History of Ireland (1801–1922)

From 1801 to 1922 the whole island of Ireland formed a constituent part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK). For almost all of this period, Ireland was ruled directly by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in London.Ireland faced considerable economic difficulties in the 19th century, including the Great Famine of the 1840s. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a vigorous but unsuccessful campaign for Irish home rule, followed by the eclipse of moderate nationalism by militant separatism.

In 1922, following the War of Independence, twenty-six southern and western counties of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom as the Irish Free State. Six counties in the northeast, which became Northern Ireland, remained within the United Kingdom.

Act of Union and Catholic Emancipation

Ireland opened the nineteenth century still reeling from the after effects of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Prisoners were still being deported to Australia and sporadic violence continued in county Wicklow. There was another abortive rebellion led by Robert Emmet in 1803. The Act of Union, which constitutionally made Ireland part of the British state can largely be seen as an attempt to redress the grievances of the 1798 rising cite encyclopedia
title = Irish Rebellion
encyclopedia = Britannica Online
year = 2008
url = http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/294143/Irish-Rebellion
accessdate = 2008-05-11] and to prevent it from destabilising Britain or providing a base for foreign invasion.

In 1800 the Irish Parliament and the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Act of Union which, from 1 January 1801, abolished the Irish legislature, and merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. After one failed attempt, the passage of the act in the Irish parliament was finally achieved, albeit with the mass bribery of members of both houses, who were awarded British and United Kingdom peerages and other "encouragements". [Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition p.28.]

In this period, Ireland was governed by authorities appointed in Britain. These were the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was appointed by the King and the Chief Secretary for Ireland appointed by the British Prime Minister. As the century went on, the British Parliament took over from the monarch as the executive as well as legislative branch of government. For this reason, in Ireland, the Chief Secretary became more important than the Lord Lieutenant, who became of more symbolic than real importance. After the abolition of the Irish Parliament, Irish Members of Parliament were elected to the British Parliament in Westminster. The British Administration in Ireland - euphemistically known as "Dublin Castle" - remained dominated by Protestants until Irish independence in 1922.

Part of the Union's attraction for many Irish Catholics was the promised abolition of the remaining Penal Laws then in force (which discriminated against Roman Catholics), and the granting of Catholic Emancipation. However King George III blocked emancipation, arguing that to grant it would break his coronation oath to defend the Anglican church. A campaign under lawyer and politician Daniel O'Connell and his Catholic Association led to the conceding of Catholic emancipation in 1829, thus allowing Catholics to sit in parliament. O'Connell then, at the head of the Repeal Association, mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union and the restoration of Irish self-government. O'Connell's tactics were largely peaceful, using mass rallies to show the popular support for his campaign. However his campaign for the Repeal of the union was unsuccessful. While O'Connell failed to gain repeal of the union, his efforts led to reforms in matters such as local government, and the Poor Laws.cite website
title = Daniel O'Connell
date = 2008
website= Bookrags
year = 2008
url = http://www.bookrags.com/biography/daniel-oconnell/
accessdate = 2008-06-26]

Despite O'Connell's peaceful methods, there was also a great deal of violence and rural unrest in the country in the first half of the 19th century. In Ulster, there were repeated outbreaks of sectarian violence, such as the celebrated riot at Dolly's Brae, between Catholics and the nascent Orange Order. Elsewhere, tensions between the rapidly growing rural population on one side and their landlords and the state on the other, gave rise to much agrarian violence and social unrest. Secret peasant societies such as the "Whiteboys" and the "Ribbonmen" used sabotage and violence to intimidate landlords into better treatment of their tenants. The most sustained outbreak of violence was the "Tithe War" of the 1830s, over the obligation of the mostly Catholic peasantry to pay tithes to the Protestant Church of Ireland. The Royal Irish Constabulary was set up in response to such violence to police rural areas.

