Feargal Cochrane's "Belfast"

Feargal Cochrane is professor emeritus and senior research fellow at the Conflict Analysis Research Centre, University of Kent. His many books include Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace and Breaking Peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland.

Cochrane applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Belfast: The Story of a City and its People, and reported the following:

My page 99 focuses on the building of the Titanic in Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard, a subject that sits right at the centre of the book. So from that perspective anyone who opens the book at page 99 will know instantly that it is a book about Belfast.

The Titanic is probably Belfast’s most famous export, and we have constructed a civic brand around the most famous ship to be built since Noah’s Ark. The huge ocean liner was the last word in opulent transatlantic travel and was heralded as the ‘unsinkable ship’ before it did just that on its maiden voyage in the icy waters of the North Atlantic in April 1912. My page 99 focuses on the building of the Titanic and its sister ship the Olympic and the importance of these liners for the prestige of the shipbuilding industry in Belfast and for the economic progress of the city as a whole.

However, what my page 99 doesn’t do (but the book does) is explain the wider economic, political and cultural dimensions of shipbuilding in Belfast. Bluntly put, not everyone got to build the ships as it was an industry dominated by the Protestant/unionist/British community in the east of the city. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries they controlled ship building and dominated the wider political, economic and cultural life of Belfast, while the Catholic/ nationalist/Irish minority were largely excluded. The political and legal system as well as the nature of the public buildings in the city has reflected that reality until very recently.

In addition to shipbuilding, the book also has chapters on the linen industry, the political radicalism of the United Irishmen, the architecture of the city as well as chapters on the political conflict, the tourism and the cultural flourishing of more recent times. These chapters all emphasise the interconnections between politics, economics and culture and the way in which our divided history is woven indelibly into all aspects of the past and present of the city. So, ships are not just ships and buildings are not just bricks mortar and glass, they are history, heritage and part of our divided past –artefacts in our cultural archaeology.

But my page 99 certainly provides a glimpse of the wider themes within the book so I think it passes the test.

Learn more about Belfast at Feargal Cochrane's website.

The Page 99 Test: Northern Ireland.

--Marshal Zeringue