Hi All,
I hope the question below doesn't seem tendentious or even conspiratorial.
When one looks at a map of the plantations in Ireland one can see that the areas that were 'Officially Planted' are areas with a majority population that does not self identify as British and areas that were 'unofficially planted' (in Antrim and Down) are areas with a majority population that self identifies as British.
I'm not interested in the minutiae of Northern Irish demographics ; however there is a connection between perceived ancestral religious affiliation and identification with Britishness (please let's not discuss the reasons for this identification unless challenging the contention).
It is contended that the 'Protestant' population of Ulster are descended from planters and my question is; is this true?
After all many Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland became Calvinist and no one contends that these areas were planted. Why is it held that Gaelic speaking people in Ireland were immune from conversion. Certainly much land in Antrim and Down was leased to undertakers and they were supposed to bring people over to farm it but wouldn't it have made more sense to use the locals; Perhaps with a couple of Scots to demonstrate modern techniques? There was a category defined as deserving Irish who were allowed to retain land ; how better to demonstrate that one was deserving that conversion?
I know this question is confused but I sort of wonder if the planatations thing is just a lie.
Ok well first of all I am struggling slightly with the wording of your question but I hope I can help. In terms of whether or not the plantations happened; It's almost non-negotiable. The main reason for this was so that the Catholic Irish lords in the long term wouldn't be able to ally with the Catholic nations of Spain and France who would use Ireland as a back door to England and as a naval base to cut off British trade from the rest of the world.
On July 1579, Irishman "James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald" landed in Dingle with a small Spanish force and a papal Bull from Pope Gregory XIII. The uprising that followed was crushed, after some initial success where a Royal army was defeated at Glenmalure, but for the British their possible nightmare had happened.
Plantation quickly followed and by mid-1586 over half a million acres of the best land was expropriated for this very reason and the first large scale plantation had begun. (This is factually recorded)
You do raise reasonable questions though. In David Ross' book "History of a Nation" he confesses that "many Irish tenants were accepted by undertakers who preferred any tenant to none" and that they had to "spend less in housing and defence for Irish tenants" but on plantation (early 1600s and particular to your examples) he notes "A more intensive Scottish settlement took place in Antrim and Down where two Scottish Lairds, Hamilton and Montgomery established a population of Scottish lowland farmers, "Presbyterian in their religious beliefs." The important thing to note here is that the reason we know that the Protestant populace was an alien phenomenon and not homegrown is because many of the towns that sprung up around this time simply didn't exist before hand and they survive today in the likes of Coleraine that were built unquestionably by Protestant settlers (as the Irish were unlikely to have had money to do so).
Finally as to your proposition that the Irish may have converted there can be almost no doubt that some probably did but to suggest this is the reason for Protestantism on the North East coast doesn't hold to any examination of the times. From the same book I noted earlier Ross writes that throughout the 17th and 18th Century Catholicism remained strong in Ireland as the Protestant priests refused to learn Irish and vice-versa with the local populace and English.
To part on this note it's actually sadly ironic that the Protestant churches, though not until the 1840s, began to teach in Irish (well after the plantations), and as a reaction to this new threat the Catholic Church discouraged the populace from speaking it leading it to it's gradual decline of over 100years