A fateful weekend in 1921: at the crux of negotiations for an Anglo-Irish Treaty and an independent Irish parliament

This article highlights the stressful logistics of final negotiations for the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, a treaty that both ended the Irish war of independence (1919–21) and authorized the creation of the Irish Free State (1922). The treaty also confirmed a new international border which is still problematic today (not least in respect to the United Kingdom's decision to exit the European Union). Caught between dissidents in Dublin and experienced British ministerial negotiators in London, the ostensible plenipotentiaries of an Irish revolutionary government were obliged to rush back by rail and boat on a fraught mission to Ireland and then return immediately to London for final negotiations. The article lays bare the circumstances of that fateful weekend of 2-4 December 1921, two days after which the Irish team in London signed a controversial document that was to be contested in a civil war between different groups of Irish nationalists in 1922. The author argues that logistical pressures cannot be divorced from political tensions bearing down on negotiators.