Irish Volunteers in the context of "Irish Republic"

The Irish Republican Army (IRA; Irish: Óglaigh na hÉireann) was an Irish republican revolutionary paramilitary organisation who waged a guerrilla campaign against the British occupation of Ireland in the 1919–1921 Irish War of Independence. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916. In 1919, the Irish Republic that had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising was formally established by an elected assembly (Dáil Éireann), and the Irish Volunteers were recognised by Dáil Éireann as its legitimate army.

Following the signing in 1921 of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which ended the War of Independence, a split occurred within the IRA. Members who supported the treaty formed the nucleus of the Irish National Army. However, the majority of the IRA was opposed to the treaty. The anti-treaty IRA fought a civil war against the Free State Army in 1922–1923, with the intention of creating a fully independent all-Ireland republic. Having lost the civil war, this group remained in existence, with the intention of overthrowing the governments of both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland and achieving the Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916.

The Home Rule Crisis was a political and military crisis in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that followed the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1912.

Unionists in Ulster determined to prevent any measure of home rule for Ireland and formed a paramilitary force, the Ulster Volunteers, which threatened to resist by force of arms the implementation of the Act and the authority of any Dublin Parliament. Irish nationalists responded by setting up the Irish Volunteers "to secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland". Both sides then began importing weapons and ammunition from Germany, in the Larne gun-running and Howth gun-running incidents. HM Government's ability to face down unionist defiance was thrown into question by the "Curragh incident", when dozens of British Army officers threatened to resign or face dismissal rather than deploy into Ulster (ostensibly to secure arms against Ulster loyalist seizure), forcing a climb-down by the government. The crisis was temporarily averted by the outbreak of World War I. The Home Rule Bill was enacted, but its implementation was suspended for the duration of the war.

The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government ("Home Rule") for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the northern province of Ulster. Many Ulster Protestants and Irish unionists feared being governed by a nationalist Catholic-majority parliament in Dublin and losing their links with Great Britain. In 1913, the militias were organised into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and vowed to resist any attempts by the British Government to impose Home Rule on Ulster. Later that year, Irish nationalists formed a rival militia, the Irish Volunteers, to safeguard Home Rule. In April 1914, the UVF smuggled 25,000 rifles into Ulster from Imperial Germany. The Home Rule Crisis was interrupted by the First World War. Much of the UVF enlisted with the British Army's 36th (Ulster) Division and went to fight on the Western Front.

After the war, the British Government decided to partition Ireland into two self-governing regions: Northern Ireland (which overall had a Protestant/unionist majority) and Southern Ireland. However, by 1920 the Irish War of Independence was raging and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was launching attacks on British forces in Ireland. In response, the UVF was revived. It was involved in some sectarian clashes and minor actions against the IRA. However, this revival was largely unsuccessful and the UVF was absorbed into the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), the new reserve police force of Northern Ireland.

The Easter Rising (Irish: Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an independent Irish Republic while the United Kingdom was fighting the First World War. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798 and the first armed conflict of the Irish revolutionary period. Sixteen of the Rising's leaders were executed starting in May 1916. The nature of the executions, and subsequent political developments, ultimately contributed to an increase in popular support for Irish independence.

Organised by a seven-man Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916 and lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language activist Patrick Pearse, joined by the smaller Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 women of Cumann na mBan seized strategically important buildings in Dublin and proclaimed the Irish Republic. The British Army brought in thousands of reinforcements as well as artillery and a gunboat. There was street fighting on the routes into the city centre, where the rebels slowed the British advance and inflicted many casualties. Elsewhere in Dublin, the fighting mainly consisted of sniping and long-range gun battles. The main rebel positions were gradually surrounded and bombarded with artillery. There were isolated actions in other parts of Ireland; Volunteer leader Eoin MacNeill had issued a countermand in a bid to halt the Rising, which greatly reduced the extent of the rebel actions.

Éamon de Valera (/ˈeɪmən ˌdɛvəˈlɛərə, -ˈlɪər-/ AY-mən DEH-və-LAIR-ə, -⁠LEER-; Irish: [ˈeːmˠən̪ˠ dʲɛ ˈwalʲəɾʲə]; first registered as George de Valero; changed some time before 1901 to Edward de Valera; 14 October 1882 – 29 August 1975) was an American-born Irish statesman and political leader. He served as the president of Ireland from 1959 to 1973, and three terms as prime minister (titled as President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State from 1932 to 1937 and as Taoiseach from 1937 to 1948, 1951 to 1954, and 1957 to 1959). He had a leading role in introducing the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, and was a dominant figure in Irish political circles from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, when he served terms as both the head of government and head of state.

De Valera was a commandant of the Irish Volunteers (Third Battalion) at Boland's Mill during the 1916 Easter Rising. He was arrested and sentenced to death, but released for a variety of reasons, including his American citizenship and the public response to the British execution of Rising leaders. He returned to Ireland after being jailed in England and became one of the leading political figures of the War of Independence. After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, de Valera served as the political leader of Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin until 1926, when he, along with many supporters, left the party to set up Fianna Fáil, a new political party which abandoned the policy of abstentionism from Dáil Éireann in favour of republicanising the Irish Free State from within.

The Proclamation of the Republic (Irish: Forógra na Poblachta), also known as the 1916 Proclamation or the Easter Proclamation, was a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising in Ireland, which began on 24 April 1916. In it, the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, writing as the "Provisional Government of the Irish Republic," proclaimed Ireland's independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Patrick Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dublin's main thoroughfare, marked the beginning of the Rising. The proclamation was modelled on a similar independence proclamation issued during the 1803 rebellion by Robert Emmet.

The Soloheadbeg ambush took place on 21 January 1919, when members of the Irish Volunteers (or Irish Republican Army [IRA]) ambushed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers who were escorting a consignment of gelignite explosives at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary. Two RIC officers were killed and their weapons and the explosives were stolen. The Volunteers acted on their own initiative and had not sought authorisation for their action. As it happened on the same day that the revolutionary Irish parliament first met and declared Ireland's independence, it is often seen as the first engagement of the Irish War of Independence.