After the political union of Britain and Ireland in 1801, agricultural products dropped in value in Ireland and only Ulster experienced industrial prosperity. About one million Irish died in the famine caused by the potato crop failure in the 1840s. On August 31, 1913, known as Bloody Sunday, the Dublin Metropolitan Police charged workers’ rallies; two men were batoned to death and several hundred men, women, and children were badly beaten. This occurred during a months-long dispute between the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, established in 1908 in Dublin to mobilize unskilled labor. By October, 20,000 workers were involved in strikes and lockouts. The Home Rule movement (an Irish parliament within a federal United Kingdom) had not succeeded by the outbreak of the war.

“Ireland.” In A Dictionary of World History, edited by Anne Kerr and Edmund Wright. Oxford University Press, 2015. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199685691.001.0001/acref-9780199685691-e-1831.

“No Laughing Matter: The Dublin Lockout in Press Cartoons” (PowerPoint). The Dublin Lockout: An Exhibition at the National Library of Ireland, August 22, 2013–2014. Accessed June 6, 2021. https://www.nli.ie/lockout/.