County Louth and the Irish Revolution, 1912–1923 explores the local activism of the IRA and how revolution was experienced by rural and urban labourers, RIC men, republican women, cultural activists, and Big House families. Events were increasingly shaped for all these groups by the developing reality of partition, transforming a marginal county into a borderland and creating a zone of new violence and banditry. The expert contributors to the first-ever local history of the county during this period bring to light a wealth of fascinating stories that will appeal to the general public and historians alike. Critically, these stories reveal new findings about the early military skirmishes in County Louth by republican figures such as Seán MacEntee and Frank Aiken; the controversial sectarian massacre at Altnaveigh; and how the Civil War made a fiery battlefield of Dundalk and Drogheda. County Louth and the Irish Revolution, 1912–1923 documents the complexity of the local experience as the national revolution merged with long-established antagonisms and traditions, the effects of which have shaped the county ever since.

This is the first comprehensive account of County Louth's experience of the revolutionary period (1912-23), revealing a county with a strong industrial and agricultural base that faced serious challenges stemming from declining population, large-scale unemployment and extensive poverty. Although overwhelmingly nationalist, Louth's political activists were bitterly divided until the foundation of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. The First World War split the Volunteers. The majority sided with Redmond and, in late summer 1914, these volunteers, with bands playing and flags flying, saw off many of their comrades to fight in the First World War. The Irish Volunteers, which opposed the war, remained few in number but took part in the 1916 Rising. As the militancy of 1916 faded, the IRA in Louth was widely criticized for its relative inactivity during the War of Independence while Sinn Fein struggled to gain political control in the face of strong nationalist opposition. By 1922, the county was central to the Provisional government's campaign to destabilize Northern Ireland, which witnessed many atrocities. During the Civil War, Louth experienced extensive violence, including streetfighting, ambushes, assassinations, executions and house burnings. When peace was restored, Louth emerged from a decade of instability more divided than ever, cut off by partition from its natural hinterland in Ulster, and facing an uncertain future.

This book gives an insight into the Irish revolution, and seeks to explain how it came about, through a study of events at a regional level. County Longford was the scene of Sinn FÈinís crucial by-election victories in 1917 and an active area of IRA operations during the War of Independence. Sinn FÈinís victory in the by-election acted as a catalyst for the rapid spread of the movement throughout Longford in the latter half of 1917. Marie Coleman discusses the political aspect of the revolution by examining the importance of administrative charges as Sinn FÈin and D·il .ireann usurped the functions of the courts and local government, and then goes on to describe the military side of the revolution. A narrative account of the War of Independence and Civil War in Longford is followed by a personnel profile of the Volunteers and Cumann na mBan respectively, outlining their activities at various stages of the independence campaign, and examining their motivation for joining these organisations and engaging in violent activity.

The first comprehensive account to record and analyze all deaths arising from the Irish revolution between 1916 and 1921 This account covers the turbulent period from the 1916 Rising to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921—a period which saw the achievement of independence for most of nationalist Ireland and the establishment of Northern Ireland as a self-governing province of the United Kingdom. Separatists fought for independence against government forces and, in North East Ulster, armed loyalists. Civilians suffered violence from all combatants, sometimes as collateral damage, often as targets. Eunan O’Halpin and Daithí Ó Corráin catalogue and analyze the deaths of all men, women, and children who died during the revolutionary years—505 in 1916; 2,344 between 1917 and 1921. This study provides a unique and comprehensive picture of everyone who died: in what manner, by whose hands, and why. Through their stories we obtain original insight into the Irish revolution itself.

Arming the Irish Revolution is an in-depth investigation of the successes and failures of the militant Irish republican efforts to arm themselves. W. H. Kautt’s comprehensive account of Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms acquisition begins with its predecessors—the Irish Volunteers and the National Volunteers—and, counterintuitively, with their rivals, the pro-union Ulster Volunteer Force. After the 1916 Rising, Kautt details the functioning of the Quartermaster General Department of the Irish Volunteer General Headquarters in Dublin and basic arms acquisition in the early days of 1918 to 1919. He then closely examines rebel efforts at weapons and ammunition manufacturing and bombmaking and reveals that the ingenuity and resources poured into manufacturing were never able to become a primary source of weapons and ammunition. As the conflict grew in intensity and expanded, the rebels encountered increasing difficulty in obtaining and maintaining supplies of weapons and ammunition since modern weapons in a protracted conflict used more ammunition than previous generations of weapons and their complexity meant that the weapons could not be clandestinely produced within Ireland. Thus, as the rebels conducted campaigns that became difficult to combat, their greatest limiting factor was that most of their weapons and ammunition had to be imported. Arming the Irish Revolution is the first work of research and analysis to explore in detail the Irish work inside Britain to establish arms centers and to conduct arms operations and trafficking. It also examines the full extent of the overseas or foreign arms trade and the arms operations of the War of Independence, including the continuance into the truce and treaty eras and up to the outbreak of the Civil War (1922–1923)—all of which reveals how the rebel leaders ran complex, maturing, and capable smuggling and manufacturing enterprises worldwide under the noses of the police, customs, intelligence, and the military for years without getting caught. Quite apart from the battlefield these groups and their activities led to political consequences, playing no small part in producing what were real concessions from Lloyd George’s government. In the last chapter Kautt offers observations and conclusions about overall successes and failures that establishes Arming the Irish Revolution as a landmark study of insurgent or revolutionary arms acquisition in both Irish and military history.

In 1912, a bloodless revolution had already taken place in Monaghan that resulted in the overthrow of one ruling elite, which was replaced by another. What began in 1912 with the signing of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, followed the next year by the founding of the Ulster Volunteer Force, might be considered from the Protestant perspective as an attempted counter-revolution. It was, at the very least, a determined effort to remain part of the British empire, the spiritual and ancestral home of Monaghan Protestants. But constitutional nationalists were not prepared to give up the gains they had made. Separatist nationalists wanted more, and so for them the 1916 Rising represented the beginning of unfinished business. In this political maelstrom there were agrarian agitators who sought the final solution to the land question; 2,500 young men who went to war, one-fifth of whom never returned and the others who did returned to a very changed country; and paramilitaries who divided along sectarian lines. Thus, between 1912 and 1923, Monaghan politics and society were transformed for a second time, not least of all by the imposition of the border with all the attendant social and economic problems partition brought. Because of Monaghan's socio-religious demographic and its borderlands location, this book offers an intriguing insight to how the period 1912-23 played itself out at local level. (Series: Irish Revolution 1912-23) [Subject: Irish Revolution, Easter 1916, Monaghan, Irish History, Irish Studies]