Inishowen is isolated. A promontory on the northern reaches of the Donegal coast, located on the north-western corner of Ireland it is a remote peninsula which seems removed from the concerns of wider Irish, let alone British politics. Yet this image is deceptive, for in fact Inishowen is near the very heart of the British Isles. The map of the archipelago, when turned on its side, makes this apparent, for the province of Ulster juts out into the Irish Sea and is nestled between the Argyllshire region of Scotland, the north Welsh region where the island of Anglesey gestures towards County Down, and the Cumbrian coastline of England.

This position at the heart of the British Isles has had the unfortunate consequence of making the province the archipelago's charnel house: when the political structures of governance and representation have become unstable or illegitimate, Ulster has been the central arena of contestation, from the Nine Years War of 1594–1603 when the Gaelic chieftains Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell resisted the expansion of English rule, to the Troubles which flared in the 1960s in which a physical-force republicanism associated with Irish separatist ambition endeavoured to undermine a state system dominated by a Unionist constituency.

In the wars of 1688–91, when the Williamite Revolution was rippling through the three Stuart Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, Ulster was a critical testing ground for the military capacity of the contending forces. In the city of Londonderry, just east of Inishowen, the conflict tipped decisively against James II. For 105 days, between April and July 1689, the city of 30,000 souls was surrounded by the Catholic army. Despite the pessimistic assessment of the City Governor, Robert Lundy, that the city must fall, the citizens were able to hold out long enough for the Williamite navy to break the boon that had blocked the Foyle river's access to the sea. The siege of Londonderry eventually became an iconic event in Williamite political culture, although in the decades immediately following the siege Anglicans and Presbyterians contested the garlands of war.