Free Stater, or pro-Treatyite, were terms, often used by opponents, to describe those in Ireland who supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 that led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The pro-Treaty side included members of the Old IRA who had fought the British during the recent Irish War of Independence. Led by Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy, it soon became the nucleus of the new (regular) Irish National Army that overcame their anti-Treaty IRA opponents during the often-bitter Irish Civil War of 1922–1923.
The term is sometimes heard anachronistically in Northern Ireland for anyone from the Republic of Ireland, occasionally as a pejorative term when used to refer to partitionists.
See also
References
- Knirck, Jason K. (2006). Imagining Ireland's Independence: The Debates Over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 151. ISBN 9780742541481. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
- Jackson, Alvin (2014). The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 649. ISBN 9780199549344. Retrieved 12 May 2016.
- McLaughlin, Robert (2013-01-01). "Chapter 6: Irish-Canadian Nationalists: Free Staters and Republicans, 1922-1925". Irish Canadian Conflict and the Struggle for Irish Independence, 1912-1925. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-1097-2.
- Reid, Bryonie; Graham, Brian; Nash, Catherine (2013). Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. p. 65. ISBN 9781409466741. Retrieved 12 May 2016.