Origins: The Ulster Volunteer Force
The Ulster Volunteers were a unionist militia founded in 1912 to block Home Rule for Ireland. In 1913 they organised themselves into the Ulster Volunteer Force to give armed resistance to the prospective Third Home Rule Act (enacted in 1914). With a rival Irish Volunteers being formed by nationalists in response, outright civil war in Ireland seemed inevitable. However, the outbreak of the Great War intervened: the Act was put in abeyance until after what was expected to be a short war. The Ulster Volunteers contributed thirteen additional battalions to the Division.
Read more about this topic: 36th (Ulster) Division
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