Irish revolutionary period

Irish revolutionary period

The Birth of the Irish Republic; painting by Walter Paget
Date	1911 (1911) to 1927 (1927) (14 years, 2 months and 30 days)
Location	Ireland

The revolutionary period in Irish history was the period in the 1910s and early 1920s when Irish nationalist opinion shifted from the Home Rule movement-supporting Irish Parliamentary Party to the republican Sinn Féin movement. There were several waves of civil unrest linked to Ulster loyalism, trade unionism, and physical force republicanism, leading to the War of Independence, the creation of the independent Irish Free State, the Partition of Ireland and the Civil War.

Modern historians define the revolutionary period as the period from 1912 or 1913 to 1923, i.e. from the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill to the end of the Civil War, or sometimes more narrowly as the period from 1916 to 1921 or 1923, i.e. from the Easter Rising to the end of the War of Independence or the Civil War.

The early years of the Free State, when it was governed by the pro-Treaty party Cumann na nGaedheal, have been described by at least one historian as a counter-revolution.

Home Rule seemed certain when in 1910 the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) under John Redmond held the balance of power in the British House of Commons and the third Home Rule Bill was introduced in 1912. Unionist resistance was immediate, with the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (UVF). In turn the Irish Volunteers were established to oppose them and prevent the UVF introduction of self-government in Ulster.