History of Ireland (1801–1923)
Ireland Éire (Irish) | |||||||||||
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1801–1922 | |||||||||||
Flag of the Lord Lieutenant | |||||||||||
Anthem: "God Save the King/Queen" | |||||||||||
Status | Country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | ||||||||||
Capital | Dublin | ||||||||||
Largest city | Dublin (1801–1901) Belfast (1901–1922) | ||||||||||
Common languages |
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Religion |
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Monarch | |||||||||||
• 1801–1820 (first) | George III | ||||||||||
• 1910–1922 (last) | George V | ||||||||||
Lord Lieutenant | |||||||||||
• 1801–1805 (first) | Philip Yorke | ||||||||||
• 1922 (last) | Edmund FitzAlan | ||||||||||
Historical era | Imperial Britain | ||||||||||
• Acts of Union came into effect | 1 January 1801 | ||||||||||
29 April 1916 | |||||||||||
• Government of Ireland Act enacted | 3 May 1921 | ||||||||||
6 December 1921 | |||||||||||
• Irish Free State established | 6 December 1922 | ||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||
1911 | 84,421 km2 (32,595 sq mi) | ||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||
• 1911 | 4,390,000 | ||||||||||
Currency |
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Today part of |
Acts of Union
History of Ireland |
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Ireland opened the 19th century still reeling from the after-effects of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Prisoners were still being deported to Australia and sporadic violence continued in County Wicklow. There was another abortive rebellion led by Robert Emmet in 1803. The Acts of Union, which constitutionally made Ireland part of the British state, can largely be seen as an attempt to redress some of the grievances behind the 1798 rising[1] and to prevent it from destabilising Britain or providing a base for foreign invasion.
In 1800 the
After one failed attempt, the passage of the act in the Irish parliament was finally achieved, albeit, as with the
In this period, the administration of Ireland consisted of authorities appointed by the central British government. These were the
As the century went on, the UK Parliament and Cabinet took over from the monarch as the legislative and executive branches of government, respectively. For this reason, in Ireland, the Chief Secretary became more important than the Lord Lieutenant, who became of more symbolic than real importance. After the abolition of the Irish Parliament, Irish Members of Parliament were elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in Westminster.
The
Catholic Emancipation
Part of the Union's attraction for many Irish Catholics and Dissenters was the promised abolition of the remaining
O'Connell's tactics were largely peaceful, using mass rallies to show the popular support for his campaign. While O'Connell failed to gain repeal of the Union, his efforts led to reforms in matters such as local government and the
Despite O'Connell's peaceful methods, there was also a good deal of sporadic violence and rural unrest in the country in the first half of the 19th century. In
The Great Famine
Ireland underwent major highs and lows economically during the 19th century; from economic booms during the
The economic problems of most Irish people were in part the result of the small size of their landholdings and a large increase in the population in the years before the famine.
In the new Whig government (from 1846),
Emigration was not uncommon in Ireland in the years preceding the Famine. Between 1815 and 1845, Ireland had already established itself as the major supplier of overseas labour to Great Britain and North America.
Young Irelander Rebellion
Some members of the Repeal Association, called the
Land agitation and agrarian resurgence
In the wake of the famine, many thousands of Irish peasant farmers and labourers either died or left the country. Those who remained waged a long campaign for better rights for tenant farmers and ultimately for land re-distribution. This period, known as the "Land War" in Ireland, had a nationalist as well as a social element. The reason for this was that the land-owning class in Ireland, since the period of the 17th century Plantations of Ireland, had been composed of Protestant settlers, originally from England, who had a British identity.[citation needed] The Irish (Roman Catholic) population widely believed that the land had been unjustly taken from their ancestors and given to this Protestant Ascendancy during the English conquest of the country.[citation needed]
The
The most effective tactic of the Land League was the
Ultimately, the land question was settled through successive
Unrest and agitation also resulted in the successful introduction of agricultural co-operatives through the initiative of
Culture and the Gaelic revival
The Culture of Ireland underwent a massive change in the course of the 19th century. After the Famine, the Irish language went into steep decline. This process was started in the 1830s, when the first National Schools were set up in the country. These had the advantage of encouraging literacy, but classes were provided only in English and the speaking of Irish was prohibited. However, before the 1840s, Irish was still the majority language in the country and numerically (given the rise in population) may have had more speakers than ever before. The Famine devastated the Irish speaking areas of the country, which tended also to be rural and poor. As well as causing the deaths of thousands of Irish speakers, the famine also led to sustained and widespread emigration from the Irish-speaking south and west of the country. By 1900, for the first time in perhaps two millennia, Irish was no longer the majority language in Ireland, and continued to decline in importance. By the time of Irish independence, the Gaeltachts had shrunk to small areas along the western seaboard.
