British Opinion and Irish Self-Government 1865-1925

The movement in British pubic opinion towards the acceptance of Irish self-government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has not been systematically investigated by historians. The result is that British acceptance of political independence in Ireland has been regarded as the result of a combination of self-interested machinations by politicians and a weak and distracted response to political violence. This book posits a different explanation, which emphasises the influence of international developments on the ideological context of British attitudes to Ireland in these years.