The Great Famine

Ireland underwent major highs and lows economically during the nineteenth century; from economic booms during the Napoleonic Wars and in the late nineteenth century (when it experienced a surge in economic growth unmatched until the 'Celtic Tiger' boom of the 1990s), to severe economic downturns and a series of famines, the last threatening in 1879. The worst of these was the Great Irish Famine (1845-1849), in which about one million people died and another million emigrated. [David Ross (2002) "Ireland: History of a Nation": 226]

Ireland's economic problems were in part the result of the small size of Irish landholdings and a large increase in the population in the years before the famine. [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2596880] Other factors were an almost complete lack of transport infrastructure: in years preceding the famine, there were only six miles of railway track. [ [http://en.allexperts.com/e/h/hi/history_of_rail_transport_in_ireland.htm History of rail transport in Ireland at AllExperts ] ] In particular, both the law and social tradition provided for subdivision of land, with all sons inheriting equal shares in a farm, meaning that farms became so small that only one crop, potatoes, could be grown in sufficient amounts to feed a family.Fact|date=March 2007 Furthermore, many estates, from whom the small farmers rented, were poorly run by absentee landlords and in many cases heavily mortgaged. Enclosures of land since the turn of the century had also exacerbated the problem, and the extensive grazing of cattle had contributed to the smaller plots of land available to tenants to raise their crops. This policy of making more land available for grazing made it necessary to clear the land of "excess" people, and the famine would help to achieve this aim. Fact|date=March 2007

In the new Whig government in Britain (from 1846), Charles Trevelyan became assistant secretary to the Treasury, and largely responsible for the British government's response to the famine in Ireland. Trevelyan, like much of the British establishment, saw the Irish, and particularly the Irish peasantry, as a lower form of humanity, and therefore chose not to intervene too greatly in their plight. Fact|date=March 2007

When potato blight hit the island in 1845, much of the rural population was left without food. Unfortunately at this time, the then Prime Minister Lord John Russell adhered to a strict "laissez-faire" economic policy, which maintained that further state intervention would have the whole country dependent on hand-outs, and that what was needed was for economic viability to be encouraged. Fact|date=March 2007 Public works schemes were set up but proved inadequate, and the situation became catstrophic when epidemics of typhoid, cholera and dysentery took hold. Enormous sums were raised all over the world by charities (Native Americans sent supplies, as did the Ottoman Empire, while Queen Victoria personally gave the equivalent in modern money of €70,000). Fact|date=March 2007 However the inadequate nature of the British government's inaction led to a problem becoming a catastrophe; the class of cottiers or farm labourers was virtually wiped out.

The famine spawned the first mass wave of Irish emigration to the United States.Fact|date=March 2007 There was also massive emigration to England, Scotland, Canada, and assisted passages to Australia. Fact|date=March 2007 Because of ongoing political tensions between theUS and Britain, the large and influential Irish American diaspora created, financed and encouraged the Irish independence movement. In 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB, also known as the Fenians) was founded as a secret society dedicated to armed rebellion against the British. A related organisation formed in New York was known as Clan na Gael, which several times organised raids into the British Province of Canada. While the Fenians had a considerable presence in rural Ireland, the Fenian Rising launched in 1867 was a fiasco and was contained by police rather than the British military.Fact|date=March 2007 Moreover, wider support for Irish republicanism, in the face of harsh laws against sedition, was minimal in Ireland in the period; as late as the 1860s, mass meetings of constitutional nationalists ended with the singing of "God Save the Queen" while royal visits often drew cheering crowds.Fact|date=March 2007

Young Ireland/Irish Confederation

Members of Repeal Association called the Young Irelanders, formed the Irish Confederation tried to launch a rebellion against British rule in 1848. This coincided with the worst years of the famine, however it was contained by Military action. O'Brien leader of the Confederates, failure to capture a party of police barricaded in widow McCormack's house, who were holding her children as hostages, marked the effective end of the revolt.”. ["The Felon's Track", by Michael Doheny, M.H. Gill &Sons, LTD 1951, Pg 182] Though intermittent resistance continued till late 1849, O'Brien and his colleagues were quickly arrested. Originally sentenced to death, this sentence was later commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land, where they joined John Mitchel

