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EMPIRE and NATIONALISM in EUROPE, 1850-1900 (2 of 7)

In the Middle Ages and later, England had absorbed Scotland, Wales and Ireland -- empire of sorts. And in Ireland resistance remained strong. There in the nineteenth century English and Scottish landlords had been dominant, with Roman Catholics -- a majority among the Irish -- prevented from acquiring land. The landlords raised their rent, and when an agricultural depression began in the 1870s those rents remained. Many tenant farmers were evicted and became homeless. In response a movement grew that sought reduced power for the landlords and freedom for Catholics to own land. Also in the 1870s a Home Rule movement arose mainly among the middleclass Irish of Dublin. It sought something less than full independence -- a return of an Irish parliament with the power to decide domestic issues while Parliament in England continued to decide foreign policy.

A Land League formed that appealed to Irish nationalism and aimed at more rights for tenant farmers and reduced evictions. The Land League boycotted peasants who moved onto lands where tenant farmers had been evicted, trying to force the new tenant to leave and deny the landlord new rent. This created violence and became known as the Land War.

Britain's parliament created rent controls, which lowered rents for many of the Irish by 20 percent but did not help the more impoverished farmers, and the violence and the struggle for more rights and reduced evictions for tenants continued.

The leader of the Liberal Party, William Gladstone, committed the party to Home Rule for the Irish, while some in the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party remained opposed to Home Rule. The House of Lords killed the Home Rule bill, believing it would weaken the United Kingdom and encourage others in the empire to seek to break away.

Protestants in northern Ireland remained anti-Catholic and passionately in favor of union with Britain -- 50 people having been killed in Belfast alone in 1886, while many Catholic Irish remained against anything less than complete independence and for independence of all of Ireland. A division remained in Ireland between nationalists in the countryside and people in Ireland's major city, Dublin. Many in Dublin looked upon the land movement as something for peasants, and nationalists from the countryside entered Dublin to promote their cause with rallies, pretending to be locals and committing violence against opponents.