 2001 (UK) and 2006 (ROI).
0-10% dark green, 10-30% mid-green,
30-50% light green, 50-70% light orange,
70-90% mid-orange, 90-100% dark orange.

The vast majority of Ulster Protestants live in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Most tend to support the Union with Great Britain,[26] and are referred to as unionists. Unionism is an ideology that (in Ulster) has been divided by some into two camps; Ulster British, who are attached to the United Kingdom and identify primarily as British; and Ulster loyalists, whose politics are primarily ethnic, prioritising their Ulster Protestantism above their British identity.[27][28][29] The Loyal Orders, which include the Orange Order, Royal Black Institution and Apprentice Boys of Derry, are exclusively Protestant fraternal organisations which originated in Ulster and still have most of their membership there.

About 3% of Ulster Protestants live in the three counties of Ulster now in the Republic of Ireland, Cavan, Monaghan, and Donegal, where they make up around a fifth of the Republic's Protestant population.[30] Unlike Protestants in the rest of the Republic, some retain a sense of Britishness, and a small number have difficulty identifying with the independent Irish state.[31][32][33]

Most Ulster Protestants speak Ulster English, and some on the north-east coast speak with the Ulster Scots dialects.[34][35][36] A very small number have also learned the Irish language as a second language.[37][38][39]

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See also

References
  1. "Census 2011: Religion: KS211NI (administrative geographies)". nisra.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  2. "Census 2011: Key Statistics for Northern Ireland" (PDF). nisra.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 December 2012.
  3. "8. Religion" (PDF). Central Statistics Office. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
  4. Hunt, Stephen (13 May 2016). Contemporary Christianity and LGBT Sexualities. Chapter 7: Christians and Gays in Northern Ireland. ISBN 9781317160922. Retrieved 15 May 2017.CS1 maint: location (link)
  5. Byrne, Sean (2000). Social Conflicts and Collective Identities. p. 94. ISBN 9780742500518. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  6. It's never too late for 'us' to meet 'them': prior intergroup friendships moderate the impact of later intergroup friendships in educational settings. Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  7. Ó Lúing, Seán (1953). Art Ó Griofa. Dublin: Sairséal agus Dill. p. 217.
  8. NI Curriculum, Teachers' Notes, p. 54
  9. "'Sheep stealers from the north of England': the Riding Clans in Ulster by Robert Bell". History Ireland.
  10. "The Methodist Church in Ireland: History". Retrieved 31 March 2019.
  11. "Ulster blood, English heart – I am what I am". nuzhound.com.
  12. "The Huguenots in Lisburn". Culture Northern Ireland.
  13. According to the Lord Deputy Chichester, the plantation would 'separate the Irish by themselves...[so they would], in heart in tongue and every way else become English', Padraig Lenihan, Consolidating Conquest, Ireland, 1603–1727, p43
  14. Jonathan Bardon (2011). The Plantation of Ulster. Gill & Macmillan. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-7171-4738-0. To King James the Plantation of Ulster would be a civilising enterprise which would 'establish the true religion of Christ among men...almost lost in superstition'. In short, he intended his grandiose scheme would bring the enlightenment of the Reformation to one of the most remote and benighted provinces in his kingdom. Yet some of the most determined planters were, in fact, Catholics.
  15. Ellis, Steven (2014). The Making of the British Isles: The State of Britain and Ireland, 1450-1660. Routledge. p. 296.
  16. Canny, Making Ireland British, p. 211
  17. "From Catastrophe to Baby Boom – Population Change in Early Modern Ireland 1641-1741". The Irish Story.
  18. K. J. Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The “Ill Years” of the 1690s (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), ISBN 0748638873, pp. 178-9.
  19. Karen Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The 'Ill Years' of the 1690s, pp. 176-179
  20. Edmund Curtis, p. 198.
  21. "The Irish at Home and Abroad: Scots-Irish in Colonial America / Magazine / Irish Ancestors / The Irish Times". irishtimes.com.
  22. Fischer, David Hackett, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America Oxford University Press, USA (14 March 1989), p. 606; Parke S. Rouse, Jr., The Great Wagon Road, Dietz Press, 2004, p. 32, and Leyburn, James G., The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, Univ of NC Press, 1962, p. 180.
  23. James Connolly. "James Connolly: July the 12th (1913)". marxists.org.
  24. "The Scots in Victorian and Edwardian Belfast". euppublishing.com.
  25. "Protestant population decline". The Irish Times. 22 September 2014.
  26. http://www.kevinbyrne.ie/pubs/ByrneOMalley2013a.pdf
  27. Smithey, Lee A. (22 August 2011). Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland. ISBN 9780199875382.
  28. "People - Political Science - Trinity College Dublin" (PDF). www.tcd.ie.
  29. Andrew White. "White, A. (2007) Is contemporary Ulster unionism in crisis? Changes in unionist identity during the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Irish Journal of Sociology, 16 (1), pp. 118-135".
  30. Darach MacDonald. "Frontier Post". darachmac.blogspot.dk.
  31. http://www.seupb.eu/Libraries/Peace_Network_Meetings_and_Events/PN__The_Border_Protestant_Community_and_the_EU_PEACE_Programmes__100205_A_report_to_the_Peace_II_Monitoring_Committee.sflb.ashx
  32. "Living behind the Emerald". Independent.ie.
  33. "Orange County, Irish-style..." Independent.ie.
  34. Gregg R.J. (1972) "The Scotch-Irish Dialect Boundaries in Ulster" in Wakelin M. F., Patterns in the Folk Speech of The British Isles, London
  35. C. Macafee (2001) "Lowland Sources of Ulster Scots" in J.M. Kirk & D.P. Ó Baoill, Languages Links: The Languages of Scotland and Ireland, Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, Belfast, p121
  36. J. Harris (1985) Phonological Variation and Change: Studies in Hiberno English, Cambridge, p15
  37. Ervine, Linda. "Linda Ervine: I realised Irish belonged to me - a Protestant - and I fell in love with it". The Irish News.
  38. Geoghegan, Peter. "Protestants go for Gaelic in Northern Ireland". www.aljazeera.com.
  39. "Revival of native tongue among Protestants speaks volumes" – via www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk.
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