Land agitation and agrarian resurgence

In the wake of the famine, many thousands of Irish peasant farmers and labourers either died or left the country. Those who remained waged a long campaign for better rights for tenant farmers and ultimately for land re-distribution. This period, known as the "Land War" in Ireland, had a nationalist as well as a social element. The reason for this was that the land-owning class in Ireland, since the period of the 17th century Plantations of Ireland, had been composed of Protestant settlers, originally from England, who had a British identity.Fact|date=March 2007 The Irish (Roman Catholic) population widely believed that the land had been unjustly taken from their ancestors and given to this Protestant Ascendancy during the English conquest of the country.Fact|date=March 2007

The Irish National Land League, was formed to defend the interests of tenant farmers, at first demanding the "Three F's" - Fair rent, Free sale and Fixity of tenure. Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, such as Michael Davitt, were prominent among the leadership of this movement. When they saw its potential for popular mobilisation, nationalist leaders such as Charles Stewart Parnell also became involved.

The most effective tactic of the Land League was the boycott (the word originates in Ireland in this period), where unpopular landlords were ostracised by the local community. Grassroots Land League members used violence against landlords and their property; Fact|date=March 2007 attempted evictions of tenant farmers regularly turned into armed confrontations. Under the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Ireland was put under "coercion"- a form of martial law - to contain the violence. Parnell, Davitt, William O'Brien and the other leaders of the Land League were temporarily imprisoned - being held responsible for the violence.

Ultimately, the land question was settled through successive Irish Land Acts by British governments – beginning with that of William Gladstone, which first gave extensive rights to tenant farmers, the Wyndham "Land Purchase Act (1903)" won by William O'Brien enabling tenant farmers purchase their plots of land from their landlords, the problems of non-existent rural housing resolved by D.D. Sheehan under the Bryce "Labourers (Ireland) Act (1906)". These acts created a very large class of small property owners in the Irish countryside, and dissipated the power of the old Anglo-Irish landed class.

Unrest and agitation also resulted in the successful introduction of agricultural co-operatives through the initiative of Horace Plunkett, but the most positive changes came after the introduction of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 which put the control and running of rural affairs into local hands. However it did not end support for independent Irish nationalism, as British governments had hoped. "See also Irish Land Commission."

Culture and the Gaelic revival

The Culture of Ireland went under a massive change in the course of the 19th century. After the Famine, the Irish language went into steep decline. This process was started in the 1820s, when the first National Schools were set up in the country. These had the advantage of encouraging literacy, but classes were provided only in English and the speaking of Irish was firmly discouraged. However, before the 1840s, Irish was still the majority language in the country and numerically (given the rise in population) may have had more speakers than ever before. The Famine devastated the Irish speaking areas of the country, which tended also to be rural and poor. As well as causing the deaths of thousands of Irish speakers, the famine also led to sustained and widespread emigration from the Irish-speaking south and west of the country. By 1900, for the first time in perhaps two millennia, Irish was no longer the majority language in Ireland, and continued to decline in importance. By the time of Irish independence, the Gaeltachts had shrunk to small areas along the western seaboard.

In reaction, to this, Irish nationalists began a "Gaelic revival" in the late 19th century, hoping to revive the Irish language and Irish literature and sports. While social organisations such as the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association were very successful in attracting members, most of their activists were English speakers and the movement did not halt the decline of the Irish language.

The form of English established in Ireland differed somewhat from British English and its variants. Blurring linguistic structures from older forms of English (notably Elizabethan English) and the Irish language, it is known as Hiberno-English and was strongly associated with turn of the century Irish writers like J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, and had resonances in the English of Dublin-born Oscar Wilde. Some nationalists saw the celebration of Hiberno-Irish by predominantly Anglo-Irish writers as offensive "stage Irish" caricature. Synge's play "The Playboy of the Western World" was marked by rioting at performances.

