Because most people don't value the opinion of invaders over the people invaded. Ireland was artificially partitioned not in 1622 but in 1922. Your continued excuse that all of this happened a long time ago and therefore we should consider the opinions of two distinct territories is as false as it is morally bankrupt.

Since when did you care about anti-Catholicism?

Since I was planning to write a dissertation about it...?

Where is all this misplaced hostility coming from

first im a "Historian," Next the cromwellian invasion of Ireland is modern history, now I have a hatred for papists.

What next

well contemplating a dissertation about it

Well since not too long ago you described Protestants as being relatively Philosemitic and Cromwell is one of the supposed exemplars of that attitude.

I forgot about the absurd level of specialization in history, where you can only study about small windows of time in small geographic areas, without bothering to look at anything else, ever.

1600 is modern for anywhere else besides the Americas. "Early Modern" begins in the 15th century, even.

The hostility comes from your harping on a relatively irrelevant point in order to shove your history degree in somebody's face.

@putin I'm _talking_ about in 1922. In 1922, 1922 was NOW, and the settlement of northern Ireland by Scots and others was centuries past.

@ Putin
''I'm sure the ethnically cleansed territory of North Cyprus doesn't want to return to Cypriot rule. After all, they got rid of the Greeks and sold the unoccupied houses to Turkish settlers. Good analogy. And the settlers of the West Bank don't want to return to Palestinian rule. And the settlers of South Africa didn't want to return to black majority rule. The settlers of Malvinas didn't want to return to Argentinian rule. And on and on and on. ''

I am not sure if this an argument for a united Ireland or one which highlights the influx of settlers to Ireland. We might go from the Celts, to the Vikings, to the Normans, to the English, to the Scots, to the Eastern Europeans etc..etc..Question is to whom should Ireland be returned? There is nothing all that special about Ireland in this reard; indeed, one could come up with an analagous sequence for most ''countries'' that you care to mention.

Bottom line is that the best argument that the Irish nationalists can put up is that Ireland is an island. When this one comes up I always wonder about Hispaniola, Timor etc.

@Idiot nationalism :"This is not about the English government hurting N.I./Ireland years ago; it is still going on in the occupation of N.I."

No, 'Ireland' as a geographic entity is an island in the British Isles, Ireland as an occupied country is a social construct. So it with me, 'I imagine a nation sate called Ireland, and it is occupied' - alas you are in the minority with this imaginary state. We live by the UN supported self-determination of people. The Republic (which i grew up in and live in now) makes no territorial claim over the 6 counties. No since 1998, when the majority voted in favour of the good friday agreement (94% in favour, though only 56% voted).

"And I think the brutality and discrimination the Irish have suffered at the hands of imperialism more than justifies that the land should be theirs."

No, this is not the principle which we use to determine land ownership, sovereignty or other empire building land deals. Nor should it be.

It is possible to claim compensation via various higher courts (the European court of human rights perhaps) and then use the money from the compensation to buy houses from the unionist majority (and i'm sure Polish claims from WW2 are still extant)

You should not be able to force people from their homes and committing the same crimes you accuse others of to get 'justice'

@Obiwan"Why not allow Scotland, Wales, and all of Ireland sovereignty, and form the UK as a sort of EU collection of these four?"

'England' or the UK has been fairly clear that it would not prevent Scotland from become an independant nation is it wanted to (as the Scottish Nationalist Party proposes) The Scottish people on the other hand have not been convinced (and the SNP have the power to hold an election whenever they want, they just don't want to lose..)

Equally, both the Irish and British governments have undertaken to respect the wishes of the people of northern ireland, if they choose to vote for independence/Union with the republic...

The most likely change in status of any of these nations is to become independent EU member states (though the UK might leave the EU and join the EFTA).

"Well since not too long ago you described Protestants as being relatively Philosemitic and Cromwell is one of the supposed exemplars of that attitude.

I forgot about the absurd level of specialization in history, where you can only study about small windows of time in small geographic areas, without bothering to look at anything else, ever.

1600 is modern for anywhere else besides the Americas. "Early Modern" begins in the 15th century, even.

The hostility comes from your harping on a relatively irrelevant point in order to shove your history degree in somebody's face. "

Yes absurdly specialized is atlantic history 1492- 1840. I guess I should just know everything.

