The Irish Counter-revolution, 1921-1936: Treatyite Politics and Settlement in Independent Ireland

In 1912, Michael Collins argued that the Anglo-Irish treaty offered nationalists the freedom to achieve freedom. In 1926, his successor Kevin O'Higgins went to London with a proposal to have the British monarch crowned king of a reunited Ireland. In 1933, General Eoin O'Duffy, leader of the Blueshirts, advocated a corporatist state on the Fascist Italian model, within a republican settlement. John Regan explains how such contrasting political views were reconciled within an evolving treatyite position. He argues that there existed elements of anti-democratic culture on both sides of the treaty divide, not least Collins himself. Based on ten year's research in archives in Ireland, Britain, France, and the USA, this is a radical reappraisal of the Irish Free State.