The Irish Nationalist Movement

Background to Irish Nationalist Movement Nineteenth Century

Since the application of the Act of Union at the turn of the nineteenth century until 1923 the whole of Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. For a vast majority of this period Ireland was rule by Parliament in Westminster. According to Allen and Unwin the Irish Question was the greatest problem facing the British government in the late ninetieth and early twentieth century, yet the nature of the problem of Ireland meant that it was almost an impossible political issue to resolve as, no one solution would satisfy both the British electorate and the Irish population. Prior to the Irish War of Independence there had been mounting tensions over British rule in Ireland since the act of union in 1800. Throughout the nineteenth century various organisations had slowly been increasing in size and number in response to the rising resentment that had developed because of British rule within Ireland. Resentment was born out of hatred for the alien leadership that the Irish nation had to adhere to, this hatred was heightened due to the poverty

The underlying causes of the revolution that happened in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century stem from vast injustices that the Irish people suffered at the hand of British rule. ‘For the history of nineteenth-century Ireland is more than a prologue to the events of the twentieth and has a character of its own, which is all too often distorted by those who, neglecting all else, confine their attention to the signposts which point to the developments of a later age. Irish history would be a simpler, but less rewarding subject, were it indeed that all the signposts pointed one way.’ (A...

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...of Ireland. Gradually throughout the eighteenth century the number and severity of the penal laws increased vastly, these laws prohibited Catholics of partaking in lots of aspects of public life and treated them as second class citizens. Catholics and Presbyterians had numerous limitations put on their daily lives, they were not allowed to hold positions in public office or Parliament, they were denied suffrage, they were not allowed to marry Protestants and denied access to certain educational institutions. Following the death of James Stuart in 1776 many of the Penal laws were repealed and the topic of Catholic emancipation became an important issue on the Irish political horizon. An influential Irish minister for Dublin Henry Grattan

Act of uniformity

Young irelander rebellion

The Young Ireland was political and

Culture and Gallic revival

Home rule movement