Anglo-Irish Treaty

Signed in London in the early hours of 6 December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty ended the Irish War of Independence and created the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. It gave most of Ireland far more autonomy than earlier Home Rule plans, but it kept the British monarch as head of state and allowed Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. The bitter division it caused among Irish nationalists led directly to the Irish Civil War.

A truce in July 1921 halted the fighting. Éamon de Valera, the leader of the self-declared Irish Republic, met the British prime minister David Lloyd George four times in London that month, and Lloyd George sent proposals on 20 July that broadly resembled the eventual settlement. Weeks of correspondence followed over whether Britain was dealing with a sovereign state, which Lloyd George refused to accept. Talks finally opened in London on 11 October, framed as an inquiry into how Ireland's link with the empire could be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.

De Valera, now president of the Republic, chose not to go. The Irish delegation was led by Arthur Griffith, with Michael Collins, Robert Barton, Eamonn Duggan and George Gavan Duffy, and Erskine Childers as a secretary. They were described as plenipotentiaries, but their instructions required them to refer the full text of any treaty to the cabinet in Dublin before signing. The British team included Lloyd George, Austen Chamberlain, Lord Birkenhead and Winston Churchill. After two weeks of formal sessions, the real bargaining moved to smaller meetings, usually with Griffith and Collins facing two British ministers.

By late November it was clear to all sides that a united 32-county republic was not on offer, and the remaining disputes centred on the oath to the Crown, defence, trade and the north. The British conceded changes to the oath's wording and added a boundary commission. Collins later said that Lloyd George had threatened "terrible and immediate war" if the delegates did not sign at once. They signed in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street soon after 2 a.m. on 6 December without first consulting Dublin.

Crown forces would leave most of Ireland, and the Irish Free State would have the same standing as Canada. The king would be represented by a governor-general, and members of the new parliament would swear allegiance to the Free State's constitution and fidelity to the king. Northern Ireland, created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, could opt out, as its parliament did, and a boundary commission would then settle the border. Britain kept several naval bases, the Treaty Ports, and the Free State took on a share of the United Kingdom's debt.

De Valera denounced the treaty on 8 December, and the Dáil cabinet backed it by only four votes to three. Opponents objected above all to dominion status and the oath, and some also to partition. After long and often bitter debates, the Dáil approved the treaty on 7 January 1922 by 64 votes to 57, while the British House of Commons had approved it on 16 December 1921 by 401 to 58. The anti-treaty minority, led by de Valera, refused to accept the result, and a provisional government chaired by Collins took over.

The split erupted into civil war in 1922, which the pro-treaty side won in 1923. Griffith died in August 1922, and Collins was killed ten days later in an ambush by anti-treaty republicans at Béal na Bláth. The Irish Free State formally came into being on 6 December 1922. After the Statute of Westminster loosened imperial ties, the Free State removed the treaty's provisions on the monarch, the governor-general and the treaty's legal supremacy during the 1930s, bearing out Collins's claim that the settlement offered "the freedom to achieve freedom". The modern state is Ireland.

Our 1920 map shows Ireland still within the United Kingdom, while our 1930 map shows the Irish Free State separate from Northern Ireland.