Editing The Troubles (section)

=== 1912–1922 ===
{{Main|Partition of Ireland}}
[[File:Ulster Covenant.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|The ''[[Ulster Covenant]]'' was issued in protest against the [[Third Home Rule Bill]] in September 1912.]]
[[File:Easter Proclamation of 1916.png|thumb|upright=0.7|The ''[[Proclamation of the Irish Republic]]'' was issued during the [[Easter Rising]] of April 1916.]]
[[File:Irish Boundary Commission final report map (1925) - religious distribution.png|thumb|Irish Boundary Commission final report map (1925) shows religious distribution of the population. The green areas signify Catholic majority areas, while the red areas signify non-Catholic majority areas.]]

By the second decade of the 20th century, Home Rule, or limited Irish self-government, was on the brink of being conceded due to the agitation of the [[Irish Parliamentary Party]].
In response to the campaign for Home Rule which started in the 1870s, unionists, mostly Protestant and largely concentrated in Ulster, had resisted both self-government and independence for Ireland, fearing for their future in an overwhelmingly Catholic country dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1912, unionists led by [[Edward Carson]] signed the [[Ulster Covenant]] and pledged to resist Home Rule by force if necessary. To this end, they formed the paramilitary [[Ulster Volunteers|Ulster Volunteer Force]] (UVF).<ref name="coogan"/>

In response, nationalists led by [[Eoin MacNeill]] formed the [[Irish Volunteers]] in 1913, whose goal was to oppose the UVF and ensure enactment of the [[Third Home Rule Bill]] in the event of British or unionist refusal. The outbreak of the [[First World War]] in 1914, and [[Ireland and World War I|Ireland's involvement in the war]], temporarily averted possible civil war in Ireland and delayed the resolution of the question of Irish independence. Home Rule, although passed in the British Parliament with [[Royal Assent]], was suspended for the duration of the war.

The Irish Volunteers split, with a majority, known as the [[National Volunteers]], supporting the war effort, and some of them joining Irish regiments of the [[Kitchener's Army|New British Army]]. Many of those who stayed were radical nationalists, among them [[Irish Republican Brotherhood]] infiltrators. From these ranks came those who launched the [[Easter Rising]] in Dublin in 1916, led by [[Patrick Pearse]] and [[James Connolly]]. Two-and-a-half years after the executions of sixteen of the Rising's leaders, the separatist [[Sinn Féin]] party won the December 1918 [[1918 Irish general election|general election in Ireland]] with 47% of the vote and a majority of seats, and set up the 1919 [[First Dáil]] (Irish Parliament) in Dublin. Their victory was aided by the [[Conscription Crisis of 1918|threat of conscription for First World War service]]. The [[Irish War for Independence]] followed, leading to eventual independence in 1922 for the [[Irish Free State]], which comprised 26 of the 32 Irish counties. In [[Ulster]], particularly in the six counties which became [[Northern Ireland]], Sinn Féin fared relatively poorly in the 1918 election, and unionists won a majority.<ref name="coogan"/>

