Irish War of Independence war movies

Since 1801 Kingdom of Ireland had joined the Kingdom of Great Britain to create a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which formally created the union between the two islands, but the fact that the agreements was reached partly through bribery or other arrangements by British Secret Service Office left a lot of people bitter about the whole idea of union. During the industrial revolution Ireland was seen by the British mainly as source of agricultural produce, thus the disproportion between the two countries was more and more visible and lead to Irish nationalism movements that rose to power during 19th century and there were several attempts to break the union and return to independence. In April 1916 Irish republicans launched an armed uprising, which was suppressed after only one week, but brutality of the British forces gave the independence movement even more volunteers than before. In December 1918 republican party Sinn Fein won the election and month later they formed a government that declared independence from Britain, which was the beginning of the war.

The character of the war was rather unusual for the era and had more in common with the British war in colonies than open conflict between states - Irish Republican Army (IRA) was formed of volunteers that often lacked the experience and weapons, so their operations were limited to attacks on British patrols and small barracks in order to gain the weapons and force British to withdraw from the island. With enemy using partisan tactics British could not make much use of their military advantage (especially since they tried to use the local forces rather than bring the regular army to the region), so they mostly tried to discourage the IRA by repressions against civilians. In escalating violence over 1000 people were killed on both sides and around 5000 were interned. On 11 July 1921, after over 2 years of conflict, both sides signed truce, which ended the war with Ireland regaining the independence from United Kingdom as a result, but the agreement did not reached all the targets for Irish nationalists (f.e. Northern Ireland being still part of United Kingdom), which soon lead to Irish Civil War.

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The Wind That Shakes the Barley 2006

In 1919 the oppression of Irish nationalists reaches new heights and is the sparkle that starts the local revolt against British. But even the success in the conflict does not stop the erosion of the Irish society.