Lost Counties: The Partition of Ulster
In December 1922 a proclamation established the Irish Free State. Among loyalists in three border counties of Ulster, partitioned and cut adrift from unionist jurisdiction, the sense of betrayal was acute.
Founded one century ago, in 1922, the Irish Free State was established as a Dominion of the British Commonwealth under the Crown. Comprising 26 of the island’s 32 counties, the Free State had a primarily Catholic populace: according to the first census, in 1926 Protestants represented a mere seven per cent of the three million-strong population. For the predominantly unionist Protestant minority, the Free State’s formal separation from Britain prompted difficult political questions. What did it mean to be a ‘unionist’ or a ‘loyalist’ after Ireland’s relationship with Britain had been so profoundly redefined?
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