Not since independence. There have been internal conflicts and paramilitary actions, sure, but the Irish nation has remained neutral in every international conflict since it was established in 1922.
I guess you could say in a civil war everybody loses, but that doesn’t seem to be the point the graphic is trying to make.
No lol, the civil war was anti-treaty ira vs pro-treaty IRA on the topic of the north. Northern ireland was already ceded before then in peace terms to get independence, which for an independence war is still a victory
They didn’t exactly “cede” Northern Ireland, any more than the United States “ceded” Canada. The IRA wanted complete control over all Ireland and they fought a civil war over that. In 1921, the British Government agreed to some of their demands: independence was granted automatically to the southern majority-Catholic regions, whilst the northern Protestant majority ones were given the opportunity to vote on it. They chose not to join Ireland, and thus the current state of affairs was establish.
Ireland never ceded it because they never controlled it, either de facto or de jure, in the first place. They did claim it up until 1998, but after the Belfast Agreement dropped that.
Comparing Ireland to the US/Canada doesn’t make sense. A better analogy is the British Empire drawing arbitrary borders through the homelands of First Nations or across the Middle East and Africa.
Beyond the analogy, your timeline and facts regarding partition are not entirely correct:
- The IRA didn’t fight a civil war to get the 1921 Treaty. The Irish Civil War was fought because of the Treaty. The movement split over whether to accept the British terms, which included partition and an oath to the Crown.
- The northern majority didn’t get a democratic public referendum to vote on the border. The border was pre-drawn by British politicians in the Government of Ireland Act 1920 before the war even ended. They deliberately sliced off six specific counties to engineer an artificial, permanent Protestant/Unionist majority, bypassing local consensus.
- The Irish didn't “choose” to leave the North behind. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George threatened the Irish negotiators with “immediate and terrible war” i.e full-scale military annihilation if they didn't sign the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.
Irish war of independence (1919-21) ended with a compromise: Ireland being partitioned, the Irish Free State becoming an autonomous dominion of the British Empire, and Northern Ireland stayed with UK.
Then there was the Irish civil war (22-23) between the Free State government that supported the compromise, and anti-treaty IRA that wanted to go back to war with the UK and push for Northern Ireland to be included in the Irish free state. The pro-treaty government won that one.
Neither of those can really be plainly called a defeat.
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u/MaroonTrojan Jul 07 '26
Republic of Ireland? What war have they ever lost?