Linenopolis and the shipyards: industrial Belfast
Linen mills and the Harland and Wolff shipyard turn Belfast into one of the great industrial cities of the British Empire, and the builder of the Titanic.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast 1861–1986 — Michael Moss and John R. Hume, Blackstaff Press (1986)
In the nineteenth century Belfast grew faster than any other city in Ireland, from a town of about 20,000 in 1800 to a city of nearly 350,000 by 1901. Its linen mills earned it the nickname “Linenopolis”, and Harland and Wolff, founded in 1861, became one of the biggest shipyards in the world; it launched the Titanic in 1911. Industrial Ulster looked east to Glasgow, Liverpool and the empire, not south to rural Ireland, and that shaped unionist confidence that Home Rule would ruin them. The best-paid skilled jobs went overwhelmingly to Protestants, and the yards saw repeated expulsions of Catholic workers in times of tension, most notoriously in 1920.
- A History of Ulster — Jonathan Bardon, Blackstaff Press (1992)
- Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast 1861–1986 — Michael Moss and John R. Hume, Blackstaff Press (1986)
- Belfast's Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s — Alan F. Parkinson, Four Courts Press (2004)
Why it matters today
Industrial Belfast is a source of real pride, and the Titanic Quarter now sells it to tourists. It also explains why unionists came to see the Union as the basis of their prosperity, and why the shipyards' largely Protestant workforce became a long-standing nationalist grievance.