A Short History of the Irish Revolution: 1912 to 1927

by Richard Killeen

The Irish revolution began with the Ulster crisis of 1912 followed by the Irish Nationalist Party securing the passage of the Home Rule Act in 1914. By then, however, the Great War had broken the Act was suspended for the duration of the war, with the violent Ulster opposition to it still unresolved. But the war changed everything. Over thirty thousand Irish troops died. A radical nationalist minority rebelled against British rule at Easter 1916, an event that established itself as the foundation date of a new, more assertive nationalism. In 1918 Sinn Fein supplanted the old Nationalist party and formed its own assembly in Dublin. At the same time the IRA began an armed campaign against British Rule. By 1922, Britain had withdrawn from twenty-six of the thirty-two counties of Ireland which now constituted the Irish Free State. The Ulster problem had, however, never been resolved. The result was partition and the establishment of two states on the island - something unthinkable fifteen years earlier. The years of the Irish revolution were the crucible of modern Ireland. Richard Killeen's authoritative survey of the period is an ideal introduction to this tumultuous time.

Genres: Ireland, Nonfiction

166 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2007

Reviews

[Cole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still confused

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Killeen assumes that readers of A SHORT HISTORY OF THE IRISH REVOLUTION will already know of Ireland's long list of grievances against Britain: legal discrimination against Catholics, bloody suppression of rebellions like Wolfe Tone's 1798 rising, the Great Famine, and so forth. He begins, therefore, with a discussion of the peaceful and almost conservative Home Rule movement, which began in the Westminster Parliament (where the Irish had a number of MPs until 1918) and reached fruition with the Home Rule Bill. Except for a few fringe groups like the Ulster Volunteers, the Irish middle class and elite were willing to accept this offer of limited local government. Irish Independence was on few minds in 1914.

Then came the Great War. Killeen identifies this cataclysm as the real trigger of the Irish Revolution. The war prevented potential troublemakers from emigrating, as they would have done in the nineteenth century; it slaughtered thousands of Catholic Irish and Ulster soldiers for no apparent gain, undermining the British Empire's prestige; it inspired a handful of rebels to launch the Easter Rising (April 1916), which Britain crushed but which made an independent Irish republic seem possible; and it led to a demand for Irish conscription (1918), a measure so unpopular that Irish MPs withdrew from Westminster. This in turn led to the meeting of an autonomous Irish assembly, or Dail, in Dublin and the beginning of armed conflict in January 1919.

Killeen characterizes the independence war as, essentially, several years of gangland violence. Wars of independence usually take this form: one side is usually much weaker than the other and must prefer raids and ambushes to open-field battles (a lesson the Irish learned in 1798), while the incumbent power generally prefers not to legitimize the rebels by treating them as a regular army. The Irish Republican Army largely confined itself to killing or terrorizing British officials and, especially, members of the RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary) - the latter sustained about 300 casualties by the end of 1920. Meanwhile Britain, increasingly desperate, sent in paramilitary police known (from their thrown-together war surplus uniforms) as Black and Tans. This group, and another paramilitary force called Auxiliaries, consisted of brutalized Great War veterans who saw the Irish as an enemy population due no more consideration than Germans. (Cf. the Freikorps in contemporary Germany.) Torture, "random firing at civilians and the looting and burning of towns became a commonplace."

By 1921 Britain had lost the war, at least outside of Ulster. The IRA had neutralized the Royal Irish police, the republicans had established an effective civilian counter-government with its own courts and tax collection, the Black and Tans had accomplished nothing more than destroying any chance of reconciliation, and sending in the regular Army would have meant conceding Ireland no longer belonged to metropolitan Britain. Parliament offered the rebels a Government of Ireland Act, which they rejected but the Ulster Protestants accepted - inaugurating the statelet known thereafter as Northern Ireland. The IRA (and here is a part of the story I didn't know) then tried to conquer the breakaway counties by force, burning houses in Belfast and other towns and killing dozens of people. The Ulster Volunteers hit back by expelling about 10,000 Catholics from the North, and Britain instituted a fairly vicious form of martial law. The Ulster campaign only ended when the IRA split over the 1922 Treaty with Britain; diehard Republicans fought a violent feud (the "Irish Civil War") with supporters of the Irish Free State, and by 1923 both parts of the island had settled into a sullen peace.

The author concludes that Northern Ireland came out of the independence war the worse for wear, its civic life poisoned by sectarianism, isolationism, and Protestant triumphalism. The Treaty, by keeping southern Ireland nominally within the British Empire and obliging legislators to swear loyalty to the King, at least forced former republicans to learn compromise, negotiation, and patience. These were skills that would prove useful during the 1930s and '40s, as the Free State navigated the Depression and Second World War and moved toward full independence.

While this book gets off to a rather abrupt start, it tells a complex story with clarity and a good balance between detail and context. It made me curious about what happened next, as the former revolutionaries became part of the nascent republican establishment. That's high praise for any sort of story-teller.

[Paul Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, concise summary of the (most recent) Irish revolution following the 1916 Easter Rising. All the major issues are adequately tackled, with relative clarity given the confusing nature of interaction among the many varied protagonists. Short on detail on the 1916 executions but good detail on the aftermath, especially the pro and anti treaty debates, providing that partioning of the country was not always the main issues on the agenda. A thorough intro into modern Irish politics.

[Caroline Ailanthus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I liked it. And the book is what the title suggests, a short but effective introduction. I left off one star both because the book didn't particularly "wow" me (gotta reserve at least one star for the ones that do!) and because I found it difficult to keep track of all of the detail--the author should have either explained more or less. But basically Richard Killeen did the job he set out to do.

What stood out to me was what a vicious little war this was--the period of active fighting was relatively short and the number of people killed relatively small, but most of the fighting consisted of targeted assassinations and small-scale attacks on civilians, not clashes between armies. On the Irish side, much of the fighting was organized by local commanders acting almost autonomously, and there were multiple political parties and militant groups that worked together and often overlapped but could and did disagree. This was a war of persons--and personal feelings and thoughts--not of peoples.

The other thing that stood out was the political complexity of the whole process. I had always assumed that Ireland (excepting Ulster) just got tired of being oppressed by the British one day and got up and did something about it, but there was so much more to it.

Of course, to find out more was why I read the book. Mission accomplished.

[Frederick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of my Downton Abbey inspired readings. This is a very clear and concise explanation of the events in the title. I recommend it as a not only a well-written history but one that compels you to further study. If you are Irish or interested in history of the UK and Ireland you should read this and move on from there. Top grade writing and information.