Dublin Castle And The Anglo Irish War

The Irish War of Independence is still regarded as a conflict that is both enigmatic and emotive in content; it transformed the British imperial dream into a nightmare and was to shape the foreign and domestic agendas of two countries for nearly a century. This book seeks to examine the reasons and ask the hard questions to determine why the British state was unable to pour oil on troubled Irish waters and put Home Rule to bed and how that inability was left to fester. It examines in detail the relationships which existed between the arms of the British administration in Ireland and how the complexity of those bonds led sometimes to an animosity of sorts being fostered until it began to affect operational aspects of the British security apparatus in Ireland.' The operations and actions of British Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, their mercenary Auxiliary security forces and the Bristish Government of the day are all probed and examined in this book. Why were the British, with massive imperial holdings and a modern and well equipped armed forces, unable to suppress an infant insurgency, numerically inferior and ill equipped less than four hundred miles from Whitehall? Why was the shining light of British colonial policing, the Royal Irish Constabulary subjected to stagnation and rot from within for over fifty years? Why instead of reforming the existing police in place in Ireland mercenary forces, with little official oversight, were introduced into Ireland in an effort to quell the rising trouble?

The war was prosecuted ruthlessly by the Irish Republican Army which, paralleling the political efforts of Sinn Féin, hoped to break Britain's will to rule Ireland and create an independent Irish republic. The British retaliated by introducing two new irregular forces into Ireland, the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries. Fighting took place principally in counties Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Monaghan, Armagh, Clare, Kerry, and Longford. It was sporadic but vicious, with fewer than 2,000 IRA volunteers facing over 50,000 crown forces. The IRA depended upon energetic local leaders -- where there were none, there was little fighting.

"The volumes contain vivid and interesting descriptions of life in Dublin Castle and of Sturgis' liaison work with London. There are portrayals of leading figures of the period on both the British and Irish sides. Most importantly, they give a unique insight into the relations between civil servants and politicians at a time when civil servants were to a large extent in control of British policy in Ireland."--BOOK JACKET.

The Irish Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century spawned the creation of the modern Irish state. This is the first full length analysis to offer a comprehensive framework of that revolution in its totality, taking into account the broad range of social, economic and political developments as well as the IRA's campaign of guerrilla warfare and the British response to it. Drawing on such previously unpublished sources as the Irish Department of Defense's Military History Bureau, the author paints a broad picture of the people and the key events in the Irish struggle for independence. The book also breaks new ground in presenting much of the behind the scenes debate within the British Government in the prosecution of its policies in response to the revolt in Ireland. British official frustration provoked by the acceptance of D���¡il Eireann by the majority of the Irish people and the independent institutions it sought to set in place is also explicitly chronicled. New light is shed on the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations as well as on the divisions within Irish nationalism before and indeed afterwards which culminated in the Irish Civil War. The role of external forces including public opinion in the United States and British competing obligations at home and abroad are also covered. Considerable attention is given to the development of democratic government in the fledgling Irish Free State in the midst of domestic upheaval, and to the broader effort at nation building which followed after the Civil War.

The Anglo-Irish War has often been referred to as the war 'the English have struggled to forget and the Irish cannot help but remember'. Before 1919, the issue of Irish Home Rule lurked beneath the surface of Anglo-Irish relations for many years, but after the Great War, tensions rose up and boiled over. Irish Nationalists in the shape of Sinn Féin and the IRA took political power in 1919 with a manifesto to claim Ireland back from an English 'foreign' government by whatever means necessary. This book explores the conflict and the years that preceded it, examining such historic events as the Easter Rising and the infamous Bloody Sunday.

An accessible overview of Ireland's War of Independence, 1919-21. From the first shooting of RIC constables in Soloheadbeg, Co Tipperary, on 21 January 1919 to the truce in July 1921, the IRA carried out a huge range of attacks on all levels of British rule in Ireland. There are stories of humanity, such as the British soldiers who helped three IRA men escape from prison or the members of the British Army who mutinied in India after hearing about the reprisals being carried out by the Black and Tans in Ireland. The hundreds of thousands of people who celebrated the Centenary of the 1916 Rising with pride and joy are the same people who will appreciate the story of the Irish Republicans who battled against all odds in the next phase of the fight for Ireland between 1919 and 1921.