Here are the texts for next class (Monday 27th).

THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER Ulster had been the most Gaelic part of Ireland. The area was “underdeveloped” by mainland European standards of the time, and it possessed few towns or villages. During the XVI century Henry VIII was named king of Ireland as well as England. However, the Irish had a very strong sense of identity and didn’t want to be ruled by English men. They rebelled and a series of clashes started. The English crown decided that the only way to keep control of Ireland would be to “plant” the area known as Ulster with English farmers and landlords. The plantation of Ulster took place between 1609 and 1690 when Irish northern lands were taken and granted to Scottish and English settlers. Some lands were kept for building towns. There were very few towns in Ulster before the plantation. By 1611, the development of new towns such as Bangor and Belfast had begun. Some towns were built around the forts which the English had built, such as Derry, Enniskillen and Omagh. The Irish language began to decline after the earls departed in 1607 and English language became the language of power. THE TROUBLES Ever since the English settled in Ireland, there has been a war between the 2 main religions: Catholics and Protestants. This had a big effect on Ireland. In the late 1960s, the Catholics (also known as the Republicans)split up, and some of them, together with the Irish Army,  formed the IRA (Irish Republican Army. The government answered by launching the Operation Demetrius, which was a British Army operation in Northern Ireland on 9–10 August 1971, during the “Troubles”. It involved the arrest and internment (imprisonment without trial) of 342 people suspected of being involved with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA advanced to Northern Ireland, where most of the Protestants (a.k.a. Unionists) lived. There then rose a number of terrorist attacks throughout the 1970s. An important incident was the “Bloody Sunday”, when the British police shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest against internment.  Terrorist attacks continued and reached its peak in the 1980s and continued throughout the 1990s. Finally, in 1999, an agreement in Belfast was signed to ease the relations between the North and South. So basically, the terrorist attacks, known in Ireland and abroad as "The Troubles", came to an end. But the IRA refused to disarm. However, in 2005, the IRA disarmed.