HISTORY SINCE PARTITION

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified by the Dáil in January 1922 by a vote of 64 - 57. The minority refused to accept the result and this resulted in the Irish Civil War, which lasted until 1923. On 6 December 1922, in the middle of the Civil War, the Irish Free State came into being. During its early years the new state was governed by the victors of the Civil War. However, in the 1930s Fianna Fáil, the party of the opponents of the treaty, was elected into government. The party proposed, and the electorate accepted in a referendum in 1937, a new constitution which renamed the state "Éire or in the English language, Ireland" (article 4 of the Constitution).
The state was neutral during World War II, which was known internally as The Emergency. It offered some assistance to the Allies, especially in Northern Ireland. It is estimated[60] that around 50,000 volunteers from Éire/Ireland joined the British armed forces during the Second World War. In 1949, Ireland declared itself to be a republic.

Ireland experienced large-scale emigration in the 1950s and again in the 1980s. From 1987 the economy improved and the 1990s saw the beginning of unprecedented economic success, in a phenomenon known as the "Celtic Tiger".[61] By 2007 it had become the fifth richest country (in terms of GDP per capita) in the world, and the second richest in the European Union, moving from being a net recipient of the budget to becoming a net contributor during the next budget round (2007–13), and from a country of net emigration to one of net immigration. In October 2006, there were talks between Ireland and the U.S. to negotiate a new immigration policy between the two countries, in response to the growth of the Irish economy and desire of many U.S. citizens who sought to move to Ireland for work.[62]