The discourse on the Irish civil war has seen significant growth over the past two decades; the pioneering work of Michael Hopkinson in Green against green (1988) has been followed by a series of articles, books and theses on various aspects of the Irish civil war. However, the overall emphasis upon the IRA has been disproportionate when compared to the dearth of work done on the Irish military tradition in the National Army during the Revolutionary period. The consensus understanding of the Irish civil war, in that such a consensus exists, is that of a binary divide that occurred within the Irish revolutionary movement after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the creation of a new Irish Free State. In the Irish context, the sides involved in the Irish civil war are often broken down into pro- and anti-Treaty factions which ostensibly divided over the issue of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and the type of state to be created; Republic vs. Free State. This popular narrative, with some variations, is largely accepted within the historical discourse on the Irish civil war. Hopkinson is one of very few academics to attempt to widen this aspect of the discourse, and even his research stops short of redefining the historical understanding of the Irish civil war. Instead of viewing the conflict as between two large amorphous factions, this thesis posits that the conflict should be viewed as one faction, the pro-Treaty forces attempting to create a new state, with the pro-Treaty National Army being utilised to achieve this outcome.