Hope I can fill in for the General!
The main struggle in the first half of the century revolved around achieving a package of reforms for Catholics known as Emancipation and led by the barrister Daniel O' Connell. He was appalled at the violence of 1798 and it's aftermath and vowed never to see it's like again but that didn't stop him waging a brilliant campaign which culminated in the effective erasure of the Penal Laws in 1829.
Within a few years Catholics were allowed a seat in Westminster and from that point on up until the famine political energies were devoted to Repeal of the Act of Union. This Act had been passed after the earlier rebellion under the promise of an amelioration of the Penal legislation but it became a bone of contention in itself both among the Irish Protestant and Catholic nationalist communities. The British Whigs were courted by the Repealers after Emancipation as their liberal political philosophy was more amenable to achieving democratic reform but they were yet adamantly opposed to breaking the Union.
I've a couple of blogs here on the famine which are a bit emotive in places but nevertheless try to situate the state of agrarian relations and especially the Irish farmer's vulnerability to blight within their historical context;
http://www.historum.com/blogs/gile+n...-part-one.html http://www.historum.com/blogs/gile+n...-part-two.html
There is an almost shell-shocked lull after the famine with many of the old leaders having either died or being exiled. The Repeal movement for instance withers away under the leadership of O' Connell's less effective son, John, and it isn't for another twenty years or so that the national movement achieves anything like it's former coherency when Parnell begins to take the reigns. The Land Wars in the late 1870's were fought for the so-called three F's; fair rent, free sale & fixity of tenure & Michael Davitt is an important figure here but he eventually breaks ranks with Parnell's Home Rulers over the Kilmainham Treaty (viewed as a sell-out in many quarters at the time).
Nevertheless much was achieved during this period of agitation and there was a lot of expectation that Gladstone would be able to deliver Home Rule which is why we begin to see the emergence of a more concentrated Unionist and loyalist opposition up the North which begins to align itself more noticeably with the Conservatives. Orange lodges throughout the country become rallying points for disaffected Unionists for instance. Behind all the political wheeling and dealing is the growing threat of Fenianism with it's power base in the States and for a time the 'New Departure' signalled the mergence of the physical force tradition with Parnell's parliamentary politics. There is a London bombing campaign, the imprisonment of suspected Fenian leaders and an aborted uprising in 1867 but once the Land Wars kick off nationalist energies are diverted again to the agrarian question.
Politics was all about land for much of the century really, beginning with 'whiteboy' resistance movements and the Tithe Wars of the 1830's & culminating in Westminster land acts which attempted to 'kill Home Rule with kindness'.
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