Home Rule and partition 1870 to 1925: Parnell and the Home Rule movement, the Ulster crisis, the 1916 Easter Rising, the rise of Sinn Fein, the War of Independence, and the partition of Ireland.

What this dot point is asking

You need to explain how Parnell built the Home Rule movement, why the Ulster crisis brought Ireland to the brink of civil war, how the 1916 Easter Rising transformed nationalism, and how the War of Independence led to the partition of Ireland by 1925. The AS 2 paper rewards causal analysis and judgement; this period is also rich in sources (speeches, the Covenant, executions, the Treaty debates) for the source-evaluation question.

Parnell and the Home Rule movement

The first two Home Rule Bills failed: the 1886 Bill was defeated in the Commons when Liberal Unionists split from Gladstone, and the 1893 Bill passed the Commons but was rejected by the Lords. Parnell's career ended after the O'Shea divorce scandal split his party in 1890, and he died in 1891, but the Irish Parliamentary Party, reunited under John Redmond in 1900, kept Home Rule alive.

The Ulster crisis

The 1916 Easter Rising

The Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, led by the IRB, Patrick Pearse and the socialist James Connolly, seized the General Post Office and proclaimed a Republic, but was crushed within a week. It was initially unpopular, but the execution of fifteen leaders in May 1916 and the threat of conscription in 1918 turned Irish opinion from Redmond's constitutional Home Rule towards republican separatism, a shift the poet Yeats captured in the phrase "a terrible beauty is born".

Sinn Fein, the War of Independence and partition

• 1918 election. Sinn Fein won a landslide (73 seats), refused to sit at Westminster, set up the Dail Eireann (January 1919) and declared an independent republic.
• War of Independence (1919 to 1921). The IRA, under figures such as Michael Collins, fought a guerrilla war against British forces and the Black and Tans.
• Government of Ireland Act (1920). Created two parliaments, separating the six north-eastern counties as Northern Ireland.
• Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921). Created the Irish Free State as a dominion with an oath to the Crown; Northern Ireland opted out.

The Treaty's terms (the oath and partition) split nationalists and caused the Irish Civil War (1922 to 1923) between pro- and anti-Treaty forces. Partition was confirmed when the Boundary Commission collapsed in 1925, leaving the existing six-county border in place.

Examples in context

A model AS paragraph on the impact of the Easter Rising might read: "The Easter Rising mattered far less for what it achieved militarily than for the reaction it provoked. As a rebellion it failed: poorly supported, confined largely to Dublin, and crushed within six days, it left much of the public hostile to the rebels who had brought destruction to the city in wartime. Its transformative power came from the British response. The execution of fifteen leaders between 3 and 12 May 1916, carried out slowly and including the wounded Connolly tied to a chair, converted defeated insurgents into martyrs and shifted sympathy towards separatism. This radicalisation was then amplified by the conscription crisis of 1918, which fused Catholic and nationalist opposition, and confirmed by the Sinn Fein landslide that December. The judgement, therefore, is that the Rising was a genuine turning point, but one whose significance was created by the executions and sustained by later events rather than by the rebellion itself." This weighs the named event against alternatives and reaches a clear judgement.

Try this

Q1. What did the Third Home Rule Bill of 1912 provoke in Ulster? [2 marks]

• Cue. Unionist resistance through the Solemn League and Covenant (1912) and the armed Ulster Volunteer Force.

Q2. Explain why the Easter Rising of 1916 increased support for republican separatism. [6 marks]

• Cue. The execution of the leaders created martyrs, the threat of conscription in 1918 alienated opinion, and Sinn Fein channelled the radicalised mood to its 1918 landslide.

Q3. How far was Ulster unionist resistance the main reason for the partition of Ireland by 1925? [20 marks]

• Cue. Weigh unionist strength and the British refusal to coerce Ulster against the role of the Government of Ireland Act, the Treaty, and the Boundary Commission's collapse. Reach a substantiated judgement.