Ireland has experienced a considerable amount of civil conflict over the centuries. In the past couple of hundred years, it has mainly been to do with objection to British rule over the Republic, along with the religious differences between Catholics and Protestants.
I do not propose to include very much specific information here. If the subject interests readers sufficiently to learn more, links are provided to sites such as Wikipedia where much greater detail can be found.
The Irish Rebellion (Irish: Éirí Amach).This was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in Ireland. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organising force behind the rebellion.
Since 1691 and the end of the Williamite war, Ireland had chiefly been controlled by a Protestant Ascendancy constituting members of the established Church loyal to the British Crown. It governed the majority Irish Catholic population by a form of institutionalised sectarianism codified in the Penal Laws. In the late 18th century, liberal elements among the ruling class were inspired by the example of the American Revolution (1776–1783) and sought to form common cause with the Catholic populace to achieve reform and greater autonomy from Britain.
Relative peace reigned for the next 100 years.
Then came the Irish War of Independence (Cogadh na Saoirse).
This was a guerilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed to a truce in July 1921, though violence continued in the north-east (mostly between republicans and loyalists). The post-ceasefire talks led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended British rule in most of Ireland and established the Irish Free State. However, six northern counties would remain within the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland.
The IRA that fought in this conflict is often called the Old IRA to distinguish it from later groups that used the same name.
Since the 1880s, Irish nationalists in the Irish Parliamentary Party had been demanding Home Rule, or self-government, from Britain. Fringe organisations, such as Arthur Griffith's Sinn Féin instead argued for some form of Irish independence, but they were in a small minority at this time.
The demand for Home Rule was eventually granted by the British Government in 1912, immediately prompting a prolonged crisis within the United Kingdom as Ulster Unionists formed an armed organisation - the Ulster Volunteers, to resist this measure of devolution. In turn, Nationalists formed their own military organisation, the Irish Volunteers.
The British Parliament passed the Third Home Rule Act with an amending Bill for the partition of Ireland introduced by Ulster Unionists, but the Act's implementation was postponed by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. The majority of Nationalists followed their IPP leaders and John Redmond's call to support Britain and the Allied war effort in Irish regiments of the New British Army, the intention being to ensure the commencement of Home Rule after the war. But a significant minority of the Irish Volunteers opposed Ireland's involvement in the war. The Volunteer movement split, a majority leaving to form the National Volunteers under John Redmond. The remaining Irish Volunteers, under Eoin MacNeill, held that they would maintain their organisation until Home Rule had been granted. Within this Volunteer movement, another faction, led by the separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood, began to prepare for a revolt against British rule.
The plan for revolt was realised in the Easter Rising of 1916, in which the Volunteers, now explicitly declaring a republic, launched an insurrection whose aim was to end British rule and to found an Irish Republic. The rising, in which over four hundred people died, was almost exclusively confined to Dublin and was put down within a week, but the British response, executing the leaders of the insurrection and arresting thousands of nationalist activists, galvanized support for the separatist Sinn Féin, the party which the republicans first adopted and then took over.
To Irish Republicans, the Irish War of Independence had begun with the Proclamation of the Irish Republic during the Easter Rising of 1916.
Irish Civil War (Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann).
Republicans argued that the conflict of 1919-21 (and indeed the subsequent Irish Civil War) was the defence of this Republic against attempts to destroy it.
The Irish Civil War began 28 June 1922 and 'ended', 24 May 1923. It was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire.
The conflict was waged between two opposing groups of Irish nationalists: the forces of the 'Provisional Government' that established the Free State in December 1922, who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and the Republican opposition, for whom the Treaty represented a betrayal of the Irish Republic. The war was won by the Free State forces.
The Civil War left Irish society divided and embittered for decades afterwards. The two main political parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are the direct descendants of the opposing sides in the War.
As previously said, there is a huge amount of information available to be read. Click these links.
There is an excellent film, starring Liam Neeson as Michael Collins,
one of the leaders involved in the Civil War. I highly recommend it.
