Guerrilla Warfare In The Irish War Of Independence 1919 1921

Tracing the development of the Irish Republican Army following Ireland's Declaration of Independence, this book focuses on the recruitment, training, and arming of Ireland's military volunteers and the Army's subsequent guerrilla campaign against British rule. Beginning with a brief account of the failed Easter Rising, it continues through the resulting military and political reorganizations, the campaign's various battles, and the eventual truce agreements and signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Other topics include the significance of Irish intelligence and British counter-intelligence efforts; urban warfare and the fight for Dublin; and the role of female soldiers, suffragists, and other women in waging the IRA's campaign.

He thus provides an insight into the reasons why some young men became increasingly willing to use violence, and offers a new explanation for the dominance of south-western units in the War of Independence, on the basis of their actual experiences. He then reappraises the impact of the less well known units in the North, East and West which have so far been widely ignored.

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.

"The Irish War of Independence, January 1919 to July 1921, constituted the final stages of the Irish revolution. It went hand in hand with the collapse of British administration in Ireland. The military conflict consisted of sporadic, localised but vicious guerrilla fighting that was paralleled by the efforts of the Dail Government to achieve an independent Irish Republic and the partitioning of the country by the Government of Ireland Act."--Book jacket.

Following years of discontent over Home Rule and the Easter Rising, the deaths of two Royal Irish Constabulary policemen in Soloheadbeg at the hands of the IRA in 1919 signalled the outbreak of war in Ireland. The Irish War of Independence raged until a truce between the British Army and the IRA in 1921, historical consensus being that the conflict ended in military stalemate. In A Hard Local War, William Sheeham sets out to prove that no such stalemate existed, and that both sides were continually innovative and adaptive. Using new research and previously unpublished archive material, he traces the experience of the British rank and file, their opinion of their opponents, the special forces created to fight in the Irish countryside, RAF involvement and the evolution of IRA reliance on IEDs and terrorism.

In Dublin, the War of Irish Independence (1919-1921) was an intense and dirty battle between military intelligence agents. While IRA flying columns fought the British Army and the Black and Tans in the countryside, the fighting in Ireland's capital city pitted the wits of IRA commander Michael Collins against the cloak-and-dagger innovations of British Intelligence chief Colonel Ormonde de l'Epee Winter. Drawing on detailed witness statements of Irish participants and documents and biographies from the British side, this history chronicles the covert war of assassinations, arrests, torture and murder that climaxed in the Bloody Sunday mass assassination of British intelligence officers by IRA squads in November 1920.

On Easter Monday 1916, Irish rebels seized a number of strategic buildings in Dublin, including the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, and declared an Irish Republic. Within a week they had been bombarded into surrender. Out in the countryside, amidst chaos and confusion over counter orders, the Rising failed to materialize as planned. The one notable exception was the campaign of the Fingal Brigade of North County Dublin. Their leader, the charismatic Tom Ashe, launched a fast moving guerrilla campaign against the para-military Royal Irish Constabulary, seizing barracks and capturing arms. At Ashbourne the Irish Volunteers, having captured the RIC barracks, were faced with the arrival of a numerically superior force of armed policemen. Using tactics evolved from British army training manuals, they overcame and defeated the police. Ashe and Fingal Brigade had shown that fast moving guerrilla warfare was the way ahead in the future struggle for Irish independence This little-known yet crucial development in the Irish War of Independence is well researched and described in this over-due account.

During the War of Independence 1919-1921, the Irish Republican Army developed 'Flying Columns, ' small groups of dedicated volunteers, severely commanded, trained, and disciplined. Constantly on the move, their paramount objective was merely to exist; to avoid disaster at all costs. One of the most successful of the Flying Columns was that of West Cork. In this book, its commander, Tom Barry, describes the setting up of the column, its training, and its plan of campaign. He also describes the Column's two most famous engagements: Kilmichael and Crossberry. This book is considered a classic of the War of Independence in Ireland. -- Publisher description.