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The Famine was a watershed in Irish history and has become a rallying point for Irish nationalists and totemic of English exploitation and suppression in Ireland. The following years saw some small victories in improving land rights but a Bill that would have returned an Irish parliament to Dublin was continually blocked by the upper chamber of the British parliament, the House of Lords. An awakening of Irish culture was also underway with, for example, the Gaelic League founded in 1893 to promote the everyday use of the Irish language.

The Easter Rising and beyond

The prospect, in 1912, of an Irish Home Rule Bill finally being forced past the recalcitrant Lords galvanised unionist groups in favour of close ties with Britain, and both Irish nationalist and unionists began to gather arms. The Home Rule Act was given royal assent in 1914, but then suspended when Britain was drawn into World War I.

The nationalist Easter Rising of 1916 saw the taking of strategic sites in Dublin, including the General Post Office, and the proclamation of an independent Irish republic. The British government, then engulfed in a life-or-death conflict with Germany, had no qualms about using troops diverted from the Western Front and heavy armaments in central Dublin. Many of the rebels were executed as traitors – a heavy-handed approach that boosted support for Irish nationalism. Future president of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, was originally given a death sentence which was later commuted to life in prison.