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The Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which officially concluded the Irish War of Independence, established the Irish Free State as a virtually autonomous nation. One provision in the treaty, however, radically undermined the nature of the new state: Ireland was to be partitioned, with six counties in the northeast section of the country remaining a part of the United Kingdom, to be known as Northern Ireland. In these six counties, the majority--approximately two-thirds--were Protestants, vehemently opposed to assimilation with the overwhelmingly Catholic South. These religious differences, in effect since the late 17th century, when England established Protestant settlements in the North, were underscored by economic ones: Northern Ireland had a relatively industrialized economy, as opposed to the largely agrarian South. The dispute over partition and other issues of the treaty deeply divided the South, resulting in the Irish Civil War in 1922.

In the decades that followed, long-standing discrimination, de facto segregation, and physical repression (the Royal Ulster Constabulary [RUC], the Northern Irish police force, was more than 95 percent Protestant) against the Catholic minority in the North led to increased dissension. In 1967, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed to promote equality in such areas as public housing and employment. The organization organized a protest march in 1969 that was violently suppressed by the police. The police RUC and the local government in both England and Ireland. In 1969, the

British army was called in to keep the peace, an action that was applauded by the Catholic minority, since the British soldiers were now seen as their protectors. That view soon changed as the British army conducted house-to-house searches for weapons in a rude and offensive fashion that alienated the Catholic population. At this point, the Northern branch of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had been dormant for a number of years, began a reorganization that by 1971 resulted in a bombing campaign aimed at, among others, British soldiers. The government retaliated with a policy of "internment," arrest and imprisonment without charges for an indefinite period. The violence escalated further on Sunday, January 30, 1972, when British troops fired on a peaceful civil rights demonstration in the city of Derry (Londonderry), killing 13 civilians. This "Bloody Sunday" set off further demonstrations as the violence steadily increased. Two militant Protestant groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, matched, and often exceeded, the IRA in terrorist activity.

Tensions increased in 1981 when 10 IRA prisoners died on a hunger strike, but in 1984 an accord between the English prime minister Margaret Thatcher and the Irish prime minister Garrett Fitzgerald was welcomed by the moderate political parties, although condemned by extremists on both sides. The agreement recognized the right of the majority of people in Northern Ireland to determine their form of government, while calling for the protection of the minority's civil liberties. This cooperation between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland constituted the first step in the slow development of the peace process, which got under way again in 1994. The on-again, off-again peace discussions finally bore fruit on April 10, 1998, when the "Good Friday" agreement allowed for a power-sharing arrangement in the Northern Ireland government. The old animosities continued to plague the new government, however, causing Britain to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2002.

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