Introduction: Ireland and the Politics of Independence 1922–49, New Perspectives and Re-considerations

Abstract

Whether what occurred in Ireland between 1912–23 was a revolution or not remains a matter of debate.1 The fact that there is still a degree of discomfiture over applying the word ‘revolution’ to this period and the war of independence is indicative of a historiography which has yet to resolve some of the most fundamental questions of twentieth century Irish history. That what happened in Ireland, in the decade before the two Irish polities north and south were formed, was a revolution is accepted here. Though as a revolution it was peculiarly narrow in its focus and decidedly limited in its results. Revolutionary change swept the entire island of Ireland after 1912. Its initial force came from within Ulster Unionism as it reacted and armed in response to the prospect of home rule in the period before the First World War. Ulster Unionism introduced the gun to twentieth century Irish politics and it also initiated the militarisation of Irish society with the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force and in response the nationalist Irish Volunteers. By 1921, militant Ulster Unionism had been reconciled in a six-county political administration in the north-east of the Ireland, known somewhat ambiguously as Northern Ireland. The main force for revolutionary change after 1914 came from the south, and with the advent of sustained revolutionary violence in late 1919 more particularly the extreme south-west of the island, leading to the creation in 1922 of a self-governing dominion within the Commonwealth: the Irish Free State. It is the southern 26-county polity in its many constitutional forms – Southern Ireland, Free State, Eire-Ireland, and Republic – which interests us here and throughout the rest of this volume.