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44°F / 7°C
(Sunny. Nippy.)
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BEGINNINGS
Belfast is a Janus-faced city, shaped by both Irish Catholic and Scots/English Protestant heritages while being situated on the cultural and political interface between Ireland and Britain. Its history is punctuated with civil unrest, great poverty, revolutionary fervor, several industrial world records and, in spite of everything, an enduring spirit of optimism and renewal.
Béal Feirsde ("the mouth of the crossing") was first mentioned in 666 AD as the site of a battle between Ireland’s ancient peoples. It remained true to its name–a simple crossing point over an insignificant river–until the Norman invasion of Ulster in 1177. After laying the foundations of Carrickfergus Castle, the Norman leader John de Courcy built a smaller Norman fort at the mouth of the River Lagan in 1178, and so Belfast was born as a permanent settlement.
1600-1800
Out of all the chiefs of Ireland the fierce Celtic warriors of Ulster proved the hardest to subdue. It is an irony underpinning Ulster’s history that it was targeted for plantation by James I in order to curb its rebellious spirit. By 1611 the policy of appropriating Catholic lands and “planting lowland Scots and English settlers was well underway. Over the next century, 200,000 Scots Presbyterians poured into the Province, and Ulster’s distinctive, predominantly Protestant culture was formed.
In 1690 the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the English Catholic monarch James II at the Battle of the Boyne and took over the English throne. When King William entered Belfast, enormous bonfires were burned in his honour—a tradition that remains to this day in the form of the 12th July celebrations.
INDUSTRIAL BELFAST
Ireland’s parliament in Dublin was dissolved under the Act of Union in 1801. With ties between Belfast and mainland Britain now stronger than ever, the stage was set for the city’s meteoric industrialization. As cotton manufacturing took off in British cities, Belfast initially followed suit. However, when it was discovered in 1828, that power looms could also spin soaked flax, cotton manufacturing was exchanged for the production of linen. Linen had been the main cottage industry in Ulster throughout the 18th century. Over 70,000 people worked in linen mills at the end of the 19th century—mostly women and children in pitiful conditions.
In 1853 Belfast’s second industry was born when construction began on the Harland & Wolff shipyard. In 1870 a contract for the White Star Line was secured, and Belfast began producing the sleekest, biggest, fastest and most technically advanced ocean liners in the world. The most famous of these ships was the "unsinkable" Titanic, which sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912.
THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Over 5,500 Ulstermen were dead or wounded in the Battle of the Somme (1916), a wound which still runs deep in Ulster consciousness. The Easter Rebellion in Dublin of the same year led to a landslide victory in the 1918 General Election for Sinn Féin and by 1920 it was clear that Ireland would have to be given substantial independence from Britain. Ulster remained problematic and a solution was brokered in 1921 when Northern Ireland was created as a separate state under Britain while the South became the Irish Free State and later the Republic of Ireland. Belfast was declared the regional capital of the new six-county country, which it remains to the present day.
TROUBLES
From the foundation of Northern Ireland until the 1960s, the Unionist-dominated Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont systematically ignored the rights of the nationalist minority. Inspired by the Civil Rights movement in America, the first generation of university-educated Catholics initiated their own Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. The situation was catapulted into uncontrollable unrest when Civil Rights protestors were shot by the British Army in Derry on "Bloody Sunday". Stormont was dissolved in 1972 and once again rule was from Westminster. British troops were stationed in the Province and Catholics and Protestants formed themselves into hostile paramilitaries. The "Troubles" became Europe’s longest running conflict. Belfast witnessed many explosions and assassinations. The city centre was entirely cordoned off while war-torn images made the city infamous around the world.
PEACE
An I.R.A ceasefire was followed by a Loyalist ceasefire in 1994-1995. Representatives from the British and Irish governments, as well as the heads of most local parties, brought about the "Good Friday" or "Belfast" Agreement of 1998. For a city once immortalised by the lines: Let’s bury the future and live in the past/May the Lord in his mercy be kind to Belfast, Belfast is finally displaying a capacity to move beyond the confines of its own turbulent history.
BELFAST TODAY
The coalition between moderate Unionism and moderate Nationalism is, inevitably for two groups of politicians with opposite aspirations, showing signs of strain. Despite declared ceasefires, so-called "punishment beatings" continue unabated, perpetrated by mafia-like gang members on both sides of the paramilitary divide. For the Loyalist paramilitaries, the political ceasefires have led to an intensification of internecine warfare, as rival groups fight for supremacy of staunchly Protestant areas of the city, such as the Shankill Road. Every July Northern Ireland braces itself for the Drumcree protest, which has consistently spilled over into Province-wide rioting and mayhem, with cars and buses hijacked and burned, and all major roads blocked. If you’ve planned your visit to Northern Ireland for July, you may wish to reschedule. Life tends to return to normal after the 12th July, although rioting can begin as early as the first week of the month.
There is a continued threat from Dissident Republicans also, groups such as the Continuity I.R.A. and the Real I.R.A.–the latter group being responsible for the carnage of the Omagh bombing in 1998. It is worth bearing in mind that the peace process is not welcomed by groups of disaffected individuals on either side of the divide here, and that their capacity to wreck havoc and destructions remains serious.
Nevertheless, the prosperous signs of peace surround in today’s Belfast. Formerly comprising a slight trickle of the brave, the foolish or the ideologically committed, tourism in Northern Ireland has expanded since into a major source of revenue and civic pride. New bars and restaurants are opening in Belfast on a weekly basis. There are many prestigious festivals. The Cathedral Quarter–Belfast’s answer to Dublin’s Temple Bar–is booming, introducing us and our visitors to the exotica of Japanese noodle bars and classy drinking establishments, such as the John Hewitt. Our coffee is also immeasurably better.
To witness this new-city-within-the-city, check out the Waterfront area. Once an industrially depressed backwater (literally), beside a murky River Lagan, the Waterfront has been transformed by peacetime investment into the city’s most glamorous skyline. At night, the lights from the Waterfront Hall and the impressive Odyssey Arena–Ireland’s largest entertainment complex–sparkle across the blue, floodlit lagoon. Belfast is still poised between a brighter future and a nightmarish past, but the city seems too changed by peace to slide back, whatever the effects of political wavering and sporadic paramilitary activity may be. If you’re interested in seeing a city in transformation, now would be a good time to visit.
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