In reaction to this, Irish nationalists began a
The form of English established in Ireland differed somewhat from
Home Rule movement
Until the 1870s, most Irish people elected as their Members of Parliament (MPs)
Parnell's movement also campaigned for the right of Ireland to govern herself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who had wanted a complete repeal of the Act of Union. Two home rule bills (in
Home Rule divided Ireland: a significant minority of
In 1889, the scandal surrounding Parnell's divorce proceedings split the Irish party, when it became public that Parnell, popularly acclaimed as the 'Uncrowned King of Ireland', had for many years been living in a family relationship with Mrs. Katharine O'Shea, the long-separated wife of a fellow MP. When the scandal broke, religious non-conformists in Great Britain, who were the backbone of the pro-Home Rule Liberal Party, forced its leader W. E. Gladstone to abandon support for the Irish cause as long as Parnell remained leader of the IPP. Inside Ireland, the Catholic Church turned against him. Parnell fought for control but lost. He died in 1891. But the Party and the country remained split between pro-Parnellites and anti-Parnellites, who fought each other in elections.
The United Irish League founded in 1898 forced the reunification of the party to stand under John Redmond in the 1900 general election. After a brief attempt by the Irish Reform Association to introduce devolution in 1904, the Irish Party subsequently held the balance of power in the House of Commons after the 1910 general election.
The last obstacle to achieving Home Rule was removed with the Parliament Act 1911 when the House of Lords lost its power to veto legislation and could only delay a bill for two years. In 1912, with the Irish Parliamentary Party at its zenith, a new third Home Rule Bill was introduced by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, passing its first reading in the Imperial House of Commons but again defeated in the House of Lords (as with the bill of 1893). During the following two years in which the bill was delayed, debates in the Commons were largely dominated by questions surrounding Home Rule and Ulster Unionists' determined resistance to it. By 1914 the situation had escalated into militancy on both sides, first unionists then nationalists arming and drilling openly, bringing about a Home Rule crisis.
Labour conflicts
Although nationalism dominated Irish politics, social and economic issues were far from absent and came to the fore in the first two decades of the 20th century. Dublin was a city marked by extremes of poverty and wealth, being home to several tenement areas and possessing some of the worst slums anywhere in the British Empire. It also possessed one of the world's biggest "red light districts" known as Monto (after its focal point, Montgomery Street, on the north side of the city).
Unemployment was high in Ireland and worker's pay and conditions were often very poor. In response to this, socialist activists such as
However, the labor movement was split into nationalist lines. Southern unions formed the
Home Rule crisis
Since early 1914, Ireland seemed to be on the brink of civil war[17] between rival private armies, the Nationalist and Unionist Volunteer groups, over the proposed introduction of Home Rule for Ireland.
Already in April 1912, 100,000 unionists, led by the barrister
In September 1914, just as the
The
Until 1918, the Irish Parliamentary Party, which sought independent self-government for the whole of Ireland through the principles of parliamentary constitutionalism, remained the dominant Irish party. But from the early 20th century, a radical fringe among Home Rulers became associated with
Easter Rising
Because of divisions among the Volunteer leadership, only a small part of their numbers was mobilized. Indeed,
The government and the Irish media wrongly blamed Sinn Féin, then a small monarchist political party with little popular support for the rebellion, even though in reality it had not been involved. Nonetheless, Rising survivors, notably Éamon de Valera returning from imprisonment in Great Britain, joined the party in great numbers, radicalized its programme and took control of its leadership.
Until 1917, Sinn Féin, under its founder
Faced with an impending split between its monarchists and Republicans, a compromise was brokered at the 1917 Ard Fheis (party conference) whereby the party would campaign to create a republic, then let the people decide if they wanted a monarchy or republic, subject to the proviso that if they wanted a king, they could not choose someone from Britain's Royal Family.
