The Irish Free State and Collective Security, 1930–6

Abstract

This paper seeks to assess, in the context of Irish foreign policy at the League of Nations, the Free State's attitude to collective security during the period 1930-6. Ireland's relationship with the League of Nations is charted from the Free State's election to the League Council in 1930 to the declaration before the General Assembly of the League in 1936 by Eamon de Valera that collective security was effectively dead. The impact of the Italian-Abyssinian dispute on the Free State's relations with the international community is examined, and it is suggested that the League's failure to successfully defend Abyssinia's territorial integrity from the aggression of a great power helped crystallise the policy of neutrality formally declared by the Free State soon afterwards. However, while the fallout from the Italian-Abyssinian dispute represents a turning point in Ireland's commitment to securing international order, the retreat from the world stage had begun much earlier. A strand of policy development can be delineated to show that a predisposition to individual state self-help pre-dates the irredentist and isolationist stance adopted by the Free State with the breakdown of the inter-war system. In this sense, the decision to declare a policy of neutrality is perfectly consistent with the development of Irish foreign policy at the League since the Free State became a Council member in 1930.