Contributor:

Professor Roy Foster

Talk Title:

Partition and the Southern Irish Protestant experience.

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the ‘complex and varied’ story of southern Irish Protestantism after 1921. It describes the changing position and status of this community in the pre-partition period and its declining numbers afterwards. It also notes how southern Protestants adapted to life in the new state, the diversity of their experiences and the extent to which ‘Protestant society remained fairly distinct, endogenous and conscious of their difference’ until the 1970s. It suggests that in terms of ‘cultural attitudes and markers, Southern Irish Protestants felt more affinity to Sothern Irish Catholics than to the culture of Northern Protestantism’ and that their experience was a ‘testament to the majority political culture of independent Ireland, the realism and adaptability of its small cohort of Irish citizens, and… the perhaps underestimated degree of tact exercised by both traditions in the new Irish state.’

Short Biography:

R.F. (Roy) Foster is Emeritus Professor of Irish History at Oxford and Emeritus Professor of Irish History and Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of many prizewinning books and is a well-known cultural commentator and critic.

Further Reading:

Protestant And Irish: The Minority’s Search for Place in Independent Ireland – Ian d’Alton and Ida Milne (eds.) The Decline of the Big House in Ireland: A Study of Irish Landed Families 1860-1960 – Terence Dooley Descendancy: Irish Protestant Histories Since 1795 – David Fitzpatrick Different and the Same: A Folk History of the Protestants of Independent Ireland – Deirdre Nuttall The Church of Ireland 1869-1969 – R.B. McDowell Crisis and Decline: The Fate of the Southern Unionists – R.B. McDowell Ireland’s Holy Wars: the struggle for a nation’s soul 1500-2000 – Marcus Tanner