ABSTRACT

Historians generally view the Irish War of Independence as the first and largely unsuccessful experience for the British army in conducting modern counterinsurgency. This article argues that during the Interbellum the ‘Irish war’ became a starting point for the military thought about this type of conflict, although this did not become fully consolidated in the army’s thinking. Some important aspects of the British forces’ conduct in the ‘Irish war’ remained undervalued, not least because of the only official analysis of this conflict, ‘The Record of the Rebellion in Ireland’, was classified for a long time. It strongly challenges traditional and revisionist understanding of this conflict and its implications on the British way of counterinsurgency during the Interbellum. These contradictions between documentary evidence from archives and established methods of historical thinking, as well as correlations of archival material with our understanding of modern counterinsurgencies, will be contrasted and analysed in this article.

摘要

历史学家普遍认为爱尔兰独立战争是英国军队进行现代反叛乱的第一次，而且在很大程度上是不成功的经历。本文认为，在内战期间，“爱尔兰战争”成为军方思考此类冲突的起点，尽管这并未在军队的思维中完全巩固。英国军队在“爱尔兰战争”中的一些重要方面仍然被低估，尤其是因为对这场冲突的唯一官方分析，“爱尔兰叛乱记录”长期被列为机密。它强烈挑战了对这场冲突的传统和修正主义理解，以及它对内战期间英国反叛乱方式的影响。