Ireland

12 Pages 3110 Words

nd (see Ireland, Partition of).
For further details of the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Eire in 1937, and the Republic of Ireland in 1949, and their subsequent history, see Ireland, Republic of; Northern Ireland.
Ireland, Partition of, political division of Ireland between an independent Irish state, the Republic of Ireland, and the north-east of the island, Northern Ireland (sometimes called Ulster), where a Protestant majority has preferred to remain within the United Kingdom. This partition had its roots in the 17th-century Ulster Plantation, which introduced Protestant settlers from England and Scotland into an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, establishing a Protestant ascendancy of the settlers over the native population in politics and society.
Home Rule and the Division of Ireland
A movement for the partition of Ireland first arose during the Irish Home Rule crisis of the 1880s, brought about by a tightly organized Irish parliamentary party under the skilled leadership of a Southern Irish Protestant, Charles Ste...