Anglo-Irish people

Anglo-Irish (Irish: Angla-Éireannach) was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were mostly the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy. They mostly belonged to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until 1871, or to a lesser extent one of the English dissenting churches, such as the Methodist church. Its members tended to follow English practices in matters of culture, science, law, agriculture and politics. Many became eminent as administrators in the British Empire and as senior army and naval officers.

The term is not usually applied to Presbyterians in the province of Ulster, whose ancestry is mostly Scottish, rather than English or Irish, and who are sometimes identified as "Ulster-Scots".

Anglo-Irish social class

The term "Anglo-Irish" is often applied to the members of the Church of Ireland who made up the professional and landed class in Ireland from the 17th century up to the time of Irish independence in the 20th century. In the course of the 17th century, this Anglo-Irish landed class replaced the Gaelic Irish and Old English aristocracies as the ruling class in Ireland. They were also referred to as "New English" to distinguish them from the "Old English" who descended from the medieval Hiberno-Norman settlers. A larger but less socially prominent element of the Protestant Irish population were the immigrant French Huguenots and the English and Scottish dissidents who settled in Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries, many of whom later emigrated to the American colonies.

Irish

Irish may refer to :

See also

Anglo-Irish Treaty

The Anglo-Irish Treaty (Irish: An Conradh Angla-Éireannach), commonly known as The Treaty and officially the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was an agreement between the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Irish representatives that concluded the Irish War of Independence. It provided for the establishment of the Irish Free State within a year as a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations (the first use by the UK government of this term, rather than "British Empire", in an official document). It also provided Northern Ireland, which had been created by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, an option to opt out of the Irish Free State, which it exercised.

The agreement was signed in London on 6 December 1921, by representatives of the British government (which included Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who was head of the British delegates) and Irish representatives including Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith. The Irish representatives regarded themselves as having plenipotentiary status (negotiators empowered to sign a treaty without reference back to their superiors) acting on behalf of the Irish Republic though this was never accepted by the British government. As required by its terms, the agreement was ratified by the members elected to sit in the House of Commons of Southern Ireland and the British Parliament. In that sense it could be regarded as a treaty but it was not between two states. Dáil Éireann (the legislative assembly for the de facto Irish Republic) also ratified the treaty. Though the treaty was narrowly ratified, the split led to the Irish Civil War, which was ultimately won by the pro-treaty side.

Irish Civil War

The Irish Civil War (Irish: Cogadh Cathartha na hÉireann; 28 June 1922 – 24 May 1923) followed the Irish War of Independence and accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State, an entity independent from the United Kingdom but within the British Empire.

The conflict was waged between two opposing groups, Irish republicans and Irish nationalists over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The forces of the Provisional Government (which became the Free State in December 1922) supported the Treaty, while the Republican opposition saw it as a betrayal of the Irish Republic (which had been proclaimed during the Easter Rising). Many of those who fought in the conflict had been members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the War of Independence.

The Civil War was won by the Free State forces, which were heavily armed with weapons provided by the British Government. The conflict may have claimed more lives than the War of Independence that preceded it, and left Irish society divided and embittered for generations. Today, two of the main political parties in the Republic of Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are direct descendants of the opposing sides of the war.