Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

Two separate plantation schemes took place. From 1606 onwards, Scottish Protestants, called Presbyterians settled in the eastern part of Ulster. From 1608, the City of London Merchants organized a colonizing programme for English Protestants to be settled in the northern part of Ulster. As the settlers moved into Ulster, the Irish were dispossessed, and were forced to move out into the hills and neighbouring countryside, sometimes the Irish were encouraged to return as, labourers and tenant farmers, to the land that had once been theirs. Large numbers of labourers were needed to clear the land and grow crops. Where this happened, a tense situation developed between the two groups of people. In some areas there was no mixing of the communities at all.

As the British Empire expanded in the seventeenth century, Acts of trade, established which goods were to be produced by colonists for Britain. There were advantages and disadvantages to this system of economic control.