Word: irelands
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...most immediate problem was to restore order. There were hints that Chichester-Clark might decide to invoke Northern Ireland's Special Powers Act, which could enable police to undertake mass arrests and detentions. At best, however, such wholesale roundups could lead to nothing more than a temporary cooling-off period. At worst, since most police are Protestants, they could simply compound Catholic panic and resentment. Britain's direct involvement in its new Irish "troubles," belated and reluctant as it was, provided the only measure of relief. That involvement may well increase substantially, and perhaps indefinitely, before any kind...
UNTIL the 17th century, Ulster was one of the most Gaelic provinces of Ireland. The charm of the land, with its soft glens and mist-hung mountains, its harpers, poets, cattle raids and mythic storytelling, powerfully attracted the English settlers in Dublin and the area around it known as the Pale. Though most of the chiefs of the north had made a token submission to the English Crown, they actually ruled with little outside interference...
...seaport of Derry was handed over to the city of London and renamed Londonderry. Yet 30 years later the Ulster Irish were still strong enough to launch another uprising, under Owen Roe O'Neill. It grew so serious that it finally required the fire-and-sword scourging of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell...
...final chance for the Ulster Irish to rule their own land came in 1689 with the arrival in Ireland of James II, the Pretender to the English throne, which was then occupied by the Dutchman, William of Orange. Irish Catholics supplied Catholic James with fighting men, but their hopes were crushed in two battles. Spurred by antipopery, the Ulster Protestants rallied to William and successfully withstood a 3½-month Catholic siege of Londonderry. Later, at the famous Battle of the Boyne River, the Irish Catholics were on the brink of winning-until James II panicked and fled...
Even so, the real religious bitterness in Ulster dates only from the early years of this century. As the Irish got closer to Home Rule, the Protestants of Ulster feared for their future in a largely Catholic Ireland. The outbreak of World War I put a temporary halt to the divisions in Ireland. Thousands of Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, enlisted in the British army, illustrating the traditional lament that "more Irishmen have died fighting for England than ever died fighting against...