The consequences of the famine were long lasting. Ireland became a country that the young , poor and hopeful made haste to leave, encouraged by family and friends who had already made a more secure and prosperous life for themselves abroad. The decline in Ireland's population went on and on, into the twenth century. Mass eviction durning and after the famine bred a hatered of the Ascendancy landlords, giving an economic dimension to the coming political struggles. Although a starveing people scarcely stirred when called on to revolt in 1848, revolutionary sentiment revived with the founding of the Fenians, or Irish Republican Brotherhood, who attempted a rising in 1867. This helped to convince the liberal primeminister, Gladstone, that his mission was to"pacify Ireland". Moreover, Irish politicians were beginning to have an impact at Westminister, Reform Acts had given many more people the right to vote-includeing many more Irish people-and the introduction to the secret ballot in 1872 meant that tenants could no longer be intimidated by their landlords. As a result in the 1870's a large group of Nationalist MP's, committed to Home Rule(that is, self-government), appeared in the House Of Commons,led by the coldly brilliant Charles Stewart Parnell, they were able to influence events by holding up the proceedings or political manoeuvring. The Nationalists were all the more effective because of their links with Michael Davitt's Land League, which was stageing rent strikes and boycotts to assert the rights of tenant farmers. Parnell's tortuous relationship with Gladstone encouraged 'the old man' to remedy a number of Irish grievances. Eventually Gladstone was converted to Home Rule, but his attempts to pass it into law led to a split in his own party and founded on the opposition of the House of Lords. A divorce scandal ruined Parnell, leaving the Nationalist in confusion, and the retiremnet of Gladstone was swiftly followed by a series of conservative administrations commited to the union. Their policy, "killing home rule with kindness', effected a quiet social revolution in Ireland by issueing credits that enabled tenants to buy the land they worked from their landlords.Home rule cecame a live issue again after the great Liberal victory of 1906. A constitutional crisis in 1909-11 led to the abolition of the House of Lords' absolute veto, making it possible for the Liberal-Nationalists majority in the House of Commons to secure Home Rule. Protestant hostility had been growing towards the prospect of living in a country with a catholic majority, and there was a particulary unbending mood in the concentrated Protestant communities in Ulster. Fighting talk by the Ulster leader, Edward Carson, was encouraged by the conservative opposition, and arms were illicitly run in for volunteer militias of both persuasions that formed in the North of Dublin. A hostile declaration by British officers at the Curragh raised the possibility that the Army would refuse to obey the government. In this tense situation Home Rule passed and some kind of opt-out for Ulster under consideration, the First World War broke out and the entire problem was shelved.

