Irish vs. British Empire
Printed From: History Community ~ All Empires
Category: Scholarly Pursuits
Forum Name: Intellectual discussions
Forum Discription: Discuss political and philosophical theories, religious beliefs and other academic subjects
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=24745
Printed Date: 20-Apr-2024 at 07:20
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.56a - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Irish vs. British Empire
Posted By: eaglecap
Subject: Irish vs. British Empire
Date Posted: 28-Jun-2008 at 22:26
|
Even though I am part Irish I really do not know much about the Irish diaspora.
The British were sometimes brutal to the Irish natives but did they forcefully convert Catholic Irish to the Protestant faith? This would be contrary to the Protestant religion but did they? I also have a tiny bit of English ancestry so I am not picking on the Brits. I have been to the Irish Republic and I saw a number of Protestant churches. This suprised me because I believed it was strictly a Catholic country. It is a great place and the people are very kind. Our ancestor's last name was McCurly but I don't know if this is Scotch Irish or Irish-??? I know many, like the Scots, Irish were forced out of Ireland by the British and the rich Irish Lords- very sad!! we figure they came around the 1830's or 40'r to Ameerica ( our Irish side) but only a guess by the family. ------------- Λοιπόν, αδελφοί και οι συμπολίτες και οι στρατιώτες, να θυμάστε αυτό ώστε μνημόσυνο σας, φήμη και ελευθερία σας θα ε |
Replies:
Posted By: Al Jassas
Date Posted: 28-Jun-2008 at 23:13
|
All scottish people originally came from Ireland in the 10th or 11th century, so basically, they are one and the same. It is no surprise that you will find an Irish Kennedy and a Scottish Kennedy but who is the original and who is the branch only God knows.
Al-Jassas
|
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 29-Jun-2008 at 08:17
|
By the way eaglecap. The Scots are British last time I checked, indeed the last two PM's have been Scottish.
------------- |
Posted By: Parnell
Date Posted: 29-Jun-2008 at 23:13
|
McCurly is probably a scotch Irish name.
------------- |
Posted By: Dolphin
Date Posted: 29-Jun-2008 at 23:42
|
Ireland's primary religion is Catholicism, but it has a large Protestant population, especially around the border counties. The Church of Ireland is actually the fastest growing religion in Ireland, and Catholicism (or at least declared catholicism) is on the wane. The Protestant church has much less blood on its hands so to speak compared to the Catholic church with the numerous sex abuse cases and general authoritarion behaviour in the past. The Protestant church in Ireland is a remnant of the Plantations both in Munster and Ulster. There's so much religious bsh*t in Ireland's history it's kind of refreshing to see religion becoming less important, but hey, that's just my opinion. ------------- |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 05:49
|
A lot of the Irish nationalists of the 19th century were protestant. Parnell come to mind.
------------- |
Posted By: Emperor Barbarossa
Date Posted: 26-Jul-2008 at 17:54
|
Well, many Ulstermen have Scottish and English last names, and are Protestant. The weird thing is, some of those Scottish descendants are Catholic because they came to Ireland prior to the Reformation (Gallowglass families).
------------- 
|
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 26-Jul-2008 at 20:43
Or the late 18th. Wolfe Tone, the great Irish patriot who led the unsuccessful rising of 1798. Tone however was not just a patriot but a revolutionary devoted to the ideals of the French Revolution and his views on the US are interesting.
"Living at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia - Philadelphia , he wrote a few months later to Thomas Russell expressing unqualified dislike of the American people, whom he was disappointed to find no more truly democratic in sentiment and no less attached to authority than the English; he described http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington - George Washington as a "high-flying aristocrat," and he found the aristocracy of money in America still less to his liking than the European aristocracy of birth."
Incidentally I doubt anyone forcibly converted Roman Catholics to Anglicanism let alone Protestantism. There were of course social and frequently commercial and financial advantages in being Anglican (rather than Roman Catholic or Protestant, like the Ulstermen) and I've no doubt that led many to convert, at least professedly.
PS In an Irish context I should have referred to the Church of England in Ireland maybe, instead of Anglicanism, but theologically that's close enough.  ------------- |
Posted By: Akolouthos
Date Posted: 26-Jul-2008 at 20:52
I would just like to note, in the interests of clarification, that there is no such thing as "the Protestant religion," at least not in any sense that something as general as forced conversion could be contrary to it. In a broad sense, forced conversion is contrary to Christianity in general, which is not to say that it was not practiced by many groups over the ages. The Protestants, like almost every other Christian sect, have had a sketchy history with religious compulsion. The terms under which this compulsion occurred was often a result of various cultural and political factors. -Akolouthos |
Posted By: Emperor Barbarossa
Date Posted: 27-Jul-2008 at 04:25
Actually, a majority of Ulster Protestants are not Anglican but Presbyterian. I don't know if that goes for the rest of Ireland though.  -------------
|
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 27-Jul-2008 at 15:07
I did say the Ulstermen were Protestants. There have been advantages at various times to being Protestant in Ulster, but I had in mind pre-partition Ireland as a whole, where the main benefit was in belonging to the fashionable church, the Church of England in Ireland. Even in Ulster I think you will find that the majority of the economic elite were not Protestant.
