Nationalism, Land, Home Rule, 1860s-1880s

I. nationalism, 1770s-1920s

pendulum metaphor

the Fenians (1860s)

Young Irelanders

James Stephens

Irish Republican Brotherhood (Ireland) / Fenians (US)

goal: independent Ireland

> Fenian Oath

strategy: physical force

terrorist activities

uprisings (1865, 1867)

invasions of Canada (1866,1870, 1871)

Fenian invasions, Cook's Corners, Quebec, 1870. Sketch by artist Adolphe Vogt 1842-1871.

Le campement de Pigeon Hill (Eccles Hill) du 60e bataillon, qui a joué une rôle important dans l'invasion des Fenians du 25 mai 1870

govt response: arrests (Manchester martyrs) > public sympathy

II. the land question

social structure of rural Ireland: landlords, tenant farmers, agricultural laborers [Cohill, Ch 4]

long leases > annual tennancies

"landlordism": high rents, lack of improvements, absenteeism

Land Acts (British Parliament)

1870	Landlord and Tenant Act	customary tenant right given force of law and extended throughout Ireland compensated some evicted tenants compensated departing tenants who had improved the land allowed tenants to purchase their holdings
1881	Land Law (Ireland) Act	granted the three Fs set up a Land Commission (to adjudicate fair rents and make loans of up to 75% to tenants seeking to purchase their holdings)
1885	Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act	increased Land Commission loans to 100%
1891	Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act	land bonds set up as an alternative payment to landlords selling land to tenants established the Congested Districts Board
1903	Wyndham's Act	established the parameters for sales that would be automatically approved by the Land Commission. . .

 

William E. Gladstone [bio at Victorian Web]

British PM (Liberal) 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94

"My mission is to pacify Ireland."

disestablishment of the Church of Ireland (1869)

Landlord and Tenant Act (1870)

III. Home Rule and the Land War [Coohill, Ch 4 and 5]

Michael Davitt

the Home Rule Party

Isaac Butt (1813-1879)

federalist approach

59/105 Irish seats in 1874

British resistance: domino theory

land

conditions in the 1870s

Michael Davitt (1846-1905) [Coohill, 87-90]

Irish National Land League (1879)

Land War (1879-1882)

Capt Boycott, land agent for Lord Erne, Co. Mayo

 

IV. Charles Stuart Parnell and the tactics of confrontation

Charles Stuart Parnell (1846-1891)

"the uncrowned king of Ireland"

constitutional + revolutionary nationalism

tactics

confrontation in parliament

the "New Departure": national question + land question

American connection

Gladstone's response

"coercion and conciliation"

Kilmainham Treaty (1882)

Phoenix Park murders (1882)

Lord Frederick Cavendish, Irish Chief Secretary

IV. the Home Rule Bills

General election of Nov. 1885

First Home Rule Bill (1886)

General election of June 1886