The site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze ages, and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen.

The original Belfast Castle was at Castle Junction, where several roads meet at the top of the High Street. This was demolished at the same time the River Farset was covered over to create the High Street. There is a new castle on the slopes of the Cavehill above the Antrim and Shore Road, now a popular location for wedding receptions.

In the early 17th century Belfast was settled by English and Scottish settlers, under a plan by Sir Arthur Chichester to colonise and remove Irish Catholics from the land. This caused much tension with the existing Irish Catholic population who rebelled in 1641, when England was distracted with its Civil War. The resulting slaughter is still strong in Ulster Protestant folk memory. It was later settled by a small number of French Huguenots fleeing persecution, who established a sizeable linen trade.

In the 19th Century, Belfast became Ireland's pre-eminent industrial city, with linen, heavy engineering, tobacco and shipbuilding dominating the economy, and Belfast briefly overtook Dublin in population at the end of the nineteenth century. Migrants to Belfast came from across Ireland, Scotland and England, but particularly from rural Ulster, where sectarian tensions ran deep. The same period saw the first outbreaks of sectarian riots, which have recurred regularly since.

By 1901 Belfast was the largest city in Ireland. Since around 1840 its population included many Catholics, who orginally settled in the west of city, around the area of today's Barrack Street. West Belfast remains the centre of the city's Catholic population (in contrast with the east of the City which is almost exclusively Protestant). Other areas of Catholic settlement have included the north of the city, especially Ardoyne and the Antrim Road and the Markets area immediately to the south of the city centre.

Conditions for the new working-class were often squalid, with much of the population packed into overcrowded and unsanitary tenements, and the city suffered from repeated cholera outbreaks in the mid 19th Century. Conditions improved somewhat after a wholesale slum clearance programme in the 1900s.

Belfast became the centre of Irish Protestantism, and in 1922 it was declared the capital of Northern Ireland after Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State (later to become the Republic of Ireland, when it withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1949). The period immediately after partition was marked by vicious sectarian disturbances, and a dramatic hardening of the city's sectarian boundaries. In common with similar cities world-wide, Belfast suffered particularly during the Great Depression.

During the Second World War, Belfast was one of the major United Kingdom cities bombed by German forces and virtually the only one intentionally bombed by the Luftwaffe on the isle of Ireland, most of which had remained neutral during the War. Belfast was targeted due to its concentration of heavy shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Ironically, the same period saw the economy recover as the war economy saw great demand for the products of these industries.

The post-war years were relatively placid in Belfast, but sectarian tensions erupted into violence in 1969 and bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life throughout The Troubles. The general decline in European manufacturing industry of the early 1980s, exacerbated by political violence, devastated the City's economy. A calmer scene in recent years has allowed some development of the city.

This page was last updated: 10 Mai 2007

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL