Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland, located in County Antrim in the east of the country. The city's Irish name, Beal Feirste, means "river mouth of the sandbar", referring to the sandbar at the mouth of the Lagan and Farset Rivers. Belfast was granted city status in 1888 and became a center of the linen, tobacco, rope-making, and shipbuilding industries during the Industrial Revolution, becoming a global industrial center and the largest city in Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century. Belfast became the economic engine of Northern Ireland and the capital of the British province after the partition of the island in 1921, and the city suffered from intense political violence during "The Troubles" from 1968 to 1998, with the Irish Catholics and the Ulster Scots/Anglo-Irish Protestants engaging in sectarian conflict and terrorism for decades. In 2001, the Belfast metropolitan area had a population of 585,996 people.
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