Home rule movement

Until the 1870s, most Irish people elected as their Members of Parliament (MPs) Liberals and Conservatives who belonged to the main British political parties. The Conservatives, for example, won a majority in the 1859 general election in Ireland. A significant minority also voted for Unionists, who resisted fiercely any dilution of the Act of Union. In the 1870s a former Conservative barrister and Orangeman turned nationalist campaigner, Isaac Butt, established a new moderate nationalist movement, the Home Rule League. After his death, William Shaw and in particular a radical young Protestant landowner, Charles Stewart Parnell, turned the home rule movement, or the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) as it became known, into a major political force. It came to dominate Irish politics, to the exclusion of the previous Liberal, Conservative and Unionist parties that had existed there. The party's growing electoral strength was first shown in the 1880 general election in Ireland, when it won 63 seats (two MPs later defected to the Liberals). By the 1885 general election in Ireland it had won 86 seats (including one in the heavily Irish-populated English city of Liverpool). Parnell's movement proved to be a broad one, from conservative landowners to the Land League.

Parnell's movement also campaigned for the right of Ireland to govern herself as a region within the United Kingdom, in contrast to O'Connell who had wanted a complete repeal of the Act of Union. Two home rule bills (in 1886 and 1893) were introduced by Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, but neither became law. The issue divided Ireland: a significant minority of Unionists (largely though by no means exclusively based in Ulster) opposed home rule, fearing that a Dublin parliament dominated by Catholics and nationalists would discriminate against them and would impose tariffs on trade with Britain. (Whilst most of Ireland was primarily agricultural, north-east Ulster was the location of almost all the island's heavy industry and would have been affected by any tariff barriers imposed.)

In 1889, the scandal surrounding Parnell's divorce proceedings split the Irish party, when it became public that Parnell, popularly acclaimed as the 'Uncrowned King of Ireland', had for many years been living in a family relationship with Mrs. Katharine O'Shea, the long separated wife of a fellow MP. When the scandal broke, religious non-conformists in Britain, who were the backbone of the pro-Home Rule Liberal Party, forced its leader W. E. Gladstone to abandon support for the Irish cause as long as Parnell remained leader of the IPP. Parnell was subsequently deposed and died in 1891. But the Party and the country remained split between pro- and anti-Parnellites, who fought each other in elections, until reunited under John Redmond in 1899.

In 1912, with the Irish Parliamentary Party at its zenith, a new third Home Rule Bill was introduced, passing its first reading in the House of Commons but again being defeated in the House of Lords (as with the bill of 1893). However, by this time, the House of Lords had lost its power to veto legislation and could only delay the bill for two years. During these two years the threat of civil war hung over the island of Ireland, with the creation of the Unionist Ulster Volunteers to resist Home Rule and of their nationalist counterparts the Irish Volunteers to support Home Rule. These two groups armed themselves by importing thousands of rifles and rounds of ammunition from Imperial Germany and often drilled openly.

In 1914 the Imperial House of Commons finally passed the Third Home Rule Act 1914, condemned by the dissident nationalists' All-for-Ireland League party as a "partition deal". On the sudden outbreak of the First World War in August, the Act was suspended with a view to being implemented in 1915, at the end of what was expected to be a short war. The UVF and a majority of the Irish Volunteers who split off to form the National Volunteers joined in their thousands their respective Irish regiments of the New British army in support of the Allied cause to combat oppression in Europe. The 36th (Ulster) Division, the 10th (Irish) Division and the 16th (Irish) Division suffered crippling losses in the trenches. Irish units served on the Western Front, Gallipoli and in the Middle East. Between 35,000 and 50,000 Irishmen (in all armies) are believed to have died in the War. Each side believed that, after the war, Britain would favour their respective goals of remaining fully part of the United Kingdom or becoming a self-governing United Ireland within a union under the Crown.

