155 years ago today, on May 25, 1870 (April 25, 1870 in the lunar calendar), the Irish Autonomy Movement broke out in the British Empire. On May 25, 1870, the Irish Home Rule Movement broke out in the British Empire. Ireland was colonized by England and began in 1169. His late King Henry II established feudal legal rule with the support of the Holy See. However, the area directly controlled by the English was limited, with only the so-called Crown Territory centered on Dublin. It was not until the Tudor Dynasty in the 16th century that England launched a re-conquest, and Ireland would be completely incorporated into its rule over the next three hundred years. In 1801, Britain and Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The originally independent Irish Parliament was abolished and Ireland was completely annexed by the United Kingdom. The important historical path is as follows: Having just won the War of the Roses in 1494, a triumphant Henry VII turned his attention to Ireland and ordered that the decision of the Irish Parliament would only be effective after being approved by the King of England, even though England actually had direct rule in Ireland only over one county in the east. English colonists poured into Ireland, and the independence of many Irish tribal princes faced serious threats. In 1533, Henry VIII, the Tudor King, broke with the Roman Church, the National Church was established, and English-speaking England became a Protestant country. However, Gaelic-speaking Irish people have always believed in Catholicism. Hundreds of years of colonial and anti-colonial history have shaped the Irish's national identity. The Religious Reform has added the color of religious warfare to this end, forming Protestant foreign colonists and Catholic aborigines. Sharp opposition between indigenous peoples. Edward VIII and Mary I continued their father's policies and continued to launch the Irish Colonial War, expanding from the Territory to the mainland. The Tudor Dynasty acted brutally. Various policies aroused the Irish people to continuously rise and resist, but they all failed. For the first time, Elizabeth I brought the entire island of Ireland under her direct rule. During this period, immigrants from England flocked in, mainly settling in the Ulster region of northern Ireland. The Stuart Dynasty of Scotland succeeded in England, continuing the old hatred of the Tudor Dynasty, and Protestant Scots also poured into Ireland. The so-called Britons (merged England and Scotland) were formed in a sense based on the colonization of Ireland. At the same time, as a large number of Irish people were naturalized and many Britons were localized, a new ethnic group was formed in the Ulster region. Protestant Irish people were incompatible with traditional Catholics. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics, who make up the vast majority of the population, became more and more intense, and eventually resembled a national conflict. History also laid the foundation for the future division of northern and southern Ireland. 1641-1653 The two religious/ethnic conflicts between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland in 1980 and 1690 are no less than the ethnic conflicts within any country today. Citizens of the Kingdom finally established legal privileges of rule, while those who disobeyed the state religion (including Catholics, Protestant Presbyterians, etc.) were deprived of their political rights. This unjust discrimination was gradually diluted in the 18th century, especially in the 1780s, when the Catholic Church regained its rights, but it infringed on the interests of the originally dominant Protestants and provoked conflicts and attacks between the Protestant and Catholic communities. The relationship between the two became polarized, extremist forces rose one after another, and the number of enlightened people who previously advocated political reform in the Protestant community dropped sharply. It is not that there were no efforts to reconcile the relationship between the two ethnic groups. Influenced by the French Revolution, the United Irish Association came into being, trying to establish an independent Irish Republic without sectarian differences. But the Great Rebellion in Ireland in 1789, and subsequent crackdowns and violent conflicts, ruined that dream. In order to solve this hot potato in the hands of the British Empire once and for all, the Empire launched a merger bill, believing that incorporating the Irish into the framework of citizens of the Empire would deepen the Irish's identification with the Empire and reduce confrontations and conflicts between ethnic groups. After the union of Ireland and Britain in 1801, Ireland was no longer governed by Ireland's own Parliament, but was directly governed by the British Parliament in London. Obviously, the Irish people don't think much. The vast majority of Irish people obviously don't identify with the empire as deeply as their identity with religion and ethnicity. The resistance has not stopped, but the merger has only provided a new framework. In 1829, Irish Catholics completed Catholic emancipation under O'Connell's leadership. Catholics were granted full citizenship, and the two sides reluctantly reached a compromise. But O'Connell's further ideals were to dissolve the 1801 Union and establish an independent Irish national state, which aroused opposition from Irish Protestants. Since Ulster Ireland, where the majority of Protestantism, became the richest region in Ireland at this time and had the closest economic connection with the United Kingdom. At the same time, Protestants were worried that once Ireland became independent, Protestants, who would constitute a minority in the total population of the Irish country, would be oppressed by Catholics. Therefore, they firmly advocated uniting with the Empire and opposed secession. During this period, the Protestant Presbyterian Church in Ireland became conservative and severed its ties with the radical republicans in Ireland. In the 1840s, Ireland's secession from Britain began to surge again, and Irish Catholics established many political organizations demanding independence. In contrast, Protestants opposed Irish independence. The opposition of oppression, anti-oppression, colonialism and anti-colonialism in the past has now been replaced by the opposition of unity, anti-unity and independence. By 1866, this transformation was completed with the establishment of opposing nationalist and unionist parties in the two communities. In the future, the terrorism of the Irish Republican Army began to emerge at this time, and the unrestricted war against civilians appeared in Europe for the first time, so that Engels, the old-school socialist, trembled when he heard the news. Because whether it was Marx's philosophy or the European consensus at that time, terrorist acts against civilians exceeded the moral bottom line. You can violently resist the government, but you cannot wield weapons at civilians. There will be no future for the initiator. In 1868, Gladstone, leader of the British Liberal Party, came to power to form a cabinet for the first time. Gladstone sympathized with the Irish, and although his policies to improve the situation of