Throughout 1917 and 1918, Sinn Féin and the Irish Parliamentary Party fought a bitter electoral battle; each won some by-elections and lost others. The scales were finally tipped in Sinn Féin's favor when as a result of the German spring offensive the government, although it had already received large numbers of volunteer soldiers from Ireland, intended to impose conscription on the island linked with implementing Home Rule. An infuriated public turned against Britain during the Conscription Crisis of 1918. The Irish Parliamentary Party demonstratively withdrew its MPs from the House of Commons at Westminster.
In the
War of Independence
For three years, from 1919 to 1921, acting largely on its own authority and independently of the Dáil assembly, the
In the background, Britain remained committed to implementing self-government for Ireland in accordance with the (temporarily suspended)
In July 1921, a cease-fire was agreed and negotiations between delegations of the Irish and British sides produced the
Northern Ireland was given the right, immediately availed of, to opt out of the new Irish Free State, and an Irish Boundary Commission was to be established to work out the final details of the border. In December 1925 the three governments agreed to keep the existing border, and in return, the Irish Free State's treaty liability to pay its share of the UK public debt was ended.[18]
Civil War
The
However a strong Republican minority group led by Éamon de Valera[19] opposed the treaty on the grounds that:
- it had abolished the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916, established under the First Dáil,
- it imposed the controversial Dominion Oath of Allegiance (to the Irish Free State) and Fidelity (to the King) on Irish parliamentarians, and
- it accepted the partition of the island and failed to create a fully independent republic.
De Valera led his supporters out of the Dáil and, after a lapse of six months in which the IRA also split, a bloody civil war between pro- and anti-treaty sides followed, only coming to an end in 1923 accompanied by multiple executions. The civil war cost more lives than the Anglo-Irish War that preceded it and left divisions that are still felt strongly in Irish politics today.
Population changes 1801–1921
See also
- History of Ireland
- History of the United Kingdom
- Timeline of Irish history
- History of the Republic of Ireland
- History of Northern Ireland
- Act of Union 1800
- Great Irish Famine (1845–1849)
Notes and references
- ^ "Irish Rebellion". Britannica Online. 2008. Retrieved 11 May 2008.
- ^ Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition p.28.
- ^ Daniel O'Connell. Bookrags. 2008. Retrieved 26 June 2008.
- ^ David Ross (2002) Ireland: History of a Nation: 226
- JSTOR 2596880.
- OCLC 39800732.
- ^ Gray, P. (1995). Ideology and the Famine. In C. Póirtéir (ed.), The Great Irish Famine: the Thomas Davis Lectures (pp. 86-103). Mercier Press.
- ^ OCLC 1365041253.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ISBN 0745310753.
- ^ "Multitext – Private Responses to the Famine". Archived from the original on 6 April 2013. Retrieved 29 March 2013.
- ^ "Irish Famine sparked international fundraising". IrishCentral. 10 May 2010.
- ^ a b Fitzpatrick, David. Irish Emigration 1801–1921, 3
- ^ The Felon's Track, by Michael Doheny, M.H. Gill &Sons, LTD 1951, Pg 182
- ^ Lee Joseph, The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848–1918 2008, p. 85
- ^ Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: A Biography (1997) p 553
- ISBN 0856404985.
- ISBN 1-84536-040-0
- ^ Commons statement, 3 December 1925 (Hansard)
- ISBN 0-7171-1630-1
de Valera stated in a speech n Killarney in March 1922, that if the Treaty was accepted by the electorate,
"IRA men will have to march over the dead bodies of their own brothers.
They will have to wade through Irish blood."
Further reading
- Bottigheimer, Karl S. Ireland and the Irish: A Short History. Columbia U. Press, 1982. 301 pp.
- Bourke, Richard, and Ian McBride, eds. The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (Princeton University Press, 2016)
- Boyce, D. George and Alan O’day. The Making of Modern Irish History: Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy 1996 online edition
- Canny, Nicholas. From Reformation to Restoration: Ireland, 1534–1660 (Dublin, 1987)
- Cleary, Joe, and Claire Connolly, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture (2005)
- Connolly, S. J. ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish History (1998) online edition
- Donnelly, James S., ed. Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture. Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 1084 pp.
