ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an historical framework for understanding the people experiences and perspectives who live in Irish border. It provides a brief account of the political origins of partition, the processes that led to the delineation of and eventual final demarcation of the borderline. The chapter traces the ways in which the creation of the border has been understood in relation to accounts of regional identity and difference on the island as a whole in accounts of the archaeology, history and historical geography of Ireland. It explores how the new border was put into place on the ground and new territorial arrangements made concrete and consolidated. The chapter describes the material forms of the new border and its practical implementation; and the ways in which the people most directly affected by partition the new borderlanders come to terms with living with the border. It explores that the idea of a south Ulster borderland has a specific historical resonance.
