Abstract
Ulster Unionism is commonly portrayed as irrational, backward and deviant. While Unionists have resisted any accommodation with Irish nationalism, the argument runs, their conditional loyalty to the Crown has obstructed the emergence of a genuine sense of Britishness. The Union is usually interpreted as a tactical alliance designed to maintain colonial privileges rather than a bona fide expression of emotional commitment to British culture and values. At the same time, loyalists have failed to invent their own distinctive Ulster nationality; consequently they are unable to articulate their political demands in the respectable language of self-determination. Instead Ulster Protestants seem trapped within religious and political attitudes derived from the seventeenth century: one historian has written that the sense of community shared by Ulster Protestants is best seen as ‘an arrested development towards modern nationalism’.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance since 1848 (Oxford, 1983), p. 342.
Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London, 1991), p. 24.
New Ulster Movement, Two Irelands or One? (Belfast, 1972), p. 5.
Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1977), pp. 236, 243, 245.
J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Between God and Magog: the Republican Thesis and the Ideologia Americana’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XLVIII (1987), 333.
David Cannadine, ‘British History: Past, Present – and Future?’, Past and Present, 116 (Aug. 1987), 173.
John Morrill, ‘The Causes of Britain’s Civil Wars’, in The Nature of the English Revolution (London, 1993), p. 258.
J. H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present, 137 (November 1992), 48–71.
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 1992), pp. 6, 18, 54.
Keith M. Brown, ‘The Vanishing Emperor: British Kingship and its Decline 1603-1707’, in Roger A. Mason (ed.), Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 79.
David Hayton, ‘Anglo-Irish Attitudes: Changing Perceptions of National Identity among the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, ca. 1690–1750’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, XVII (1987), 151.
J. C. Beckett, ‘Northern Ireland’, Journal of Contemporary History, VI (1971), 123.
Peter Gibbon, The Origins of Ulster Unionism: The Formation of Popular Protestant Politics and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 1975), p. 136.
Alvin Jackson, The Ulster Party: Irish Unionists in the House of Commons, 1884-1911 (Oxford, 1989), p. 15.
David Hempton and Myrtle Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society 1740–1890 (London, 1992), esp. chs 8–9.
An Ulster Presbyterian, Ulster on its Own, or An Easy Way with Ireland (Belfast, 1912).
George Hill, An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster (Belfast, 1877).
John Harrison, The Scot in Ulster: Sketch of the History of the Scottish People of Ulster (Edinburgh, 1888), preface; James Barkley Woodbum, The Ulster Scot: His History and Religion (London, 1914), p. 379.
T. M. Johnstone, Ulstermen: Their Fight for Fortune, Faith and Freedom (Belfast, 1914), p. 38.
Dennis Kennedy, The Widening Gulf: Northern Attitudes to the Independent Irish State 1919–49 (Belfast, 1988), p. 62.
W. T. Latimer, The Ulster Scot: His Faith and Fortune (Dungannon, 1899), pp. 2, 7-8.
Robert Lynd, The Present Crisis in Ireland (Belfast, 1886), p. 14.
Sarah Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain Defenders: Protestant Political, Paramilitary and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict (Belfast, 1984), p. 12.
Lord Brookeborough et al., Why the Border Must Be: The Northern Ireland Case in Brief (Belfast, 1956), p. 4.
Steve Bruce, The Red Hand: Protestant Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford, 1992), p. 227.
Vanguard, Ulster-A Nation (Belfast, 1972), p. 11.
Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism (Oxford, 1986), p. 145.
Jennifer Todd, ‘Two Traditions in Unionist Political Culture’, Irish Political Studies, II (1987), 1–26.
A. T. Q. Stewart, ‘The Siege of Ulster’, Spectator, 11 Jan. 1986, p. 15.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McBride, I. (1996). Ulster and the British Problem. In: English, R., Walker, G. (eds) Unionism in Modern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509849_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509849_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-64673-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50984-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)