Northern Ireland
The island of Ireland is divided politically into two parts. Northern Ireland occupies about one sixth of the island, in the northeastern corner. It is a region of the United Kingdom, along with England, Scotland, and Wales. The republic of Ireland takes up the rest of the island. It has been a separate country since 1921.
For about 400 years, the people of Northern Ireland have been divided into two main groups—the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. Violent conflicts called the Troubles persisted between these groups during most of the late 20th century. In 1998 a major peace agreement brought the region new hope for stability. The capital of Northern Ireland is Belfast.
Northern Ireland covers an area of 5,461 square miles (14,144 square kilometers). It is bordered on the south and west by the republic of Ireland. The North Channel separates Northern Ireland from Scotland to the east. England and Wales lie across the Irish Sea, to the east and southeast. The northern coast of Northern Ireland lies on the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of Western Europe.
The center of Northern Ireland is mostly lowlands with gentle, rolling hills. The landscape gradually rises to higher elevations near the borders. The major highland areas are the Antrim Plateau in the northeast, the Sperrin Mountains in the northwest, and the Mourne Mountains in the southeast. The northern coast contains an impressive natural formation called the Giant's Causeway, which is made up of thousands of rock columns.
Northern Ireland is home to Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the United Kingdom. The lake is drained by the River Bann. The other major rivers in Northern Ireland include the Rivers Lagan and Blackwater.
Northern Ireland has a cool, humid climate, which allows green plants to grow year-round. It is frequently rainy. Strong winds often blow across Northern Ireland from the southwest.
Humans have cleared and farmed the land in Northern Ireland for hundreds of years. As a result, there are few trees left. Much of Northern Ireland is covered by grasslands, which support a wide variety of livestock. In the east are vast swampy areas called peat bogs, which contain partially decayed mosses.
The native wildlife consists mainly of birds and small mammals such as squirrels, rabbits, badgers, and foxes. The rivers of Northern Ireland are home to many fish, especially pike, perch, trout, and salmon. In recent years, extensive efforts have been taken to protect wetland areas and the waterfowl that live in these areas.
Northern Ireland has a long history of religious and political conflict between its two main groups of people. About 40 percent of the people are ethnically Irish, descended from ancient Celtic groups. Most of the ethnic Irish population is Roman Catholic. About 50 percent of the people living in Northern Ireland are descended from the Scottish and English settlers who came to the area in the 17th century. This group is mainly Protestant. The largest Protestant groups are Presbyterian and Anglican.
English is the official language and is widely spoken. Few people in Northern Ireland now speak the Irish language, Gaelic. However, both English and Irish are taught in the schools. Irish and Ulster-Scots are both official regional languages.
Scattered farms and small market towns are common throughout Northern Ireland. The largest city is Belfast, on the northeast coast. Belfast is Northern Ireland's center of government, finance, and culture. Londonderry (or Derry) is the main city in the west.
Northern Ireland's economy is closely tied to the economy of the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland's main trade partners are England, Scotland, and Wales.
Manufacturing industries once dominated the economy, but they declined in the mid-20th century. Service industries grew greatly. By the start of the 21st century, the service industries in Northern Ireland employed more than three times as many people as manufacturing.
Public services such as health, education, and administration are especially important to the economy. The other main services include retail trade, finance, and real estate. Some of the chief manufacturing industries are engineering and the production of ships, automobiles, cloth, and food and beverages. Northern Ireland also receives economic aid from the government of the United Kingdom.
Northern Ireland's climate and rich pastures are ideally suited to dairying and cattle and sheep raising. Pigs and poultry are also raised in Northern Ireland. The livestock industry, however, was hard hit by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001. The major crops are grass, hay, and turnips (to feed the animals), along with barley, potatoes, wheat, and oats. Commercial fisheries catch prawns, cod, whiting, and herring in the sea and eels and salmon in the inland waters.
The island of Ireland has been inhabited for thousands of years. Fishers and hunters settled on the eastern coast in about 6,000 BC.
The Celts invaded Ireland from Europe in about 300 BC. The Celts soon took over the island. They eventually established five kingdoms. The kingdom of Ulster spanned the north. The modern region of Northern Ireland includes most of the area that made up Ulster. Because of this, Northern Ireland is still sometimes called Ulster.
Ulster played an important role in the literature and mythical history of Ireland. During the Middle Ages, a series of tales called the Ulster Cycle celebrated the heroes and warriors of ancient Ulster.
St. Patrick introduced Christianity to the Celts in the 5th century AD. Ireland still honors St. Patrick as the father of the island's Roman Catholic tradition.
King Henry II of England sent troops into Ireland in 1170–71. He declared himself the ruler over all the Irish kings and lords. The lords of Ulster fought British rule for hundreds of years. Nevertheless, many British people settled in Ireland.
In the 16th century, the official churches of England and Scotland became Protestant. The British tried to stamp out Roman Catholicism in Ireland.
In the early 17th century, the lords of Ulster rebelled against the British but were defeated. The lords fled, and the British king James I seized their land. He sent thousands of Protestant colonists from Scotland and England to settle on these lands. The native Roman Catholic Irish people were left without much land or power.
In 1641 the Catholics rose up against the Protestants. During the uprising, thousands of Protestant colonists were murdered or forced to flee. By 1652 British forces had put down the Irish.
In 1801 Ireland was officially joined to England, Scotland, and Wales to form the United Kingdom. Many of the native Irish people opposed this union.
In the 1840s, a disease killed the potato crops in Ireland, resulting in a horrible famine. About a million people died of hunger, and millions more fled Ireland. Many people in Ireland believed that the British government did not do enough to stop the famine. This helped fuel a movement for more self-rule for Ireland, called the Home Rule movement.
In the early 20th century, Irish groups began to fight for independence. However, the Protestants in the north wanted to maintain their union with Great Britain. In 1920 Northern Ireland was created out of the six mostly Protestant counties of Ulster. The other three counties of Ulster joined the rest of Ireland, which became a separate country in 1921. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, but it gained some self-rule. The Roman Catholics in both Northern Ireland and the new republic were unhappy with the division of the island.
Relations between the Protestants and Roman Catholics within Northern Ireland worsened in the late 1960s. The Catholic minority began protesting that the government denied them political and economic rights. A long, violent struggle broke out between the two groups. The British then sent troops into Northern Ireland.
In response, an armed Catholic group called the Irish Republican Army (IRA) began a long terrorist campaign. The IRA wanted to force out the British and to reunite Northern Ireland with the Irish republic. The political party Sinn Fein also supported Irish unification. Some Protestants responded by forming their own armed groups, including the Ulster Unionists. In 1972 the British disbanded Northern Ireland's Parliament and began to rule the region directly.
During some 30 years of violence, about 3,500 people were killed and ten times more were injured. Finally, in 1998 the Catholics and Protestants signed a historic agreement designed to bring about lasting peace. The peace agreement largely succeeded. In 1999 Northern Ireland was given the right to govern most of its regional affairs, and its Parliament began meeting again. In a key step of the peace process, the IRA began to give up its weapons in 2001. Population (2001 estimate), 1,691,800.
