Belfast

Belfast is the second largest city in Ireland, and the economic and political capital of Northern Ireland. Although the Normans established a fort at Belfast in the 12th cent., a substantial town only developed at the beginning of the 17th cent.: Belfast benefited from the Ulster plantation, and from the patronage of the lord deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester, and was incorporated by royal charter in 1613. The economic collapse of Chichester's descendants, the earls of Donegall, after the mid-18th cent. liberated the town from a constrictive leasing policy, and—in combination with the success of the local cotton industry—induced a period of rapid growth. But the most remarkable years of expansion were from c.1860 to the First World War, which coincided with the marked development of the shipbuilding and engineering industries, and the consolidation of linen manufacturing: the population of Belfast grew from 87,000 in 1851 to 349,000 by 1901. Belfast was incorporated as a city in 1888, and its chief magistrate raised to the dignity of lord mayor in 1892. With the Government of Ireland Act (1920), and the partition of the island, Belfast became the administrative capital of the newly created Northern Ireland.

The swift expansion of Belfast partly determined its politics. Rapid, uneven growth was accompanied by an alteration of the sectarian demography: the proportion of catholic citizens grew from virtually nothing at the beginning of the 18th cent. to one-third by the late 19th and 20th cents. A shifting denominational balance in company with rapid growth brought fluid sectarian frontiers within the city, and political instability: intercommunal violence, notably in 1857, 1864, 1886, and 1921–2, became almost endemic. The industrial growth of the city—unique in an Irish context—brought closer links with the British economy and with the empire: this, in combination with a protestant domination of capital, helped to determine the predominantly unionist character of the city's politics.

Alvin Jackson