The [[Government of Ireland Act 1920]] partitioned the island of Ireland into two separate jurisdictions, [[Southern Ireland (1921–1922)|Southern Ireland]] and Northern Ireland, both devolved regions of the United Kingdom. This [[partition of Ireland]] was confirmed when the [[Parliament of Northern Ireland]] exercised its right in December 1922 under the [[Anglo-Irish Treaty]] of 1921 to opt out of the newly established Irish Free State.<ref name="Parliament">[https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199394/cmhansrd/1993-12-15/Debate-1.html Parliamentary debate] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101010094440/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199394/cmhansrd/1993-12-15/Debate-1.html |date=10 October 2010 }}: "The British government agree that it is for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively, to exercise their right of self-determination on the basis of [[Principle of consent|consent]], freely and concurrently given, North and South, to bring about a united Ireland, if that is their wish."</ref> A part of the treaty signed in 1922 mandated that a boundary commission would sit to decide where the frontier of the northern state would be in relation to its southern neighbour. After the [[Irish Civil War]] of 1922–1923, this part of the treaty was given less priority by the new Dublin government led by [[W. T. Cosgrave]], and was quietly dropped. As counties [[County Fermanagh|Fermanagh]] and [[County Tyrone|Tyrone]] and border areas of [[County Londonderry|Londonderry]], [[County Armagh|Armagh]], and Down were mainly nationalist, the [[Irish Boundary Commission]] could reduce Northern Ireland to four counties or fewer.<ref name="coogan"/> In October 1922, the Irish Free State government established the North-Eastern Boundary Bureau, a government office which by 1925 had prepared 56 boxes of files to argue its case for large areas of Northern Ireland to be transferred to the Free State.<ref>{{cite book | editor-last=Crowley | editor-first=John | editor-last2=Ó Drisceoil | editor-first2=Donal | editor-last3=Murphy | editor-first3=Michael | editor-last4=Borgonovo | editor-first4=John | editor-last5=Hogan | editor-first5=Nick | title=Atlas of the Irish Revolution | publisher = NYU Press | publication-place=New York | date=2017 | isbn=978-1-4798-3428-0 | oclc=1001466881 | page=830}}</ref>

Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, albeit under a separate system of government whereby it was given its own [[Parliament of Northern Ireland|parliament]] and [[devolved government]]. While this arrangement met the desires of unionists to remain part of the United Kingdom, nationalists largely viewed the partition of Ireland as an illegal and arbitrary division of the island against the will of the majority of its people. They argued that the Northern Ireland state was neither legitimate nor democratic, but created with a deliberately [[gerrymandered]] unionist majority. Catholics initially composed about 35% of its population.<ref name="familiesatwar">{{cite book|author=Peter Taylor|title=Families at War |publisher=BBC |date=1989 |page=[https://archive.org/details/familiesatwarvoi0000tayl/page/10 10]|isbn=978-0-563-20787-0|url=https://archive.org/details/familiesatwarvoi0000tayl/page/10}}</ref> A total of 557 people, mostly Catholics, were killed in political or sectarian violence from 1920 to 1922 in the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, both during and after the Irish War of Independence.<ref>{{cite book|last=English|first=Richard|author-link=Richard English|title=Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2003|pages=39–40|isbn=978-0-19-517753-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WxJutBLDxg0C&pg=PR3|access-date=3 October 2016|archive-date=20 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170420031341/https://books.google.com/books?id=WxJutBLDxg0C&pg=PR3|url-status=live}}</ref> The result was communal strife between Catholics and Protestants,<ref>{{cite web |title=CRESC Working Paper Series : Working Paper No. 122 |url=http://www.cresc.ac.uk/medialibrary/workingpapers/wp122.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170101170441/http://www.cresc.ac.uk/medialibrary/workingpapers/wp122.pdf |archive-date=1 January 2017 |access-date=3 October 2016 |website=Cresc.ac.uk}}</ref> with some historians describing this violence, especially that in [[Belfast]], as a [[pogrom]],<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/6318325 |title=Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogroms G.B. Kenna 1922 &#124; Niall Meehan |website=Academia.edu |date=1 January 1970 |access-date=3 October 2016 |last=Meehan |first=Niall}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/tit-for-tat-the-war-of-independence-in-the-northern-counties/ |title=History Ireland |publisher=History Ireland |access-date=3 October 2016 |date=4 March 2013 |archive-date=10 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161010211229/http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/tit-for-tat-the-war-of-independence-in-the-northern-counties/ |url-status=live}}</ref> although historian Peter Hart argues that the term is not appropriate given the reciprocity of violence in Northern Ireland. (see [[The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)]] and [[Bloody Sunday (1921)]]).<ref>{{cite book|author=Peter Hart|title=The I.R.A. at war, 1916–1923|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2003|pages=247, 251|isbn=978-0-19-925258-9}}</ref>