by Stephen Fife-Adams

Created on: December 22, 2006   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Besides devastating the European continent, the First World War dealt what would prove to be a mortal blow to European imperial ambitions. The Ottoman Empire collapsed completely, and although Great Britain, France and Belgium retained their imperial holdings until after the Second World War, in many corners of the globe the seeds of independence were sown in the earlier conflict, and as early as 1918 there were clear signs that the imperial powers were badly overextended. Britain's relationship with Ireland, which had always carried colonial overtones despite Ireland's nominal equal-partner status in the United Kingdom since 1801, proved no exception to the general rule. The war provided an excuse for die-hard Irish republicans to resurrect a movement that had been floundering with the passage of Home Rule in 1914. It also provided numerous opportunities for giving and taking offense that heightened tensions on all sides of the Anglo-Irish conflict; further weakened Britain's already-tentative grip on an intractable populace; provided a perfect backdrop for the Easter Rising of 1916; fueled the vicious crackdown that followed the Rising and made martyrs of the rebels; and created a generation of young men with military training throughout the British Isles for whom violence and bloodshed were natural means of achieving political ends. Many individual events during the years 1914 to 1920 nudged Ireland in the direction of independence, but overarching them all, the great catalyst, was the Great War.

When the war broke out in August 1914, an Irish Free State looked more like a pipe dream than it did a feasible, or even desirable, political scenario. In May, representatives of the British Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, and the Irish Party, led by John Redmond, had succeeded in crafting and passing a law that would extend Home Rule to Ireland. Under Home Rule, a Parliament would be established in Dublin to handle local Irish affairs while leaving international relations and other matters of empire to the Parliament at Westminster. The bill would give Ireland some measure of autonomy while keeping it firmly within the fold of the United Kingdom. King George V gave his assent to the bill in September, just as England was, reluctantly, entering the war on the continent; given the looming crisis, the Irish Party, reluctantly, agreed to put the implementation of Home Rule on hold until the end of the war, which was expected to happen before Christmas.

The fact that the

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