- Also called:
- Anglo-Irish War
- Date:
- 1919 - 1921
Irish War of Independence
, (1919?21), conflict that pitted Irish nationalists (republicans), who were pursuing independence from the
United Kingdom
for
Ireland
, against British security forces and Irish loyalists (unionists), who sought to preserve Ireland’s union with Great Britain. The
war
concluded with the
Anglo-Irish Treaty
of December 6, 1921, which established 26 counties in the south of Ireland as the Irish Free State, with
dominion
status within the
British Empire
, while granting “
Home Rule
” to six predominantly Protestant counties in the north (Ulster), which remained a self-governing part of the United Kingdom. Dissension among nationalists over the agreement resulted in the Irish civil war (1922?23).
Pursuit of Home Rule
The pursuit of
autonomy
for Ireland within the United Kingdom escalated in the final decades of the 19th century. After the Home Rule bills of 1886 and 1893 were rejected by
Parliament
, a third such bill was enacted in September 1914, though it failed to satisfy many unionists and nationalists. Nevertheless, unionists had formed a paramilitary army, the
Ulster Volunteer Force
(UVF), to try to block Home Rule, while nationalists created their own militia, the Irish Volunteers, as a counterforce. The mounting pressure was reduced when attention shifted to support for the British war effort at the outbreak of
World War I
. Moreover, because of the
onset
of the war, the Home Rule Act (formally the Government of Ireland Act, 1914) was immediately suspended for 12 months. Because of subsequent developments, its implementation would later be postponed again and ultimately would never occur.
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A History of War
The Easter Rising
As World War I dragged on, support increased for an extreme nationalist faction of the Irish Volunteers that opposed involvement in the British war effort. The Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), a revolutionary society that held sway over this faction, had been planning an insurrection against British rule since 1914, and on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a revolt led by the IRB broke out in
Dublin
involving about 1,000 men and women. A provisional Irish republican government was proclaimed, and the Dublin General Post Office and other strategic points in Dublin’s city centre were seized. After about a week of street fighting, the rebellion was squelched, and Tom Clarke,
Patrick Pearse
, and other republican leaders were forced to surrender. Their executions made
martyrs
of them and sparked an explosion of anti-British outrage, which only increased when it appeared that
conscription
might be introduced in Ireland.
The 1918 election
The
Easter Rising
and the groundswell of support for republicanism that it had catalyzed reversed the political fortunes of
John Redmond
, who had engineered passage of the 1914 Home Rule Act and promised full Irish support to the
Allies
in World War I. The general election of 1918 resulted in the defeat and virtual extinction of Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party. On the other hand,
Sinn Fein
?the Irish nationalist party, which had been of little importance before the Easter Rising but thereafter became the rallying point for extreme nationalist sentiment?won 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament. Led by
Eamon de Valera
, the chief survivor of the uprising’s leadership, Sinn Fein MPs refused to take their seats in the Westminster Parliament. Instead, they met in Dublin in January 1919 as the Dail Eireann (“Irish Assembly”), declaring themselves the parliament of an Irish republic and setting up a provisional government in opposition to Ireland’s British administration.
The Irish Republican Army
In the meantime, the
Irish Republican Army
(IRA) was created in 1919 as a
successor
to the Irish Volunteers to use
armed force
to resist British rule in Ireland. Thus began the Irish War of Independence, in which the IRA, under the leadership of
Michael Collins
, employed guerrilla tactics, mounting widespread ambushes, raids, and attacks on police barracks. The British forces responded with ruthless reprisals.
Black and Tans
When a large proportion of the Irish police resigned, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) was filled with British recruits, most of whom were jobless former soldiers. They became known as
Black and Tans
because of the dark police tunics and khaki military trousers they were issued as makeshift uniforms.
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Bloody Sunday
In seeking to combat the terrorism of the IRA, the Black and Tans engaged in brutal counteractions. Most notably, after the IRA killed at least 14 individuals (most of whom were English and were suspected of being intelligence agents) on November 21, 1920, the Black and Tans took revenge the same day by attacking spectators at a
Gaelic football
match in Croke Park, Dublin, killing 14 and
wounding
60. The event became known as Bloody Sunday.
Death toll and truce
By the end of 1920, about 500 people had been killed in the war. In the first half of 1921, approximately another 1,000 persons had died as a result of the conflict. Meanwhile, about 6,000 republicans were put in prison. By the summer of 1921?though the IRA was becoming short of manpower, weapons, and ammunition?no immediate end to the war was in sight. Nonetheless, a truce was reached on July 11, 1921, and talks on a political settlement began.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty
In October 1921
Collins
and
Arthur Griffith
were sent to London by
de Valera
to conduct negotiations. The resulting
Anglo-Irish Treaty
was signed on December 6, 1921, by Collins (as well as Griffith), who believed that it was the best that could be obtained for Ireland at the time. The settlement established two new political entities: the Irish Free State, which
comprised
26 counties and was granted dominion status within the British Empire (requiring an oath of
allegiance
to the British crown that Collins knew would be unacceptable to de Valera and other republican leaders); and
Northern Ireland
, made up of six counties that were sometimes called the province of
Ulster
, which remained part of the United Kingdom.
The path to the Irish Civil War
Collins’s persuasiveness helped win acceptance for the treaty by a small majority in the Dail. But the terms of the treaty did indeed prove unacceptable to a substantial number of Sinn Fein members and split the party into two factions, one (under Collins’s leadership) supporting the treaty and the other (under de Valera) opposing it. The former group became the core of the official Irish Free State Army, and the latter group, known as “Irregulars,” began to organize armed resistance against the new independent government. The two sides fought against each other in the ensuing Irish civil war (1922?23), which ended in the defeat of the anti-treaty forces.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by
Jeff Wallenfeldt
.