I would assume its because Wales and Scottland fell in line pretty quickly whereas Ireland never wanted to be part of Britain and told England to fuck off.

  • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    England was taken over by a Scottish king via intermarriage bullshit. The royal families of each country literally merged into one. There were attempts at military conquest to varying degrees of success before that, but ultimately the union of both countries was through royal nonsense and not England conquering Scotland.

    Consequently, Scots have played major roles in British government, business, culture, and empire for centuries, because they are nominally (and practically) equals. They weren't seen as another race. Scottish people have been oppressed by Scottish lords.

    Ireland was an imperial, colonial project defined by conquest and genocide.

    • leonadas444 [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Yeah I was just curious as to why I saw 19th century and early 20th Century Scottish and Welsh people Joining in with England to shit on Ireland. I was suprised very surprised. Honestly all three England Scottland and Wales seemed to treat the Irish (especially low born irish) like dogs back in those days.

      Edit: I would also assume some of it was the desire of the irish to remain catholic whereas England Scottland and Wales had turned fully protestant at that point.

      • bbnh69420 [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        As an outside observer, I was also going to give the religion answer, but that might be at the root of jack's post

  • chlooooooooooooo [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    first off, the welsh were treated pretty much as badly, the history of wales since the norman conquest has been one of fairly brutal colonisation and repression. the reason it's not perceived to be as bad is because wales was essentially fully assimilated and integrated by the modern period and the memory of that is more distant. there's also the fact that since it was a largely medieval affair rather than early modern, the methods of suppression of the welsh identity were less totalistic than those applied in ireland (though there are similarities, for example the way welsh language was repressed wholesale during the victorian period).

    regarding the irish, there's a more religious dimension to consider as the irish stuck with catholicism much more than the inhabitants of britain did on the whole. this was troublesome for the british crown as the protestant churches of britain were a key mechanism of state power over the populace. thus to subjugate ireland it was necessary to enforce british religion on ireland. with the way that religious identity can be tied up with cultural identity, it hence became necessary to try and replace the independent irish culture with a british culture - english or scottish, both played a role in the process of colonisation that followed (scottish colonisation of ulster was equally as important as english and it's not accurate to say that it was an english project alone).

    plantations were the main way in which the british crown tried to accomplish its goals. there were four major waves of plantation from the time of Henry VIII through to James I (who was a scottish king, highlighting the point made at the end of the last paragraph). what were the crown's goals exactly? the mercantilist ideology of the state sought profit for english and scottish landlords in ireland. how best to achieve this? seizing land from native irish landholders (whose form of ownership was more traditional and localised), and handing it out to english and scottish ones (whose concept of ownership was early modern capitalist in form). here we see the core reason for suppression of the irish - the traditional structure of irish society had to be demolished in order to enforce the new, more extractive british system. this is in contrast to earlier norman domination of ireland which had been a feudal affair and did not challenge irish society to nearly the same extent.

    i would write about the reasons scotland didn't face colonisation or suppression in the same way but @jack already handled that pretty well.

    • leonadas444 [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      So when I was reading this I was reading mostly 19th century and early 20 century accounts. By which time, Wales as you said, had been pretty much assimilated into the empire (even if it was against their will) and were even shitting on the Irish themselves,. Wasn't trying to downplay any suffering Wales had been through, I agree if we stretch the time period back through the medieval period, it gets pretty ugly for Wales as well.

      Thanks for the post though its pretty informative.

    • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      “Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonized by!”

      :chefs-kiss:

  • star_wraith [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Not British but wasn't Scotland conquered under feudalism, while Ireland was conquered during the capitalist and colonial areas? Might explain some of it.

    • Barabas [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      England conquered Ireland in the 16th century, Scotland and England was made a union in the 18th.

      Sure, Scotland and England had been at war and had conquests going back and forth, but it isn't like England and Irish lordships hadn't been at war before the conquest either.

    • leonadas444 [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      According to the guy above there was intermarriage between Scottish and English royals, allowing the scots to get a foothold in the new unified government. Wasn't that way with ireland, strict conquering and genocide.