the Irish at this time were not successful, they promoted the development of the Irish self-rule movement. On May 25, 1870, the Irish Home Rule was established, and the number of parliamentary seats it obtained continued to expand. By 1885, it had become the balancer of the parliamentary struggle. At that time, the Liberal Party narrowly won, with only 86 seats more than the Conservative Party, and the Irish Home Rule Party happened to have 86 seats. If they fell to the Conservative Party, the victory and defeat would be reversed. So Liberal Party leader Gladstone decided to support Irish Home Rule in order to win the support of the Irish Home Rule Party. He believed that this was the only opportunity to maintain the unity of the empire and bring the Liberal Party to power. In 1886, he formed a third cabinet and immediately introduced the Irish Home Rule Act, under which the Irish would regain their own parliament and government, govern themselves, and London would control only Ireland's diplomacy, military and currency. However, the vast majority of British people, led by the Conservative Party, could not accept the bill, so that the Liberal Party suffered a crushing defeat in the following parliamentary election, which divided the Liberal Party. In 1892, Grassstone formed a cabinet for the fourth time and once again raised the issue of autonomy. This time the bill passed the House of Commons but was rejected in the House of Lords. In 1910, the Irish Home Rule Party was given the opportunity to balance hands again. In the 1910 general election, the Liberal Party won 274 seats, the Conservative Party and the Unionists won a total of 273 seats, the Labour Party 41 seats, and the Irish Home Rule Party 82 seats. So the Liberal Party resumed its old trick and put the Irish Home Rule Bill on the agenda. After the power of the upper house was eliminated, the House of Commons passed the Home Rule Bill in 1912, which automatically became law in 1914. Unfortunately, World War I broke out and the autonomy bill was shelved and was implemented after the war. But by the end of the war, Ireland was no longer satisfied with its autonomous status and demanded independence. The Easter Uprising in 1916 lit the fuse of the Irish War of Independence from 1912 to 1921. After uninterrupted violent conflict, the two sides compromised and concluded a peace agreement. 26 of Ireland's 32 counties declared independence from the United Kingdom, while the six northern counties remained in the United Kingdom due to Protestants 'opposition. Britain changed its name to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For Irish nationalists at the time, the division of Northern Ireland was a man-made tragedy and an illegal act against the will of the vast majority of Ireland, while Protestants in Northern Ireland regarded Northern Ireland as a political system established in accordance with the Wilson principle of national self-determination, and further regarded Northern Ireland as a Protestant country. It now seems that Northern Ireland is born a clay giant. It is the product of the Protestants, who make up the vast majority of Ulster, who rose to independence in order to avoid oppression in Ireland, where the vast majority of Catholics are in Ireland. However, there are also a large number of Catholics in Northern Ireland, accounting for 35% of the population, and it is impossible to completely form a new nation-state. This led to the continuation of national hatred within Northern Ireland throughout the 20th century, with continuous conflicts and vendetta killings. The key to the Irish problem lies in the failure to build British national identity and the inability of the Irish, who constitute a minority, to be integrated into the British National State. The key to the division of northern and southern Ireland lies in the failure to build Ireland's national identity and the inability of Protestants, who constitute a minority, to be integrated into the Irish national state. The key to the Northern Ireland issue lies in the failure to build Northern Ireland's national identity. Northern Ireland Catholics, who constitute a minority in the population, cannot be integrated into the Northern Ireland national state, and are constantly discriminated against and suppressed by non-ethnic groups. What is a nation-state? A nation-state is an imaginary community and a product of identity. If a unified identity is not formed, it will be nothing more than a collection of scattered sand. The foundation of a nation-state lies in people's sovereignty and unity and homogeneity. The two are one and two sides and are inseparable. People's sovereignty means that legitimacy comes from the democratic self-determination of the people. If there is no single homogeneity, there will inevitably be constant internal strife, political resources will be trapped in meaningless internal friction, and the only way out is to continue to split and disintegrate, and die of old age, just like today's East-West Ukraine. The existence of a democratic country must rely on the birth and formation of a nation-state. Even the identity of the community cannot be condensed, let alone the formation of a democratic constitutional politics that obeys the majority and protects the minority. The first thing in politics is to distinguish between enemy and enemy. A nation-state means to eliminate impurities. Otherwise, it will be difficult for a community to form and return to a scattered sand situation, with only the relationship between a predator and a prey. If the nation-state grants citizenship to impurities, it will lead to the tearing of social identity; but if it does not grant citizenship to impurities, it will lead to the failure of constitutional politics and a return to the old politics of absolutism. This is also why Churchill cheered that the Irish had finally rolled out of the British Empire. Otherwise, the existence of these Irish autonomy would inevitably hinder the natural operation of British parliamentary politics, sever national identity, and lead to the disintegration of the British nation. Modernity means people's self-determination of their own destiny. This self-determination includes self-judgment on the belonging and identity of oneself, relatives, and rural states. When analyzing the 26 major human civilizations, Toynbee repeatedly emphasized that the decline of civilization must be accompanied by the ability to self-determination. Oblivion and ignorance, described in terms of historical perspective, symbolizes the exhaustion and scarcity of national blood. The nation-state brings freedom to mankind, because the nation-state is the product of recognizing that members of the community draw a clear line between themselves and others. Restricting the formation of the nation-state will inevitably bring the curse and retribution of their destiny. The same goes for the failure of nation-state construction. Why is nation-states important? Because there is no organic community of its own, atomic individuals can only be scattered sand, drifting with the flow in the long river of helplessness. Except for being swallowed by Leviathan and transformed into amoeba without bones and muscles, there is no way out. And this way out means no way out.