Shahmima Akhtar and Edward Madigan of Royal Holloway's Department of History joined Heather Jones (UCL), Darragh Gannon (UCD), and Alvin Jackson (Edinburgh) in a fascinating discussion on this pivotal moment in British and Irish history. The event was organised by Edward Madigan and Darragh Gannon and Royal Holloway's Head of Humanities, Giuliana Pieri, and historians Sarah Ansari, Selena Daly and Stella Moss were also in attendance.

History staff at the Irish Embassy in London

Royal Holloway historians were well represented at a recent event at the Irish Embassy in London to mark the centenary of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In October 1921, in the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence, a team of representatives of the Irish republican movement arrived in London to negotiate a post-conflict settlement with their British counterparts. Over the following two months, they thrashed out the terms of what would become the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The terms of the treaty, which was signed in December and ratified in Ireland the following year, reinforced the recent partition of the island and granted the newly established Irish Free State dominion status rather than total sovereignty as a republic. Passionate disagreement over the settlement among republicans would lead to a bitter civil war in Ireland and decades of political and cultural rancour and distrust. The treaty also led to the break-up of the United Kingdom and saw the withdrawal of the British forces from most of the island for the first time in centuries.