ABSTRACT
Britain's perspective of and response to Irish demands for self-determination have been conditioned by Ireland's unique status in contrast with other Crown subjects seeking independence. British Conservatives in the Parliament and in the army endorsed and encouraged Ulster Protestant threats in order to defeat the constitutional inevitability of home rule through civil war. The British strategy in seeking to enact the bill was probably two-fold: to shelve temporarily an awkward legislative problem and to persuade the United States that London had some Irish policy besides calculated violence. Britain's perception of and toleration for varying attempts at self-determination within the Commonwealth-Empire, however, has differed according to the degree of independence sought and the particular constituency seeking it. The object lesson of the Mediterranean experience for Britain should have been that its imperial perspective of the merits of nationalist demands for self-determination should, in the future, consider the attitude of one or more of the superpowers.
