Irish revolutionary period
The revolutionary period in Irish history was the period in the 1910s and early 1920s when Irish nationalist opinion shifted from the Home Rule-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 Irish War of Independence, the creation of the Irish Free State, the Partition of Ireland, and the Irish Civil War. Some modern historians define the revolutionary period as the period from the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill to the end of the Civil War (1912/1913 to 1923), or sometimes more narrowly as the period from the Easter Rising to the end of the War of Independence or the Civil War (1916 to 1921/1923). 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. Overview Home Rule seemed certain in 1910 when the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) under John Redmond held the balance of power in the British House of Commons. 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 in 1913 to oppose them and prevent the UVF introduction of self-government in Ulster. The Dublin lock-out in the same year led to creation of the Irish Citizen Army. In September 1914, two months after the First World War broke out, the UK Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1914, known as the Home Rule Act, to establish self-government for Ireland, but the act was suspended for the duration of the war. Irish nationalist leaders and the IPP under Redmond supported Ireland's participation in the British war effort, in the belief that it would ensure implementation of Home Rule after the war. A core of leaders within the Irish Volunteers' were against this decision, but the majority of the men left to form the National Volunteers, some of whom enlisted in Irish regiments of the New British Army, the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions, the counterparts of the unionist 36th (Ulster) Division. Before the war ended, Britain made two concerted efforts to implement Home Rule, one in May 1916 and again with the Irish Convention during 1917–1918, but nationalists and unionists were unable to agree to terms for the temporary or permanent exclusion of Ulster from its provisions. The period 1916–1921 was marked by political violence and upheaval, ending in the partition of Ireland and independence for 26 of its 32 counties. A failed militant attempt by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army was made to gain independence for Ireland with the 1916 Easter Rising, an insurrection in Dublin. Although support for the insurgents was small, the execution of fifteen people by firing squad, the imprisonment or internment of hundreds more, and the imposition of martial law caused a profound shift in public opinion towards