Ulster Since 1600: Politics, Economy, and Society

Ulster Since 1600 surveys the history of the province from plantation to partition, and onwards from the formation of the Northern Ireland state to the 'Troubles' of recent decades. It synthesises existing historical knowledge and also brings new insights to bear on the political, social, and economic evolution of the province and its peoples. The word 'Ulster' conjures up images of communal conflict, sectarianism, and peace processes of indefinite duration but, as this volume shows, there is much more to the history of Ulster and its peoples. From the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century, the province has been home to three major ethnic and religious groups. It was this radically reconstituted society that produced a precociously early emigration to North America, that celebrated the outbreak of the French Revolution, and that in the Victorian era hosted Ireland's first industrial city. Its rural poor suffered destruction and death during the Great Famine of the 1840s, along with their counterparts in the south of Ireland. Its urban working classes had much in common with the industrial classes of England and Scotland, in terms of religiosity, popular entertainment, labour movements, gender, and family relationships. This multi-authored volume is a major contribution to the history of Ireland and to Ireland's contested place in the British and the wider world.