"Well since not too long ago you described Protestants as being relatively Philosemitic and Cromwell is one of the supposed exemplars of that attitude. "

Quotes or it didn't happen. In this case it didn't happen. You are either thinking of someone else or making it up completely.

"
1600 is modern for anywhere else besides the Americas. "Early Modern" begins in the 15th century, even. "

Sure 1960 and 1600 should be considered of the same cloth. Got it.

"The hostility comes from your harping on a relatively irrelevant point in order to shove your history degree in somebody's face."

Putin attacking somebody for harping on a relatively irrelevant point. Oh my...

excuse me, I misunderstood the first part. I did state that protestant nations are relativeely better to jews than catholic nations throughout history. I still don't understand how that has anything to do with any purported anti-Catholicism you might read (place) into those quotes.

Reaching. For. Straws.

''I did state that protestant nations are relativeely better to jews than catholic nations throughout history''
Hey Santa have you read any Martin Luther? Or was he just a ''man of his time''?

Seriously I think that you might indeed have a point. I think that it is due to a post-reformation rekindled interest in/emphasis on, the Old Testament. I wonder if this is what lay behind some of those marvellous pictures by Rembrandt, given the context of 17th century Holland. eg., http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/rembrandt-belshazzars-feast

Just one example, but I hope a good one.

gotta love the conversation we have here

Me: Britain is historically anti-Catholic
Putin: Since when do you care about anti-Catholicism
Me: When did I not?
Putin: When you said 4 months ago Protestant nations were historically better to Jews

Anyone who has taken the LSATS want to point out the flaw in this argument?

Fulham dismisses the claims of the Irish nationalists but latches onto every contrarian/ anti-American narrative of history he can dream up, why am I not surprised.

"Question is to whom should Ireland be returned? There is nothing all that special about Ireland in this reard; indeed, one could come up with an analagous sequence for most ''countries'' that you care to mention."

Right, so basically all you have to do to steal a country is to occupy it, forcibly and illegally settle the occupied territory, and thereby create facts on the ground so that if somebody tries to say that land was stolen, you can simply raise these bizarre moral equivalency claims and say that all land is stolen. I don't know when the last time there was an anti-Viking pogrom, or when there was anti-Norman discrimination, but sure if it makes your unfair treatment of the Irish go down better, go for it.

What a brilliant defense of colonial aggression.

"excuse me, I misunderstood the first part. I did state that protestant nations are relativeely better to jews than catholic nations throughout history. I still don't understand how that has anything to do with any purported anti-Catholicism you might read (place) into those quotes."

I didn't say you were anti-Catholic. Learn to read. I expressed surprise that you *cared* about anti-Catholicism. That's like Catholics caring about bias against Seventh Day Adventists.

@Putin, when did your ancestors leave the african continent and settle down (however temporarily) somewhere else, did they displace Homo neanderthalis or Homo erectus or perhaps Homo floresiensis?

never mind the non-human lifeforms which were forced out of their habitats (And are currently suffering from mass extinctions) I suppose you subscribe to the vhemt campaign to return the earth to it's native inhabitants (http://www.vhemt.org/).

I hope you have a considerable patients...

That's a facile argument Orathaic. You're essentially saying that anything goes now, because displacement occurred in history, so nobody is in their original home, so nobody can object to settler occupations. Even if that occupation has led to present-day discrimination and violence, we can't object because that means we'd also have to restore the displaced Homo erectus. It's just a rather insultingly silly argument.

Well in any case the tables can be turned on the defenders of UK colonialism. Since displacement has always happened, then you have no moral grounds to object to displacement of settler communities regardless of how long they've managed to be defended by a colonial power.

i'm not saying that at all, i'm taking precisely the other extreme view, that because displacement has occurred the only moral option for us is to remove ourselves en-mass - the entire species - from the surface of the earth.

if there is modern day discrimination and violence then that is something which can be addressed, but it does not necessarily require further displacement.

Taking Northern Ireland as a case in point, the people there vote to elect representatives and the two main communities thus represented sit in a joint 'power-sharing' government. This means that - though there is a small majority on the Unionist side - no one community has the ability to dominate the political landscape and thus implement any oppression of the other...

Umm, Putin... I'm pretty sure SC understood what you were accusing him of. Maybe YOU should reread. (I'm not going to tell you to "Learn to read." You obviously know how to read, or you would never be using big words like "facile.")

