UNDERGRADUATE

OUTRAGES ON THE WOMEN OF IRELAND: SEXUAL AND
GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE COMMITTED BY CROWN
FORCES DURING THE ANGLO-IRISH WAR
Amy Reece*
Irish Studies Program
The armed conflict that followed the declaration of the new
Irish Republic in December 1918 was a bloody guerilla war
pitting Irish irregulars against the regular British Army
and the Royal Irish Constabulary. 1 The Irish Republican
Army (IRA), a name the insurgents called themselves, did
not have the ability to capture and hold large amounts of
territory. To make up for this shortfall, they created “flying
columns,” small, highly mobile groups employing guerrilla
tactics such as ambushes, raids, and sabotage. 2
noncombatant civilians, can unfortunately lead soldiers
to abuse civilians. The Anglo-Irish War, which is also
known as the Irish War of Independence, conformed to
this pattern. By viewing the conflict as an insurrection and
relying on police instead of soldiers to defeat it, the British
government relied upon men unprepared for such a
conflict. This unpreparedness led them to behave “in ways
that violate their preexisting moral and ethical standards.” 4
They fought “terror, as they saw it, with terror.” 5
The British forces were not used to this sort of military
campaign. They considered guerilla warfare illegitimate
and, therefore, not covered by the laws of war that
governed the First World War in which so many of them
had fought. In his chapter, “Just War and Guerilla War,”
Michael L. Gross explains that traditional armies believe
that guerilla armies “violate the principles of just war in
the most egregious way and leave state armies to wring
their hands in frustration and debate the price of violating
the same principles that their adversaries mockingly
ignore.” 3 This frustration, as well as the inability to
ascertain the difference between combatants and
Sexual violence, specifically rape, has long been both an
unintended consequence and a deliberate weapon of war.
In ethnic or nationalist conflicts, sexual violence often has
much to do with women as a living embodiment of their
nation or ethnic group. In Nationalism and Sexuality,
George Mosse explains that women are symbols and
guardians of the nation and its cultural traditions. Women
represent the purity and continuity of the nation; to violate
a woman is to violate the nation. Exploitation of women’s
place in the socio-cultural traditions of their community
by use of sexual violence creates an effective weapon of
war. Cynthia Enloe explains:
* This paper was prepared for History 390, the senior capstone, under the
direction of Professor Thomas Mockaitis.
1 Charles Townshend, “People’s War,” in The Oxford History of Modern
War, ed. Charles Townshend (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),
184-86.
2 Commandent General Tom Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland: A First Hand
Account of the Black and Tan War (1919-1921) (New York City: The Devin-
Adair Company, 1956).
3 Michael L. Gross, “Just War and Guerilla War,” in Just War: Authority,
Tradition, and Practice, ed. Anthony F. Lang, Cian O’Driscoll, and John
Williams (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 213.
If military strategists (and their civilian allies and
superiors) imagine that women provide the backbone
of the enemy’s culture, if they define women chiefly as
breeders, if they define women as men’s property, and
4 D.M. Leeson, The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the
Irish War of Independence, 1920-1921 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2011), 2.
5 Ibid.
86 CREATING KNOWLEDGE