Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Volume 1

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy Volume I, 1919 -1922 (Dublin, 1998)
A project of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Royal Irish Academy.

About Volume I
This volume is a documentary history of the development of Irish foreign policy and the Irish diplomatic service from 21 January 1919 to 6 December 1922. With a few exceptions, none of the documents in this volume have ever appeared in print before. The Department of Foreign Affairs documents in the National Archives of Ireland have been made available to researchers only since January 1991.
The opening date of the volume, 21 January 1919, marks the opening of the First Dáil (parliament) in the Mansion House in Dublin and publication of the Irish Declaration of Independence. 6 December 1922, the date on which the volume concludes, marks the official birth of the Irish Free State, one year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London on 6 December 1921.
The four years between 1919 and 1922 that are covered in this volume saw a political and military conflict within Ireland against British rule, the British partition of the island into Northern and Southern Ireland through the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, a negotiated settlement giving Southern Ireland dominion status through the December 1921 Treaty, and the emergence of the Irish Free State amid the violence of civil war which began in June 1922 and ended in May 1923. These years also saw the birth, near death and re-birth, amid the chaos of civil war, of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish diplomatic service.

Excerpts from DIFP volume I

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