Protestant Ulster: Ethno-history, Memory and Contemporary Prospects

This article highlights the processes by which an Ulster Protestant identity came to be fashioned, in the era of political conflict over Irish Home Rule, in accordance with ethno-religious and, more ambiguously, ethno-nationalist criteria. It explores how processes of myth-making and remembering have been central to the reproduction of this sense of identity. Finally, it considers the role played by ethnic essentialism in the contemporary period, and the question of whether ethnic imperatives might be transcended within the context provided by the Good Friday Agreement and the promise of new British-Irish structures and new relationships within these islands.