The unionists have been in Ireland for at leat 400 years, is that where we draw the line as to what we define as ''colonialisation'', or should we go even further back? I wonder what else that might encompass? No in Putin's eyes, as usual, the heros wear white hats and the villans black. In this case the British wear the black hats while the Irish Catholics wear the white. Had he lived through the IRA bombing campaign on the mainland (quartermaster Quadaffi of Libya), he might have a more nuanced point of view.

Well good thing nobody is advocating further displacement but rather the dissolution of the bogus partition in which two counties were gerrymandered into the north without their consent. All I'm saying is that they have no moral standing whatsoever to object to it if they use arguments like "everybody has been displaced" as the excuse for northern ireland's continued existence.

This "power sharing agreement" has resulted in half a decade of direct rule by London. What amount of power sharing has actually occurred? In any event under the "power sharing agreement" the British government engaged in a direct assault on a legal party in government - Sinn Fein, raiding their offices and accusing them of spying. Ironic considering the British governments history of spying on Irish parties. The current Tory government in the UK has revoked the fake "nonpartisan" policy Britain has had in recent years and gone back to the old days of hitching the British government to Unionist partisan success.

The only way northern ireland "works" is by having dozens of barriers and bantustans in which the two sides live in segregated communities. That's why there is no more "discrimination", because there are partitioned northern irelands within northern ireland. You could say there is no more overt and official discrimination against African Americans in the South too but that doesn't mean that there isn't many aspects of less overt discrimination that persist. Indeed the voter suppression drive of many states is an example of this. You can't say it's "racist", but it just so happens to effect certain groups more than others.

The partition happened 90 years ago. You can continue whining about how you'v been colonizing and dividing Ireland for 400 years through the Protestant Ascendancy, etc so therefore the statute of limitations has expired, but you're being deliberately obtuse in an effort to try and confuse the issue. Partition was imposed on Ireland not that long ago, and it is partition, not the descendants of colonists, absentee landlords and Irish compradors, which needs to be removed.

Yeah, when it comes to your country, you're full of "nuance". When it comes to everybody else, but especially America, you're not adverse to this so-called black hat/white hat narrative.

is it any surprise that we are more familiar with the nuance of our locality?

Fair enough, we'll have a forum in which Americans do not comment on Irish/UK politics, and vice versa. We indeed should yield to the authority of "nuanced" unionists who compare the Protestant Ascendancy and anti-Irish pogroms to the displacement of Homo Erectus or the settlement of Ireland by Vikings.

Kind of odd that someone who talks fairly regularly about the obsolescence of national boundaries is appealing to parochial expertise, but I understand the sentiment.

"Umm, Putin... I'm pretty sure SC understood what you were accusing him of. Maybe YOU should reread. (I'm not going to tell you to "Learn to read." You obviously know how to read, or you would never be using big words like "facile.") "

Guess we can't read together Smeck... I still don't understand why i wouldn't care about anti-catholicism...

"'Hey Santa have you read any Martin Luther? Or was he just a ''man of his time''?

My understanding was that he thought the Jews would convert to his brand of christianity, free from the pope, and took it as an egregious affront that they did not. But it isn't necessarily relevant. While there was of course anti-semetism throughout the protestant world it was relatively tame considering concurrent treatment of jews in Orthodox and Catholic nations. The Netherlands was famed for its tolerance of Jews

I should say the treatment of Jewish persons, anyone who reads primary accounst from early american history can see that jews were not highly esteemed in most cases

It's all very easy to have a Paul McCartney level of analysis here and just demand Britain give Ireland back to the Irish, but as long as the Protestant majority doesn't want to live under a United, Catholic Ireland it isn't going to happen.

I say this as a guy who comes from an Irish family and who even had a relative who was in the old IRA during the civil war and killed by British soldiers. Pretty biased upbringing. Ideally there should be a United Ireland but, as happened everywhere the British tried it, partition has created a horrible situation for Ireland which can't be solved easily, if it can even be solved at all. Regardless of how they got there, many of the Protestants in Northern Ireland see themselves as a distinct people. In a way, they kind of are. It sure saddens me and I hope I'm wrong, but I think the division is permanent for all intents and purposes. Ireland is basically a second Hispaniola.

Doubt it. There is a steady stream of "Ulster Scots" or whatever leaving northern Ireland. The younger population in particular is becoming increasingly non-Protestant. Northern Ireland will go the way of Ponducherry or Hong Kong. British 'neutrality' effectively means that the UK is really not committed to keeping it.