The Irish at the dawn of the twentieth century benefitted from many positive changes over the previous half-century in health care, education and social provision, and were (in general, apart from urban slums) among the healthiest in Europe. The new dynamic trade unionism reached Ireland in the 1890s and formed a combustible force when combined with the non-parliamentary nationalisms and feminism of the early century. These all culminated in the 1916 Rising, which usurped the parliamentary nationalism of the Home Rule Party and rapidly assumed leadership of nationalist Ireland. Unionists continued to oppose national self-determination in all its forms. The state of Northern Ireland was set up by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which also set up a state in the ‘south’. This was superseded by the War for Independence 1919–1921, which culminated in a Treaty with Britain which gave dominion status to the Irish Free State, comprising twenty-six of the thirty-two counties. A civil war followed 1922–1923, between pro- and anti-Treatyites.

Over 100,000 Irishmen from all over the country served in the Great War, and 40,000 died. The war brought great prosperity to farmers and shopkeepers, industrialists and food processors, though rising food prices took their toll of townspeople.

This chapter describes the influence of the Gaelic Revival on the creation of a Protestant nationalist counterculture during the first decade of the twentieth century. It discusses the manner in which cultural activism, by means of literature, the theatre, and learning the Irish language, tended to radicalise Protestants, and led them to convert to nationalism. It charts the development of a largely Dublin-based network of Protestant activists, whose development towards nationalism was largely actuated by means of immersion in the Abbey Theatre, the Gaelic League and various literary societies. Irish nationalist opposition to the Second Boer War, which radicalised some Protestant Gaelic Leaguers, is discussed. This chapter describes the attitude of two prominent Catholic newspaper editors, Arthur Griffith and D. P. Moran, towards Protestant nationalists, with Griffith seeking to incorporate Protestants into the nationalist movement, and Moran seeking their exclusion. The final section analyses Protestant Gaelic Leaguers’ attempts to form their own associational culture, which led to tensions within the movement. Ultimately, this chapter shows how Protestant involvement in the Gaelic League sometimes led to conversion to nationalism, but could cause unease among other Protestants, who sought an apolitical organisation.