Until 1918, the Irish Parliamentary Party who sought independent self-government for whole of Ireland through the principles of parliamentary constitutionalism, remained the dominant Irish party. But from the early 1900s, a radical fringe among Home Rulers became associated with militant republicanism, particularly Irish-American republicanism.

ocial and labour conflicts

Although nationalism dominated Irish politics, social and economic issues were far from absent and came to the fore in the first two decades of the 20th century. Dublin was a city marked by extremes of poverty and wealth, possessing some of the worst slums anywhere in the British Empire. It also possessed one of the world's biggest "red light districts" known as Monto (after its focal point, Mountgomery Street, on the northside of the city).

Unemployment was high in Ireland and worker's pay and conditions were often very poor. In response to this, socialist activists such as James Larkin and James Connolly began to organise Trade Unions on syndicalist principles. Belfast saw a bitter strike (by dockers organised by Larkin) in 1907 in which 10,000 workers went on strike and the police mutinied - a rare instance of non-sectarian mobilisation in Ulster. In Dublin there was an even more vicious dispute - the Dublin Lockout of 1913 - in which over 20,000 workers were fired for belonging to Larkin's Union. Three people died in the rioting that accompanied the lockout and many more were injured.

However, the labour movement was split on nationalist lines. Southern unions formed the Irish Congress of Trade Unions whereas those in Ulster affiliated themselves to British unions. Mainstream Irish nationalists were deeply opposed to social radicalism but socialist and labour activists found some sympathy among more extreme Irish Republicans. James Connolly founded the Irish Citizen Army to defend strikers from the police in 1913. In 1916 it participated in the Easter Rising alongside the Irish Republican Brotherhood and part of the Irish Volunteers.

Militant separatism

In 1914, Ireland had looked to beFact|date=September 2008 on the brink of civil war between rival Nationalist and Unionist Volunteer groups over the proposed introduction of Home Rule for Ireland.

To resist Home Rule, thousands of unionists, led by the Dublin-born barrister Sir Edward Carson and James Craig, signed the "Ulster Covenant" of 1912, pledging to resist Home Rule. This movement also saw the setting up of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). In April 1914 30,000 German rifles with 3,000,000 rounds were landed at Larne, with the authorities blockaded by the UVF (see Larne gunrunning). The Curragh Incident showed it would be difficult to use the British army to coerce Ulster into home rule from Dublin.

In response, Irish nationalists created the Irish Volunteers, part of which later became the forerunner of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) — to seek to ensure the passing of the Home Rule Bill.

In September 1914, just as the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament finally passed the Third Home Rule Act to establish self-government for Ireland, but was suspended for the duration of the war. Before it ended, Britain made two concerted efforts to implement the Act, one in May 1916 and again during 1917-1918, but during the Irish Convention the Irish sides (Nationalist, Unionist) were unable to agree on terms for the temporary or permanent exclusion of Ulster from its provisions.

However, the combination of postponement of Home Rule and the involvement of Britain in the European conflict ("England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" as an old Republican saying went) provoked some on the radical fringes of Irish nationalism to resort to physical force. A significant section of the Irish Volunteers bitterly disagreed with the Irish National Volunteers serving with Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) Division and 16th (Irish) Division of the New British Army on the urging of their Irish Parliamentary leadership, whose motives were to assure the implementation of All-Ireland self-government at the end of the war, expected to last only a year. It was from the former Irish Volunteer ranks that the Irish Republican Brotherhood organised an armed rebellion in 1916.

Easter Rising 1916

Because of divisions among the Volunteer leadership, only a small part of their numbers were mobilised. Indeed, Eoin MacNeill, the Volunteer commander, countermanded orders to units to begin the insurrection. Nevertheless, at Easter 1916, a small band of 1500 republican rebels (Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army) staged a rebellion, called the "Easter Rising" in Dublin, under Padraig Pearse and James Connolly. The Rising was put down after a week's fighting. Initially their acts were widely condemned by nationalists, who had suffered severe losses in the war as their sons fought at Gallipoli during the Landing at Cape Helles, and on the Western Front. Major newspapers such as the "Irish Independent" and local authorities openly called for the execution of Pearse and the Rising's leadership. However the government's handling of the aftermath, and the execution of rebels and others in stages, ultimately led to widespread public sympathy for the rebels.

