Wikipedia:WikiProject Ireland Collaboration/statementbyRed King (second statement)
Statement by Red King (second statement)
[edit]Ireland (country)
[edit]The purpose of this second statement is to challenge a false assumption made in each of the 'proposed solutions' in the main article: they all make the mistake of equating the country, Ireland with the modern state, Ireland. They are not identical.
The problem is that the jurisdiction of neither of the present states is coterminous with the historical country. It is wrong to define Ireland only in terms of the 20th century (which is what many of the options proposed by others seeks to do). The term 'Ireland', in the context of its people and their political structures, has an undisputed history as a distinct single nation going back at least 1000 years (see High Kings of Ireland - an even longer history is argued by some). Even under [disputed] English overlordship, Ireland remained politically distinct until the Act of Union 1801 - and even then we had the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, albeit for just 120 years.
I recognise that the current Country article defines a country to be identically equal to a sovereign state. In the case of Ireland, that is not true. There are many all-island institions, dating back many hundreds of years. Examples include the major religious denominations and the 'national' (as in "RBS Six Nations" [sic]) rugby team. The history of the country, Ireland, is not the history of the current state of that name.
Consequently I propose that if we have to have an Ireland (country) article [and I am at a loss to see why we do] then it should only redirect to the proposed 'context' Ireland article. In the context of this procedure, it should be deleted from the solution matrix because it is contentious and not critical to any of the solutions.
To avoid anyone jumping to the conclusion that this is a nationalist polemic for Irish unity, please observe that it would apply equally well to a reunited United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The last 80 years represent less than 8% of the history of the country. I'm asking people to take the long view.