Irish Volunteers (18th century)

The Volunteers (also known as the Irish Volunteers) were militia units raised by local initiative in Ireland in 1778. Their original purpose was to guard against invasion and to preserve law and order after much of the Irish Army was sent to fight abroad as part of the American War of Independence and the Dublin Castle administration failed to expand the militia.

Taking advantage of the Parliament of Great Britain's preoccupation with the American War of Independence, the Volunteers were able to pressure them into conceding legislative independence to the Parliament of Ireland. Members of the Belfast Volunteers laid the foundations for the establishment of the Society of United Irishmen. The majority of the Volunteers, however, were unionists, and later helped to suppress the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

According to historian Thomas Bartlett, the Volunteers launched the paramilitary tradition in the politics of Ireland, which, whether nationalist or unionist, has continued to shape Irish political activity with the ethos of "the force of argument had been trumped by the argument of force". Irish republicanism an offspring of the Volunteers of 1782, owes much to influences of both the American and French revolutions.