Examiner's Specific Advice

An explanation is required that accounts for the changing relationship between Irish Protestants and Catholics in this period. The principal issues in politics, economics and religion should be synthesised across the whole period in a coherent and detailed analysis. Answers are likely to examine the Protestants' political power at Westminster that declined after 1829 but was always potentially revivable if they could control Home Rule and use nationalism for their own purposes, as well as keep control of local politics and law and order. The latter was challenged in towns by the extension of the Municipal Corporation Act to Ireland from 1840 and in rural areas by the Local Government Act of 1898. Their religious power was weakened between 1828 and 1869 as Nonconformist and Radical influence increased within Britain. Their economic power suffered greatly as a result of the agricultural depression in the 1880s and the Land Acts passed between 1881 and 1903. Some answers might look at the activities of the Land League and the impact of the Anglo-Irish War, which led to their final demise.

Exemplar Question

1. How do you explain the changing fortunes of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland in the period from 1798 to 1921? [60 marks]

 

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