The government and the Irish media wrongly blamed Sinn Féin, then a small monarchist political party with little popular support for the rebellion, even though in reality it had not been involved. Nonetheless Rising survivors, notably Eamon de Valera returning from imprisonment in Britain, joined the party in great numbers, radicalised its programme and took control of its leadership.

Until 1917, Sinn Féin, under its founder Arthur Griffith, had campaigned for a form of government championed first by O'Connell, namely that Ireland would become independent as a dual monarchy with Britain, under a shared king. Such a system operated under Austria-Hungary, where the same monarch, King Charles IV reigned separately in both Austria and Hungary. Indeed Griffith in his book, "The Resurrection of Hungary", modelled his ideas on the manner in which Hungary had forced Austria to create a dual monarchy linking both states.

Faced with an impending split between its monarchists and republicans, a compromise was brokered at the 1917 Ard Fheis (party conference) whereby the party would campaign to create a republic, then let the people decide if they wanted a monarchy or republic, subject to the proviso that if they wanted a king, they could not choose someone from Britain's Royal Family. (During the Rising, Pearse had suggested having Prince Joachim of Germany, the youngest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, as King of Ireland).

Throughout 1917 and 1918, Sinn Féin and the Irish Parliamentary Party fought a bitter and rather inconclusive electoral battle; each won some by-elections and lost others. The scales were finally tipped Sinn Féin's way when as a result of the German Spring Offensive the government, which had already received large numbers of volunteer soldiers from Ireland, tried to impose conscription on the island. An infuriated public turned against Britain over the Conscription Crisis of 1918. The Irish Parliamentary Party demonstratively withdrew its MPs from the British Parliament in Westminster.

In the December 1918 general election, Sinn Féin won 73 out of 105 seats, 25 of which were uncontested. Sinn Féin's new MPs refused to sit in the British House of Commons. Instead in January 1919 they assembled as 'Teachta Dála' (TDs) in the Mansion House in Dublin and established Dáil Éireann (a revolutionary Irish parliament). They proclaimed an Irish Republic and attempted to establish a unilateral system of government.

War of Independence (1919-1921)

For three years, from 1919 to 1921, acting largely on its own authority and independently of the Dáil assembly, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the army of the Irish Republic, engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British army and paramilitary police units known as the Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division. Both sides engaged in brutal acts; the Black and Tans deliberately burned entire towns and tortured civilians. The IRA killed many civilians it believed to be aiding or giving information to the British (particularly in Munster). Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) records later revealed the targeted Protestants unionists to have been non-collaborative and very tight-lipped. The IRA also burned historic stately homes in retaliation for the government policy of destroying the homes of republicans, suspected or actual. This clash came to be known as the War of Independence or the Anglo-Irish War. It reinforced the fears of Ulster Unionists that they could never expect safeguards from an all-Ireland Sinn Féin government in Dublin.

In the background, Britain remained committed to implementing self-government for Ireland in accordance with the (temporarily suspended) Home Rule Act 1914. The British Cabinet drew up a committee to deal with this, the Long Committee. This largely followed Unionist MP recommendations, since Dáil MPs boycotting Westminster had no say or input. These deliberations resulted in a new Fourth Home Rule Act (known as the Government of Ireland Act 1920) being enacted primarily in the interest of Ulster Unionists. The Act granted (separate) Home Rule to the northeastern-most six counties of Ulster within the United Kingdom and partitioned Ireland according to their wishes into two semi-autonomous regions: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, co-ordinated by a Council of Ireland. Upon Royal Assent, the Northern Ireland parliament came into being. The institutions of Southern Ireland, however, were boycotted by nationalists and so never became functional.

