History of Belfast

Impressed by his daring, the newly crowned King James I offered O'Neill a pardon on condition he honour his terms with the Scottish lords who helped him escape and divide his lands in Ulster between himself, Montgomery and Hamilton.

In 1640[NB 1] Thomas Wentworth, then Lord Deputy of Ireland, purchased the Carrickfergus trade monopolies (namely, paying one third of the import duty paid by other locations in the kingdom) and endowed them to Belfast.

Pursuing conformity, The 1st Viscount Wentworth (Lord Deputy of Ireland between 1632 and 1640) decided to put northern Protestants more in line with the Church of England and its more elaborate form of worship which included chanting and liturgy.

Outraged that these "false prophets" and "unhallowed priestlings" should defy "the sovereign majesty of England", Milton denounced the Scottish residents of the town as "ungrateful and treacherous guests".

[36] William of Orange landed in Carrickfergus on 14 June 1690[37] with a large force of Dutch, German, Danish and French Huguenot soldiers and was reinforced by English raw recruits and Ulster skirmishers.

William III reign marks the cementing of Protestantism in the British monarchy, the establishing of Parliament as the preeminent governing body and the beginning of the Protestant Ascendency in Ireland.

Many Ulster-Scots had relatives in the American colonies, which made them sympathetic to their cause; John Hancock had ancestors from County Down and Charles Thomson, who designed the Great Seal of the United States, was from Maghera.

Cotton was spun by steam machine or waterpower into mill yarn which was then taken to hand loom weavers along the River Lagan in places like Ballymacarrett and the Catholic Short Strand in east Belfast.

Though it added to the prosperity of Belfast and its surrounding areas, this mechanised production of material combined with imports from England devastated the cottage industries of Ireland,[58] who failed to compete.

He appeared on the balcony of Kern's Hotel on 19 January to speak to a crowd while wearing a flamboyant, repeal-themed outfit complete with white velvet collar and embroidered shamrocks, wolf hounds and round towers.

[64]On 10 July 1849, the Belfast Harbour commissioners, members of the council, gentry, merchants and the 13th Regiment officially opened the Victoria Channel aboard the royal steamer Prince of Wales.

Gustav Schwab went on to create the White Star Line in 1869, and ordered all of his ocean vessels from Harland & Wolff, setting the firm on the path to becoming the biggest ship building company in the world.

Many people in the general public as well as the government did not realise previously how in earnest the Protestants of Ireland were regarding unionism; the Ulster Covenant served to remove all illusion about their staunch opposition to Home Rule.

[78] In 1914, after failing to pass an amendment to the Third Home Rule Bill a year earlier, Asquith attempted to avoid civil war in Ireland by introducing several measures proposing that island be partitioned.

[78] The shipment went undetected, as the authorities were distracted by a decoy ship in Belfast Lough, which allowed the real vessel to be unloaded near Larne and the arms to be dropped for collection throughout the area.

Because many Irish Nationalists refused to take an oath of allegiance to the King, thus disqualifying themselves from government positions, Unionists were able to fill the void they left and gain more and more political influence in Ireland.

The violence was partly in response to the IRA killing in Cork of northern Royal Irish Constabulary police officer Gerald Smyth, and also because of competition for jobs due to the high unemployment rate.

[84] Negotiations saw the establishment of a Boundary Commission to reconsider the border between Northern Ireland and the south, the possibility of the 26 counties being given status as a "free state" and the requirement of an Oath of Allegiance for all Irishmen.

Both Craig and Carson vehemently opposed the Boundary Commission, fearing it would greatly diminish the existing area of Northern Ireland (in the end, the border hardly changed at all).

[93] Meanwhile, IRA actions in Belfast, such as the killing of police, resulted in more retaliation attacks directly on the Roman Catholic population by loyalists, sometimes covertly aided by state forces.

The McMahon Murders of 26 March 1922, and the Arnon Street Massacre of a week later, in which uniformed police shot a total of twelve Catholic civilians dead in reprisal for the killings of policemen, were two of the worst incidents.

Joseph Devlin, the MP from west Belfast, concluded that Nationalists could no longer afford to abstain from taking their seats, effectively giving Unionists free rein, and decided to attend the NI Parliament to mitigate any further damage.

In early 1932, sectarian tensions increased, to the alarm of the Unionist community, as Éamon de Valera (a staunch Republican leader and Easter Rising veteran) assumed the premiership of Free State Ireland.

"[84] This brought Protestant outrage, pushing tensions to the breaking point and Loyalists responded in June 1932 by attacking Catholic pilgrims returning to Belfast on public transport from the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.

News spread to the nearby Shankill Road, a traditionally loyalist area, where a woman in a shawl was quoted by a reporter from The Irish Press as shouting "they're kicking the shite out of the Peelers [police] up the Falls!

The post-war years were relatively placid in Belfast, but economic decline and sectarian tensions added to resentment among the Catholic population as widespread discrimination festered below the surface.

Clandestine meetings were arranged in a side room of Clonard between John Hume (representing the SDLP and more moderate nationalists) and Gerry Adams speaking for Sinn Féin and the more extreme Republican movement.

However, since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, there has been major redevelopment in the city including Victoria Square, the Titanic Quarter and Laganside as well as the Odyssey complex and the landmark Waterfront Hall.

Some Loyalist influencers, fearing that Northern Ireland would receive different treatment than that of Britain when it came to trade, encouraged area youths to riot, a demonstration of their ability to disturb the peace.

On 18 January 2024, over 100,000 workers from the National Health Service, Translink NI and teachers' unions stage the Public Sector Strike over pay in many towns and cities including Belfast.