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Ireland Under the Union 1800–1900

Industrialisation in Ulster across the century

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 1

Overview

Linen and shipbuilding in Belfast, the growth of the city and its population, and the economic case Ulster made against Home Rule.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Which industry first drove Belfast's growth?

Key term

How did shipbuilding come to Belfast?

Key term

How did industrialisation change the social basis of unionism?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Which industry first drove Belfast's growth?

    Model answer

    Linen drove Belfast's growth, and the mechanised wet spinning of flax from the late 1820s moved the industry out of the cottage and into the factory.

  2. 2

    How did the American Civil War affect the Ulster linen trade?

    Model answer

    The blockade of the southern states cut off raw cotton from the mills of Britain between 1861 and 1865, demand switched to linen, and Ulster enjoyed a boom that funded a further wave of mill building.

  3. 3

    How did shipbuilding come to Belfast?

    Model answer

    The Harbour Commissioners cut the Victoria Channel and used the spoil to make Queen's Island, which gave deep water and building ground where a yard was established in the 1850s.

  4. 4

    Who were Harland and Wolff?

    Model answer

    Edward Harland bought the Queen's Island yard in 1858 and took Gustav Wolff into partnership in 1861, and their firm grew into one of the largest shipbuilders in the world.

  5. 5

    How did Belfast's population change over the century?

    Model answer

    Belfast grew from a town of about twenty thousand people in 1801 to some 350,000 by 1901, overtaking Dublin in the 1890s to become the largest city in Ireland.

  6. 6

    How did Belfast's growth contrast with the rest of Ireland?

    Model answer

    While the population of Ireland fell by more than a third after 1841, Belfast's rose several times over, so that one corner of the country was industrialising as the rest emptied.

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