History of the Irish Revolution

After finishing two longer novels, I've shifted my attention to history -- in particular, to an episode about which I knew surprisingly little: the Irish Revolution. 

To learn more, I avoided academic histories of contemporary Ireland, and turned instead to Richard Killeen's Short History, which focuses on the period between 1912 and 1927. I must say -- I was pleased: Killeen's treatment is excellent. It's readable and accessible, but erudite and nuanced, too. He establishes a clear set of definitions around Republicanism and Unionism at the start, and later breaks the period into understandable segments. These include, for instance, the Easter Rising, the Revolution, and the Civil War. 

About all of this -- and about the key figures on the Irish side of the political divide, especially -- I preciously little. But as I say, Killeen does an excellent job elucidating the themes which defined the era: the emergence of a Republican impulse is of paramount importance, but so are the governmental maneuverings which led to partition, and the confessional conflict which stirred throughout the 1920s. 

I took from Killeen's history that the partition with which we are familiar today was perhaps the most unexpected outcome of the entire period: Ireland was to remain a British territory, or it was to become, of the course of a decade, a wholly independent state -- with Unionists in the north gradually coming to terms with a government based on Dublin. This, of course, never came to pass, and the result of that extension -- of that persistent statelet in the north -- has been intractable conflict, and regrettable spasms of violence. 

If there's one critique I might offer of Killeen's history it's the ending: Killeen brings closure to the Revolution by focusing on the emergence of the Free State, and the victory of pro-Treaty groups. He stops the story in 1927. I did, though, wonder what comes next: because in 1927, the Free State was still beholden to the English crown. It was ten years later, I learned, that the Irish adopted a formal constitution, replacing the once that had been drafted in 1922 by way of negotiations with the British. And it was more than ten years after that, in 1949, that the Irish Republic itself was born, and that all remaining associations with the crown were severed. 

This story, too, seems part of the revolutionary era, and I wish that Killeen had included it in his history. Despite the critique, I remain thankful for Killeen's analysis: it has inspired further reading.