- Edwards, Ruth Dudley. An Atlas of Irish History. 2d ed. Methuen, 1981. 286 pp.
- Fleming, N. C. and O'Day, Alan. The Longman Handbook of Modern Irish History since 1800. 2005. 808 pp.
- Foster, R. F. Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (1988)
- Foster, R. F., ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland. Oxford U. Press, 1989. 382 pp.
- Foster, R. F. Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890–1923 (2015) excerpt
- Fry, Peter and Fry, Fiona Somerset. A History of Ireland. Routledge, 1989. 366 pp.
- Hachey, Thomas E., Joseph M. Hernon Jr., Lawrence J. McCaffrey; The Irish Experience: A Concise History M. E. Sharpe, 1996 online edition
- Hayes, Alan and Urquhart, Diane, eds. Irish Women's History. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2004.) 240 pp.
- Hickey, D. J. and Doherty, J. E. A Dictionary of Irish History since 1800. Barnes & Noble, 1980. 615 pp.
- Jackson, Alvin. Ireland: 1798–1998 (1999)
- Johnson, Paul. Ireland: Land of Troubles: A History from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day. Holmes & Meier, 1982. 224 pp.
- Larkin, Hilary. A History of Ireland, 1800–1922: Theatres of Disorder? (Anthem Press, 2014).
- Lee, J. J. Ireland 1912–1985 (1989)
- Luddy, Maria. Women in Ireland, 1800–1918: A Documentary History. Cork U. Press, 1995. 356 pp.
- McCormack, W. J. ed. The Blackwell Companion to Modern Irish Culture (2002)
- Mokyr, Joel. Why Ireland Starved: A Quantitative and Analytical History of the Irish Economy, 1800–1850. Allen & Unwin, 1983. 330 pp. online edition
- Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X.; and Byrne, F. J., eds. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 8: A Chronology of Irish History to 1976: A Companion to Irish History, Part 1. Oxford U. Press, 1982. 591 pp
- Newman, Peter R. Companion to Irish History, 1603–1921: From the Submission of Tyrone to Partition. Facts on File, 1991. 256 pp
- ÓGráda, Cormac. Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780–1939. Oxford U. Press, 1994. 536 pp.
- Ranelagh, John O'Beirne. A Short History of Ireland. Cambridge U. Press, 1983. 272 pp.
- Ranelagh, John. Ireland: An Illustrated History. Oxford U. Press, 1981. 267 pp.
- Russell, John (1868). (4 ed.). London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
- Vaughan, W. E., ed. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 5: Ireland under the Union, I, 1801–70. Oxford U. Press, 1990. 839 pp.
- Vaughan, W. E., ed. A New History of Ireland. Vol. 6: Ireland under the Union. Part 2: 1870–1921. Oxford U. Press, 1996. 957 pp.
Further reading
- The Politics of Irish Literature: from Thomas Davis to W.B. Yeats, Malcolm Brown, Allen & Unwin, 1973.
- Young Ireland and 1848, Dennis Gwynn, Cork University Press 1949.
- Daniel O'Connell The Irish Liberator, Dennis Gwynn, Hutchinson & Co, Ltd.
- The Fenians in Context Irish Politics & Society 1848–82, R. V. Comerford, Wolfhound Press 1998
- William Smith O'Brien and the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848, Robert Sloan, Four Courts Press 2000
- Ireland Her Own, T. A. Jackson, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1976.
- Paddy's Lament Ireland 1846–1847 Prelude to Hatred, Thomas Gallagher, Poolbeg 1994.
- The Great Shame, Thomas Keneally, Anchor Books 1999.
- James Fintan Lalor, Thomas, P. O'Neill, Golden Publications 2003.
- Michael Collins, The Man Who Won The War, T. Ryle Dwyer, Mercier Press, Ireland 1990
- A History of Ireland, Mike Cronin, Palgrave Publishers Ltd. 2002
(An Gorta Mor) Quinnipiac University
External links
- 19th Century Pamphlet Collection. Collection of 19th-century pamphlets, predominantly of Irish interest and covering a broad spectrum of subjects. A UCD Digital Library Collection.
- 19th Century Social History Pamphlets Collection. Collection of pamphlets relating to 19th-century Irish social history, particularly the themes of education, health, famine, poverty, business, and communications. A UCD Digital Library Collection.