ABSTRACT
Ireland in the pre-1914 era, although under British rule is comparatively peaceful compared with the political violence occurring in other European countries. Thanks to successive well-meaning and reforming British administrations social and economic conditions in Ireland have changed dramatically since the mid-nineteenth century. Conditions are by no means ideal – for example, the working-class dwellings in Dublin remain dire and a scandal compared with even the poorest poverty and squalor-stricken parts of Europe – but overall social and economic conditions of much of the Irish population have reached more prosperous levels, and social mobility is progressing. Extreme Irish nationalism in the form of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) has declined. Ireland, hopeful and patient, looks to a political and peaceful path to autonomy and self-determination by eventually achieving Home Rule, through the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party active at Westminster.
