At the outbreak of World War One, the British Government decided to postpone Home Rule for Ireland, which had just been enacted. Despite this, many Nationalists as well as Unionists enlisted in the British Army. Some radical Nationalists came to believe that action was needed to revive national sentiment. The Easter Rising of 1916 failed, but the execution of most of its leaders, followed two years later by an attempt to impose conscription on Ireland, led to a radicalisation of Nationalist opinion. Rallying under the banner of the Sinn Féin party – founded earlier in the century by the non-violent Nationalist Arthur Griffith but from 1917 led by the senior survivor of 1916, Eamon de Valera – this new radical movement won 73 of the 105 Irish seats at Westminster in the December 1918 General Election. Assembling in Dublin on 19 January 1919, those elected members not in prison or ‘on the run’ met as Dáil Éireann – the Parliament of Ireland – declared Irish Independence and established a government, to the Presidency of which de Valera was elected in April 1919, after escaping from prison in England. Between mid-1919 and the end of 1920, however, de Valera was in the United States, seeking recognition for the Irish state and raising funds. In his absence, Griffith led the Government, which was forced to go underground after Dáil Éireann was proscribed in September 1919. In the subsequent guerrilla warfare of 1919-21 Michael Collins, the Minister for Finance and Director of Intelligence of the Volunteers or Irish Republican Army, rose to prominence.’‘
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy. Vol. I: 1919-22 edited by Ronan Fanning. At the outbreak of World War One, the British Government decided to postpone Home Rule for Ireland, which had just been enacted. Despite this, many Nationalists as well as Unionists enlisted in...