Why is Ireland Divided? - History Matters Reaction

Why is Ireland Divided?

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[jamesgiles]

Where you not listening to the video... at all?
As someone who live in Northern Ireland I'll simply
1. Basically english and Scottish settlers were settled in Ireland to gain more control. These settlers would later become Unionist although its much more complex then I'm making it seem.
2. The unionists in the North wanted to remain in the UK and did all they could to stop ireland from getting autonomy.
3. Skipping forward a couple of years, ww1. There was the Easter rising lead by rouge Republicans (radical nationalists) who have been underground for years in Scotland, Ireland and England (im not sure about Wales). Its important to note that this uprising was *not popular* amongst the Irish people as at this point everyone was very moderate and wanted home rule and the third home rule was finally passed (however it was put on hold because of the war) and many people from Ireland want to fight for the British (about 200, 000). What escalated things was how the British handled the situation afterwards. The rebels were not given a fair or any trail at all and were shot dead. This made them into mryters (I can't spell the word correctly) and heavily radicalised the Irish people.
4. The British basically had to divide the Ireland to split between the unionists and the nationalists (people who want ireland to be independent/United) to satisfy both sides. Northern Ireland staying in the UK and Éire (Ireland) being in the commonwealth
5. This did cause a civil war. Many people were happy with the deal but some were not and sinn fein split into pro treaty sinn fein and anti treaty sinn fein. The pro treaty side won but the anti treaty sinn fein was able to rise up and was eventually achieve a fully independent ireland completely free of the British (I won't explain how they did it because it's complicated even for me).
6. In ww2 Churchill did offer NI to the Irish if they joined ww2 but they decided as they did not trust a word out of Churchills mouth and remember the unionists in the North? Yeah. Good luck trying to not cause a civil war as no one was consulted.
7. The last major thing was the troubles. Its hard to talk about this without upsetting everyone because people have there own takes on what really happened and also because the troubles is very complex to understand but in a nutshell: Catholics/nationalists were discriminated againsts in the North by the unionist majority (FYI 2/3 of the people in the North were unionist and 1/3 were nationalist. This was because 2/6 of the counties in northern ireland had a nationalist majority). The unionists discriminated against them by gerrymandering, multiple votes (if you owned a business or payed you could get up to around 7 votes), denying them jobs and houses, etc. The nationalists were inspired by Martin Luther King to March for civil rights. To put it mildly it didn't end very well and unionists did counter Marches and some even lead to violence. This got so bad they british troops were sent to protect the nationalist community. They were welcomed at first but then let's just say there was... Controversy to put it mildly while at the same time the IRA (Irish republican army) now the PIRA (provisional IRA) had risen from the shadows and started a campaign against the army and started bombing everything for a united ireland whilst loyalist paramilitaries (radical unionists) formed. In a nutshell violence and alot of blood and internment only escalated it. The British reluctantly introduced direct rule as the unionist government in NI resigned (I won't get into why as I want to keep this short). After a couple of agreements failed to make peace and a couple of "mismanagement" while at the same time, angering both sides some successful attempts were made and the troubles eventually stopped. However these agreements were not perfect and are still controversial to this day.
Hope that explains it.

[vallarygroda]

For several generations My gg grandfathers lived in N Ireland before immigration to Virginia in America in 1780 . Prior to Northern Ireland my ancestors were in Scotland probably 100s of years & then moved to Northern Ireland because of religious persecution & the plantations.Please check out the Covenanters persecution in Scotland. My 6th great grandfather was George Gillespie who helped form the Scottish reformation in Scotland . History is fascinating . Here in America Catholic & Protestant get along great but I’m sure it’s such a different culture with Soo much intense history as to why the Northern Ireland is divided. I love your channel 🎊 🎉Overall-I think most of the people in Northern Ireland are mainly of Scottish descent ( some English descent planted there too) therefore wanting to be separate from Ireland and part of the UK

[crimsonF]

3:49 You mist the point were he mentioned that north was made up of those who considered themselves Britist instead of Irish which is why Britain refused to give it up.