In July 1921, a cease-fire was agreed and negotiations between delegations of the Irish and British sides produced the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under the treaty, southern and western Ireland was to be given a form of dominion status, modelled on the Dominion of Canada. This was more than what was initially offered to Parnell, and somewhat more than had been achieved under the Irish Parliamentary Party's constitutional 'step by step' towards full freedom approach.

Northern Ireland was given the right, immediately availed of, to opt out of the new Irish Free State and an Irish Boundary Commission was to be established to work out the final details of the border. Initially, Northern Ireland comprised the north-east six counties of Ulster, while the remaining twenty-six formed the Free State: on receiving the report of the Boundary Commission, the Heads of Government declined to make any change to this arrangement.

Civil War (1922-1923)

The Dáil narrowly passed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. Under the leadership of Michael Collins and W. T. Cosgrave, it set about establishing the Irish Free State, with the IRA becoming a national, fully re-organised army and a new police force, the Civic Guard (quickly renamed as the Garda Síochána), replacing one of Ireland's two police forces, the Royal Irish Constabulary. The second, the Dublin Metropolitan Police, merged some years later with the Gardaí.

However a minority led by Éamon de Valera opposed the treaty on the grounds that:
* it did not create a fully independent republic,
* it imposed the controversial Dominion Oath of Allegiance (to the Irish Free State) and Fidelity (to the King) on Irish parliamentarians, and
* it accepted the partition of the island. De Valera led his supporters out of the Dáil and, after a lapse of six months in which the IRA also split, a bloody civil war between pro- and anti-treaty sides followed, only coming to an end in 1923. The civil war cost more lives than the Anglo-Irish War that preceded it and left divisions that are still felt strongly in Irish politics today.

Population changes (1801-1921)

(Figures are from [http://www.tacitus.nu/historical-atlas/population/british.htm Tacitus.nu] )

ee also

*History of Ireland
*History of the United Kingdom
*Timeline of Irish history
*History of the Republic of Ireland
*History of Northern Ireland
*Act of Union 1800
*Great Irish Famine (1845-1849)

Notes and references

Contemporary bibliography

A list of books by Young Irelanders
*"An Apology for the British Government in Ireland", John Mitchel, O Donoghue & Company. 1905
*"Jail Journal", John Mitchel, M.H. Gill & Sons, LTD 1914
*"Jail Journal: with continuation in New York & Paris", John Mitchel, M.H. Gill & Son, Ltd
*"The Crusade of the Period", John Mitchel, Lynch, Cole & Meehan 1873
*"Last Conquest Of Ireland (Perhaps)", John Mitchel, Lynch, Cole & Meehan 1873
*"History of Ireland, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time", John Mitchel, Cameron & Ferguson
*"History of Ireland, from the Treaty of Limerick to the Present Time" (2 Vol), John Mitchel, James Duffy 1869
*"Life of Hugh O'Neil " John Mitchel" P.M. Haverty 1868
*"The Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps)", John Mitchell, (Glasgow, 1876 - reprinted University College Dublin Press, 2005) ISBN I-905558-36-4
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14468 "The Felon's Track", by Michael Doheny, M.H. Gill & Sons, LTD 1951]
*"The Volunteers of 1782", by Thomas Mac Nevin, James Duffy & Sons. Centenary Edition
*"Thomas Davis", Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd 1890
*"My Life In Two Hemispheres" (2Vol), Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, T.Fisher Unwin. 1898
*"Young Ireland", Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1880
*"Four Years of Irish History 1845-1849", Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. 1888
* [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=6632 "A Popular History of Ireland: from the Earliest Period to the Emancipation of the Catholics",Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Cameron & Ferguson]
*"The Patriot Parliament of 1689", Thomas Davis, (Third Edition), T. Fisher Unwin, MDCCCXCIII
*"Charles Gavan Duffy: Conversations with Carlyle (1892)"
*"Davis, Poems and Essays Complete", Introduction by John Mitchel, P. M. Haverty, P.J. Kenedy, 9/5 Barclay St. New York, 1876.

