was still in hands of the Catholic Irish. The plantation of Ulster was unique in that it offered the possibility to live in Ireland to all classes. It was aimed at transplanting a society to Ireland. This resulted in the separation between the Catholic Irish and the Protestant settlers. The broad outline for the modern conflict was laid here: the same territories were occupied by the two groups, who often lived in separate quarters. As today, they identified their differences as cultural, religious and territorial.
             After a lot of uproar, such as the Battle of Boyne, won by the Protestants, in 1690, during two centuries, the Irish parliament and government were abolished by an Act of Union in 1801. This Act of Union joined Ireland to England together as part of the United Kingdom. A number of attempts was made to overthrow the Union, but all failed. In 1912 400,000 Protestants signed that they wanted to remain a part of the Kingdom. In 1916 the Easter Rising in Dublin against British rule took place. Finally in 1921, a treaty and the Government of Ireland Act were implemented, leading to the establishment of the Irish Free State, with 26 of the counties, leaving the other 6 counties in Northern Ireland British.
             Many Catholics were angry over the partition, as they saw it as a betrayal. Northern Ireland was created through demographic compromise; the six counties formed the largest area that could be comfortably held by a majority in favor of the union with Britain. The objective of securing a united independent Ireland remained and there were large IRA campaigns during the 1920s, 40s and 50s. The answer of Northern Ireland, of the Protestants, was an almost exclusively Protestant police force and reserve, gerrymandering in local government boundaries and a system of economic discrimination against Christians.
             Even though they were being discriminated against in Northern Ireland, by the 1950s more and more Catholics were prepared...