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 Partition of Ireland, the creation of the Irish Free State, and the Irish Civil War.
The Birth of the Irish Republic; painting by Walter Paget | |
| Native name | Tréimhse Réabhlóideach in Eirinn |
|---|---|
| Date | 1912 to 1923 |
| Location | Ireland |
| Outcome | Partition of Ireland; Anglo-Irish Treaty; establishment of Irish Free State and Northern Ireland |
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.