The Anglo-Irish War: The Troubles of 1913-1922

by Peter Cottrell

Overview

The Anglo-Irish War has often been referred to as the war 'the English have struggled to forget and the Irish cannot help but remember'. Before 1919, the issue of Irish Home Rule lurked beneath the surface of Anglo-Irish relations for many years, but after the Great War, tensions rose up and boiled over. Irish Nationalists in the shape of Sinn Féin and the IRA took political power in 1919 with a manifesto to claim Ireland back from an English 'foreign' government by whatever means necessary. This book explores the conflict and the years that preceded it, examining such historic events as the Easter Rising and the infamous Bloody Sunday.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472810281
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/06/2014
Series:	Guide to... , #65
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	776 KB

About the Author

Peter Cottrell is currently a serving army officer in the British army. He has recently completed an MA thesis on the Royal Irish Constabulary and is hoping to read a PhD on policing during the Anglo-Irish War. He lives in Wiltshire, UK.

Professor Robert O'Neill, AO D.Phil. (Oxon), Hon D. Litt. (ANU), FASSA, FR Hist S, is the Series Editor of the Essential Histories. He has held a number of eminent positions in history circles, including the Chichele Professorship of the History of War at All Souls College, University of Oxford, 1987–2001, the Chairmanship of the Board of the Imperial War Museum and the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. He is now based in Australia.
Peter Cottrell was born on an RAF base in Norfolk to Welsh parents and grew up in South Wales. He joined his local Welsh Territorial Army infantry battalion whilst still at school and subsequently gained a degree in War Studies from Wolverhampton Polytechnic and a PGCE from University College Swansea. In 1988 he attended Britannia Royal Naval College and was commissioned into the Instructor Branch of the Royal Navy as a Defence and Political Studies specialist. After a period of loan service in Saudi Arabia he transferred to the British Army in 1995 and gained a Master's degree in History, specialising in the militarisation of policing in Ireland from 1913-23. In an eclectic service career that included operational service in Bosnia with both UNPROFOR and IFOR as well as Afghanistan, Iraq and Northern Ireland, he finally retired as a major after twenty-one years of naval and military service in 2008 to return to teaching. From 2008-16 he taught English, History, Latin and Classics in Wiltshire and then moved to Cumbria in 2016 to be head of English and Media in a small secondary school in the depths of rural Cumbria. In 2021 he finally retired to live on the Yorkshire coast.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	7
	Chronology	12
	Background to war: A troubled island	14
	Warring sides: The combatants	18
	Outbreak: By 'any means necessary'	29
	The fighting: Dying for Ireland	45
	Portrait of a soldier: David Neligan	64
	The world around war: Civilian life during the Troubles	68
	Portrait of a civilian: Thomas Hornibrook	75
	How the war ended: A brief peace	80
	Conclusion and consequences: Coming to terms with the past	86
	Further reading	91
	Index	94