plantation-of-ulster-guide

March 18, 2018 by Alexander Meldrum

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The Plantation of Ulster. The Ulster Scots (Ulster-Scots: Ulstèr-Scotch), also called Ulster-Scots people Ulstèr-Scotch fowk or, outside the British Isles, Scots-Irish (Scotch-Airisch[3]), are an ethnic group in Ireland, found mostly in the Ulster region and to a lesser extent in the rest of Ireland. Their ancestors were mostly Protestant Lowland Scottish migrants, the largest numbers coming from Galloway, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire and the Scottish Borders, with others coming from further north in the Scottish Lowlands and, to a much lesser extent, from the Highlands. These Scots migrated to Ireland in large numbers both as a result of the government-sanctioned Plantation of Ulster, a planned process of colonisation which took place under the auspices of James VI of Scotland and I of England on land confiscated from members of the Gaelic nobility of Ireland, who fled Ulster and as part of a larger migration or unplanned wave of settlement. Ulster Scots emigrated onwards from Ireland in significant numbers to what is now the United States and to all corners of the then-worldwide British Empire . what are now Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, to British India, and to a lesser extent to Argentina and Chile. In fact, these 'Scots-Irish' from Ulster and Lowland Scotland comprised the most numerous group of immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to the American colonies in the years prior the American Revolution, with an estimated 150,000 leaving northern Ireland at the time.Towards the end of the 18th century, many Ulster-Scots Presbyterians ignored religious differences and, along with many Catholic Gaelic Irish, joined the United Irishmen to participate in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in support of republican and egalitarian ideals.Scots-IrishJust a few generations after arriving in Ulster, considerable numbers of Ulster-Scots emigrated to the North American colonies of Great Britain. Between 1717 and 1775, an estimated 200,000 migrated to what became the United States of America. In the United States Census of 2000, 4.3 million Americans (1.5% of the population of the United States) claimed Scotch-Irish ancestry. Author and former United States Senator Jim Webb suggests that the true number of people with some Scots-Irish heritage in the United States is more in the country of 27 million, possibly because contemporary Americans with some Scotch-Irish heritage may regard themselves as either Irish, Scottish, or "American" instead.

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