Documents on Irish foreign policy - Ronan Fanning

'Volume I' of the 'Documents on Irish Foreign Policy' series is a documentary history of the forging of Irish foreign policy and the Irish diplomatic service amid the backdrop of a bloody civil war. It begins on 21 January 1919 with the opening of the First Dil (parliament) in Dublin and the publication of the Irish Declaration of Independence. It closes on 6 December 1922, the date of the founding of the Irish Free State, one year after the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed. The intervening years covered in this volume were turbulent: a bitter political and military clash in Ireland, the British partition of the island into Northern and Southern Ireland in 1920, 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 a civil war which began in June 1922 and ended in May 1923. These years also saw the birth, near death and re-birth of the Irish Department of External (now Foreign) Affairs, where these foundational documents were written into history. The volume includes previously unseen letters from Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Eamon de Valera; confidential despatches and political reports from Irish diplomats, including accounts of the fundraising activities of Eamon de Valera and Harry Boland in America. It is indispensable to historians of modern Ireland.