The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland

Abstract

Between 1911 and 1926, the 26 counties that became the Irish Free State lost 34 per cent of their Protestant population.¹ To put this number into context, over the same period the Catholic populations in both the north and south fell by 2 per cent and the Protestant population in Northern Ireland rose by 2 pet cent. Over the previous 30 years, the two groups within the 26 counties had declined at almost exactly the same — gradually decreasing — rate (Protestants by 20 per cent, Catholics by 19 per cent). So this catastrophic loss was unique to the southern minority and unprecedented: it represents easily. the single greatest measurable social change of the revolutionary era. It is also unique in modern British history, being the only example of the mass displacement of a native ethnic group within the British Isles since the seventeenth century. Did the political and demographic crises coincide? How voluntary was this migration, and what were its causes? How sectarian was the Irish nationalist revolution?