ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Anglo-Irish Agreement has brought to light two subterranean ethnicities: that of the Ulster Scot in Northern Ireland and that of the Irish in England. It addresses the ethnic element in Antrim/Down hegemonic perspective by exploring the place of a new Ulster-Scots nationalism. The Northern Ireland statelet constructed in the face of southern Irish secession from the United Kingdom was shaped by externally imposed religious and economic constraints. The political power of the Anglo-Irish “governing caste” rested on its sectarian categorization of its own ascendancy as one of Protestants of Irish extraction. Historicizing the events that gave rise to Lucy Mair’s perception, suggests that ethnicity is, peculiarly, a cultural construction within empires. These take two forms: political empires, such as that of the Hapsburgs, Great Britain, or the Soviet Union; and economic empires, such as that of modern, global capitalism.
