the IRA lay deeply embedded in the centuries-old struggle of Irish Catholics and some Protestants to break the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy and to achieve independence from Great Britain. According to Coogan, "a tradition of guerrilla warfare entered into Irish folklore to emerge finally with a degree of success in the twentieth century" (4). The IRA's immediate precursor was the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) founded in 1858. Other movements had staged abortive rebellions which were suppressed by the British, including the 1798 and 1848 uprisings, led, respectively, by the United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders. Another rising planned by the IRB fizzled in 1867, forcing the IRB underground. Meanwhile, efforts by Irish Parliamentary nationalists with the support of William Gladstone's Liberal Party to achieve Home Rule failed because of the determined opposition of the Ulster Protestant Unionists in alliance with the British Tory party.
Reconstituted and reorganized in the late 1900s into a secret military arm and an open political party, Sinn Fein, the IRB was "the core of the Easter [1916 Dublin] Rising and provided the guerrillas of the [Black and] Tan War" of 1918-1921 (Bell 26). According to Bell, the uprising lacked broad public support, "but the Easter sacrifice [was] authenticated by British firing squads" (31). The IRB, renamed the IRA, with the support of some labor elements, the portion of the Irish Volunteer Force which refused to fight for the British in France and other republicans, led the final fight for independence, resulting in the December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was narrowly approved by the new Irish Parliament, or Dail.
Even though Michael Collins, the leader of the IRA, Arthur Griffith for Sinn Fein, and other nationalists negotiated that treaty, significant elements of the IRA refused to accept the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown. They also opposed, less vociferously at the time...