Additional reading

* "The life of John Mitchel", William Dillon, (London, 1888) 2 Vols.
*"Life of John Mitchel", P. A. Sillard, James Duffy and Co., Ltd 1908
*"John Mitchel", P. S. O'Hegarty, Maunsel & Company, Ltd 1917
*"Irish Mitchel", Seamus MacCall, Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd 1938
*"John Mitchel First Felon for Ireland", Edited By Brian O'Higgins, Brian O'Higgins 1947
*"John Mitchel Noted Irish Lives", Louis J. Walsh, The Talbot Press Ltd 1934
*"John Mitchel, A Cause Too Many", Aidan Hegarty, Camlane Press
*"Life of John Martin", P. A. Sillard, James Duffy & Co., Ltd 1901.
* [http://www.astonisher.com/archives/mjb/irishlit/irishlit_ch1.html The Politics of Irish Literature: from Thomas Davis to W.B. Yeats, Malcolm Brown] , Allen & Unwin, 1973.
*"Thomas Davis, The Thinker and Teacher", Arthur Griffith, M.H. Gill & Son 1922.
*"Brigadier-General Thomas Francis Meagher His Political and Military Career",Capt. W. F. Lyons, Burns Oates & Washbourne Limited 1869
*"Young Ireland and 1848", Dennis Gwynn, Cork University Press 1949.
*"Daniel O'Connell The Irish Liberator", Dennis Gwynn, Hutchinson & Co, Ltd.
*"O'Connell Davis and the Collages Bill", Dennis Gwynn, Cork University Press 1948.
*"Smith O’Brien and the “Secession”", Dennis Gwynn, Cork University Press
*"Meagher of The Sword", Edited By Arthur Griffith, M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd. 1916.
*"Young Irelander Abroad The Diary of Charles Hart", Edited by Brendan O'Cathaoir, University Press.
*"Rossa's Recollections 1838 to 1898", Intro by Sean O'Luing, The Lyons Press 2004.
*"Labour in Ireland", James Connolly, Fleet Street 1910.
*"The Re-Conquest of Ireland", James Connolly, Fleet Street 1915.
*"Thomas Davis: Essays and Poems", Centenary Memoir, M. H Gill, M.H. Gill & Son, Ltd MCMXLV.
*"The Fenians in Context Irish Politics & Society 1848-82", R. V. Comerford, Wolfhound Press 1998
*"William Smith O'Brien and the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848", Robert Sloan, Four Courts Press 2000
*"Ireland Her Own", T. A. Jackson, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1976.
*"Life and Times of Daniel O'Connell", T. C. Luby, Cameron & Ferguson.
*"Young Ireland", T. F. O'Sullivan, The Kerryman Ltd. 1945.
*"Irish Rebel John Devoy and America's Fight for Irish Freedom", Terry Golway, St. Martin's Griffin 1998.
*"Paddy's Lament Ireland 1846-1847 Prelude to Hatred", Thomas Gallagher, Poolbeg 1994.
*"The Great Shame", Thomas Keneally, Anchor Books 1999.
*"James Fintan Lalor", Thomas, P. O'Neill, Golden Publications 2003.
*"Charles Gavan Duffy: Conversations With Carlyle (1892)", with Introduction, "Stray Thoughts On Young Ireland", by Brendan Clifford, Athol Books, Belfast, ISBN 0 85034 1140. (Pg. 32 Titled, Foster's account of Young Ireland.)
*"Envoi, Taking Leave of Roy Foster", by Brendan Clifford and Julianne Herlihy, Aubane Historical Society, Cork.
*"Michael Collins, The Man Who Won The War", T. Ryle Dwyer, Mercier Press, Ireland 1990
*"A History of Ireland", Mike Cronin, Palgrave Publishers Ltd. 2002
*"The Falcon Family, or, Young Ireland", by M. W. Savage, London, 1845. ( [http://www.quinnipiac.edu/other/abl/etext/irish/falcon/falconmain.html An Gorta Mor] ) "Quinnipiac University"