Ulster: The Roots of Difference

Ulster: the Roots of Difference

游雁茹

 摘要

      The cultural collision among Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics has existed in Northern Ireland since the twelfth century. Although the British government hasn’t resorted to military forces in solving religious conflicts, its policy in Ulster has obviously been an exception in history. The enigma in Northern Ireland results not only from the locals’ military confrontation with British government but from Ulster’s unique, duel character. Estyn Evans refers to Ulster as “a land and a people of strong personality, in some ways more British than the British, yet in other ways more Irish than the Irish” (qtd. in Lyons 115). Geographically isolated, Ulster retains most of the ancient past in Ireland, growing into a stronghold of Gaelic civilization. Apart from its Irish characteristics, Ulster—because of its shortest distance from “mainland” Britain—used to be the most convenient entry for English and Scottish immigrants, who brought the British culture with them to Ireland.

     Such massive immigration has led to the influx of various cultures and religions into Northern Ireland, aggravating the cultural conflicts there. Many descents of yeomen moved into Belfast in the nineteenth century, when this city was rapidly industrialized, and Anglicanism was thus brought into Ulster along with them. Another sect, Presbyterianism, was also introduced by immigrants from “mainland” Britain. Although Presbyterians had existed in Ulster for a long time before the seventeenth-century immigration wave, the newly-arrived craftsmen and weavers then still reinforced the influence of Presbyterianism in Ulster. Despite the rapidly expanding population of Presbyterians in the end of the seventeenth century, many of them, suffering from economic pressures and long-term exclusion from civil rights, nevertheless moved out of Ulster in the late eighteenth century. After their emigration, there emerged a “triangle balance” among Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics in Ulster.

     However, it’s oversimplification to represent the conflicts in Ulster as merely ones between Catholics and Protestants. In fact, the collision there is also interlocked with other issues like classes, cultures, and Anglicans’ ascendency in Ulster. Away from the central power in Dublin, the Anglicans in Ulster virtually viewed themselves as the ruling class there, whose dominance and privileges were actually based on their property and Penal Laws. However, despite the demolition of Penal Laws in the nineteenth century, the Anglo-Irish gentry’s supreme position in Ulster had remained virtually the same, until their economic foundation was worn down later in the same century.

     In addition to religious struggles, the conflicts in Northern Ireland also result from other social and political transformation, such as economic interests, education, and nationalization of Irish politics. Besides the immigration wave in the seventeenth century, a considerable amount of Catholics from other regions of Ireland also moved into Ulster in the end of the nineteenth century, eventually accounting for nearly a quarter of population in Belfast. Working as cheap labors in Belfast, these Catholic immigrants timely met the demands for labors in this rapidly industrialized city, bringing about a keen competition for jobs with the local Protestants. Such competition ultimately led to deep anxieties among Protestants, especially when the economy of Ulster was weakened in the twentieth century. Another cause of the cultural collision in Ulster was the establishment of national education system in 1831. Originally designed to evade any religious intervention with school education, this national system was severely attacked by all churches, ultimately followed by two significant consequences in Irish education. Firstly, there emerged lots of small primary schools in Ulster; secondly, Catholic Church remained excluded from the national system of education. In 1920, urged by Protestants and supported by Catholics, educational segregation was finally formed in Ulster, which has played an important role in the Northern Irish’s long-term cultural divide. The last ground for the severe cultural collision in Northern Ireland was nationalization of Irish politics. The aspiration of the contemporary nationalists had forecast Protestants’ unfavorable position as a permanent minority in self-ruling Ireland, and such Ulster separatism ultimately developed into the partition settlement in 1920 and 1921.

     As Lyons points out, the Ulster enigma has remained an insoluble problem, and the only seeming solution for the Northern Irish is to “constantly appeal to history and … continue to use a sectarian terminology which the world has long discarded,” though such ways may deeply perplex outside observers (145). Thus, Lyons in this essay resorts mainly to history, attempting to investigate the “roots of difference” in Ulster. Though such methodology may not necessarily lead to a solution, as Lyons himself admits, “recognition of difference” is nevertheless a “prerequisites for peaceful coexistence” in Northern Ireland (145).

Work Citied

Lyons, F.S.L. Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890-1939. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978.