northern ireland

[tomlily]

why was northern ireland a divided and violent country

[vehelpfulguy]

At one time England "owned" all of Ireland.

But the irish did not like that.

So England decided to split the country into two.

We gave back the Southern half (mostly Catholic people) and kept the prosperous Northern half (mostly Protestant people but some Catholics)

The Catholics in the North wanted to join the rest of Ireland, the Protestants in the North wanted to stay with the UK.

So the Catholics and Protestants started fighting (not sure who started it).

One side would plant a bomb and kill some people.

So to get their own back the other side would plant a bomb and kill some people.

Once this tit for tat started there were so many vendettas that people were getting killed and injured all the time.

A number of criminal gangs used the "troubles" to hide behind while carryng out their criminal activities.

This caused more problems as Catholic criminal gangs and Protestant criminal gangs killed each other in turf warfare.

Shame they are both christians.

That is my understanding anyway.

[Bewlay Bros]

In a nutshell, that's about it.

The Dutch (hence the orange, William of Orange) had a bit play to play, so did Oliver Cromwell.

And yes, NI was a violent country, mostly caused by catholic scum. The irony is that the IRA, who swore (still swear probably) national allegiance to a Republic of Ireland were technically British. When it came to benefits and any other perks our Crown offered, they were soon British again.

But overall, the history will take a book the size of yellow pages to explain.

[jake-the-peg]

The bit they haven't told you is that the English thought they'd colonise Ireland and the Scots weren't doing much at the time so a huge number of Irish were kicked off of their land and replaced especially with Scots in the North.

These people were called "planters" and are the ancestors of the protestants in what is now Northern Ireland.

Ireland was once all British - then in 1916 a bunch of hot heads kicked off what became known as the Easter Rising in Dublin. (They were the IRB - Irish Republican Brotherhood - forerunners of the IRA )

They didn't have a lot of support on the ground but the aftermath was handled badly arrests firing squads that sort of thing and it paved the way for Irish independance in 1921.

Unfortunately it wasn't that easy and the Northern Protestants didn't want to be part and critically Lloyd George needed their support in parliament to stay in power so Ireland was split.

There was after a nasty civil war in Ireland between the factions that accepted this and those who opposed it and those two were the origins of todays 2 main Irish political parties.

Meanwhile the catholics in the North tried to join the independant South which is the root of the Troubles

[New Judge]

The situation with Ireland (the entire country) is similar to that of India and Pakistan. The root causes are the attempts by the British to divide a country geographically to suit religious factions.

India was partitioned (into India and East/West Pakistan) to accommodate Muslims and the Rest. As has been said, Ireland was divided to accommodate Catholics and Protestants. As with many religions, opposing factions could not get on with each other and so (the British believed) had to be separated.

The problem with this strategy is that, unsurprisingly, not all of �Religion A� wanted to live in �Area A� and they were reluctant to move. So we now have the situation in both these parts of the world where not only are opposing religious factions still living together, but the forced partition of their country (and their subsequent �displacement�) causes even more resentment and strife.

The real cause, of course, (certainly in these two examples) is Britain�s belief that it should and could occupy these lands and solve all their problems by such strategies, backed up by military intervention.

History has shown that this cannot be done, but nobody seems to learn.

[REDHEAD24]

i love the irish , not likeing the comment about catholic scum - i think if u do ur research u will find there were wrongs and violence on both sides and idiotic comments like that are just pathetic and uneccesary

[123everton]

Jakes answer I think offers the best value for money.
New Judge was doing well right upto the last line about armed intervention. Clearly the army had to go in to prevent a full scale civil war and clearly it was right as we now have a just peace in the region.
With the exception of a few bitter enders.
Redhead is right there was wrong doing by all sides before and after the partition on both sides of the border.