Partition and North-West Ireland, c .1910–1925

Abstract

During 1910–25 the north-west represented a microcosm on the island of Ireland. County Donegal was overwhelmingly Catholic and a stronghold of conservative Irish nationalism. County Londonderry was mainly Protestant and a bulwark of hard-line unionism. Between these political and cultural majorities lay the symbolic, religiously and ethnically divided, and potentially volatile Derry city. This chapter examines the north-west – the city of Derry and counties Donegal and Londonderry – to highlight its responses to, and the dramatic disruptions caused by, the prospect, implementation, and eventual embedding of Ireland’s partition as these played out at the national level. In its widest sense, the partition question overshadowed politics in the north-west for over two decades, and it bequeathed a bitter legacy. It divided the region along an unhappy border that few had wanted, exposing divisions within both nationalism and unionism. Partition affected all levels of society and deepened the peripheralisation of places on both sides of the frontier. This chapter examines a divided borderland during a time of immense political change and upheaval.