Many of the internationally famous Irishmen who spring to mind - Wilde, Wellington and the Wellesleys, Tone, Parnell, Shaw, Swift, Yeats - were Church of England in Ireland. Which isn't of course to imply any superiority in the Church, but merely to indicate that that was where the money and the privilege were, and they constitute powerful pressures to convert.
(Frequent use of misleading terms like 'the protestant ascendancy' distort the picture.) ------------- |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 27-Jul-2008 at 19:42
|
glce2003, the 1798 rebellion was (mostly) an Ulster Protestant rebellion. Indeed one of the reasons for union in 1800 was since the British felt that the reason Ireland was such a mess was as a result of the Protestant asendency and its mistreatment of Catholics . The main reasons the British refused home rule for 50 plus years (despite wanting to give all of Ireland the old heave ho) was fears of what was a desire to protect catholics. As was the reason for partition. And the reason they went into N Ireland.
Indeed it seems for the last 210 years the most of the things the British Government has done in Ireland have been motivated in part to protect Catholics. Ironic considering what the politics and secatraian feeling there is.
------------- |
Posted By: Emperor Barbarossa
Date Posted: 28-Jul-2008 at 00:58
True, I was pointing out that a majority are not now of the Anglican Church in Ireland. I see your point that the Anglican Church offered much more benefit to Irishmen then than it does now. -------------
|
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 28-Jul-2008 at 09:24
I pointed out it was led by Wolfe Tone, technically I think an Anglican. However he actually seems to have been a typical Enlightenment freethinker, the movement called itself 'United Irishmen', and I think it was more of a political movement, inspired by the French Revolution, than driven by religion.
------------- |
Posted By: Panther
Date Posted: 28-Jul-2008 at 23:56
I've read some time ago, interesting enough (To me atleast), the vast majority of our Presidents have a predominant heritage of Scottish-Irish in them. If i remember correctly, Ulster in northern Ireland was the predominant area of origin & perhaps from the west coast area of Scotland as well.
------------- |
Posted By: Emperor Barbarossa
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 01:09
Yes, this is very true. Strange origins however. The Scots-Irish basically begin in Ireland, invade Scotland in 843, go back to Ireland in the 1600s, and then many came to America. However, many stayed, and a few Ulster-Scots still speak a form of Scots called "Ullans." -------------
|
Posted By: Panther
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 03:22
|
Yes very interesting?
BTW... i meant to say this for the last day or two... Welcome back to the forum ------------- |
Posted By: Emperor Barbarossa
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 03:32
Thanks, Panther. Did you ever read Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America by Jim Webb? If you haven't, I would greatly recommend it. -------------
|
Posted By: Panther
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 05:16
|
No i haven't. I'll certainly look into it. Thank you for the tip, EB! ------------- |
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 11:38
|
Has anyone else remarked the similarity of that distinctive Charleston (SC) accent to that of Belfast? ------------- |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 11:58
|
You mean besides the fact they are both unintelligable? ------------- |
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 29-Jul-2008 at 15:19
 ------------- |
Posted By: toyomotor
Date Posted: 04-Feb-2014 at 04:51
No they didn't. The Irish began settling in Scotland during 400CE. St Columba had a monastery on Iona by that time. It was largely due to his ministry that the Scots were converted to Christianity. Many Irish names can be found in Scotland, and they actually originated in Ireland. Scotland also partially adopted the Irish naming custom of, for example, Con mac Domnhail, (altered to Donald) to become Con, son of Donald or MacDonald. ------------- |
Posted By: toyomotor
Date Posted: 04-Feb-2014 at 05:05
|
There is so much misinformation on this thread that I don't really know where to start.
The original religion of Ireland was not Catholicism, just Christianity, the Church of Ireland. It then aligned with the Roman Catholic Church. Protestantism came to Ireland with the English Plantations, commencing in about 1550. This was a system of taking the best land from the Irish, by force, and giving it to Scots and English aristocracy who in turn brought out their own people to work the land. Ireland suffered the consequences of Henry VIII's pogrom against the Catholics, and Ireland was forced to become Protestant (Anglican Church or the Church of England). Over the centuries, the Irish revolted against the English many times, on the basis that their religion had been taken from them, their land had been taken, and, by the 1698 Penal Laws, their whole culture was denied them, even their Celtic names. They gained some minor concessions over time, but religion became the symbol of the oppressors (Protestant England) over the oppressed (Catholic Irish). In Northern Ireland, there is still a religious tension from historic times, but in the Republic of Ireland, the religions live side by side without any problems. ------------- |