Isn’t everyone in Northern Ireland Irish?
No, and in fact Northern Ireland is the only place where you will hear people say that they are British when you ask their nationality. Everywhere else in the UK people will tend to say that their nationality is English, Scottish or Welsh despite the fact that none of those nationalities has existed for over 200 years.
However, you will find people in Northern Ireland who say they’re Irish as around 40% of the population is Irish. The rest are mainly made up of the descendants of the lowland Scots who returned to Ireland in the 1600s and they will say they’re British.
OK, so 60% of the population would say they’re British and the other 40% would say they’re Irish then? By and large that’s true these days but interestingly my granny and people of her generation (essentially those born prior to the 1930s) would have said that she was Irish. The difference is that she would have been saying it in the same sense that someone from Edinburgh would say they’re Scottish ie with the understanding that she was saying that whilst she was British, she happened to have been born in Ireland.
Now you might think that as the 1600s are quite a long time ago that there’d have been considerable intermarriage between the two sets of occupants and in most parts of the world where similar settlement took place that’s indeed what happened. However, in the case of Northern Ireland the returning Scots were almost entirely Protestant whilst those that were there already were almost entirely Catholic. Combine large independent settlements with religious rules making it difficult for intermarriage to occur and what happened in practice was that there was very little intermarriage so that even over 300 years later most people have ancestors that were exclusively from one side or the other.
Interestingly the emigrants going to America went in much the same proportion as the nationalities that now exist in Northern Ireland. Consequently, something of the order of 60% of those that would consider themselves “Irish Americans” are really “Ulster Scots Americans”. How can you tell which you are? Thanks to the lack of intermarriage it’s generally quite easy to do: if your ancestors came from Ireland but you have a Scottish surname then it’s almost certain that you are Ulster Scots descent since the Scots were generally concentrated in the province of Ulster.