    Many Irish nationalist backed the campaign for Home Rule conducted by the parliamentary party but groups such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood remained faithful to the revolutionary and separatist tradition. The inconclusive turn of events in 1914 increased their distrust of British intensions. The school teacher -poet Patrick Pearse, and other members of the brotherhood planned to led the Irish volunteers, a nationalist self defensive force, in a revolt against british rule, helped by the Irish citizen Army, a trade union and socialist force led by James Connolly. On the outbreak of war many irishmen had joined the British Army to fight in France, and even in 1916 the general mood in ireland was far from revolutionary. Divisions of opinion within the volunteers led to a confused sequence of orders and cancellations, so that many volunteers failed to turn out on Easter, Monday, 24, 1916. In all of Ireland only a few thousand men -less than two thousand in Dublin- were involved in what became the epic Easter riseing, at noon on the monday, a few dozen men with rifles marched down Sackville St ( now, O'Connell St) and proceeded to take possession of the General post office, a solid spacious classical building in the heart of Dublin. Shortly after, Pearse went outside and proclaimed the setting up of a Provisional Government of the Irish Republic. The GPO was fortified, barricades sealed off the streets, and snipers moved out onto the roofs. Elsewhere in the city, small contingents took up positions in the four courts and other places, ready to oppose any British advance. Failing to realize how small the rebel numbers were, the British reacted cautiously, drafting in troops from other parts of Ireland. Barricades were smashed by artillery fire, and Sackville St. was shelled by, among other things a gunboat on the River Liffey. The insurgents resisted with remarkable determination, even when it was clear that there had been no general rising and hopes of German help had faded. On the fifth day, fires started by incendiary bombs drove the rebels from the GPO. They took refuge in a row of houses nearby but, with the end in sight and civilian lives in danger, Pearse authorized an unconditional surrender. Dubliners showed little sympathy when the prisoners were marched away, and some flung rotten fruit at them. Irish opinion changed when Pearse, Connolly and thirteen others were court martialled and shot;Connolly badly wounded, was executed strapped to a chair. Later Sir Rodger Casement, a former colonial official who had been captured after landing in Ireland from a German U-boat, was tried and hanged. To the British the dead men were traitors, to the Irish they became martyrs. Other developments includeing a mishandled effort to impose conscription on Ireland, swelled the rising tide of republicanism. In December 1918, a hitherto dominent Nationalist party was swept away and , every where outside the North, the Victor was a militantly republican party, Sinn Fein (Ourselves, alone.). It's represenatives refused to take their seats at Westminister, setting up their own assembly and administration in Dublin in definace of the British government. The stage was set for another confrontation.

The stand off between Sinn-Fein and the British Authorities soon led to fighting, the guerrilla campaign waged by Sinn Fein's military wing. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) led to an ever more vicious round of atrocities and reprisals committed by both sides.  The IRA waged a ruthless campaign, but it was British-employed irregulars, nacknamed 'The Black and Tans', who became particulary notorious for uncontrolled violence. After almost three years of conflict and turbulence (1919-1921), both sides recognized the IRA could neither be defeated nor win an outright victory. The treaty digned in December 1921 partioned Ireland. Six counties in the North remained within the United Kingdom;the other twenty-six became the Irish-free state, a self governing domimion that continued to owe allegiance to the Crown. The republican represenatives, including the IRA leader, Michael Collins, had signed reluctantly, believing that they had no option. They were denounced as traitors by one wing of the movement, led by Eamon de Valera. The rejectionists lost the elections that followed, but continuing conflicts esclated into a civil war every bit as bloody ans uncompromising as the fight against the British; among the casualties was Michael Collins, who was assassinated. The government forces won, but for some years bitter feelings persisted and sporadic acts of violence occured.  Even the leaders of Northern Ireland did not expect Partition to be permanent; but the new arrangement proved durable. The North was part of the United Kingdom, but in practice was left to run it's own affairs through it's parliamnet at Stormont. Although it had substancial Catholic and Nationalist minority, Northern Ireland was dominated by Protestant unionists, not only politically but also in terms of Social and economic privileges. Unlike the free State, it was an industrialized area, well known for linen manufactures and ship building. It's standard of living was much higher than that of the South, although it's economy was vulnerable and the Great Depression of the 1930's brought appallingly high unemployement.

   Meanwhile, the Free State was evolving into a very diffrent society. Led by de Valera from 1932, it progressively loosened it's ties with the United Kingdom. In 1937, having acquired a new constitution, Eire (as the country was generally known) became a Republic in all but name; it also gave a special status to the Catholic church as "Guardian of the Faith" Ireland remained neutral durning the second World War, when by contrast, Belfast was heavily bombed. In 1949 it formally became a Republic, furthur distancing itself from Britain by leaving the Commonwealth. For several decades the position remained substantially unchanged. Unionism reigned in the North, where the Nationalists remained quiescent and sporadic action by military useing the old IRA name acheived little. de Valera's vision of a rural, vote with their feet against its economic backwardness. Things began to changes after de Valera's retirement as Taoiseach(Prime Minister)  in 1959, and for both Ireland's the 1960's would prove to be a watershed.