Irish Revolution 1912-1923

"""Just after the Irish War for Independence, the British Army’s ‘Irish Command’ drafted an official history of their experiences and their understanding of that conflict entitled, ‘The Record of the Rebellion in Ireland, 1919–1921 and the part played by the army in dealing with it’. This four-volume history was largely an exercise in explaining why they lost, but was never released beyond the archives. Two of the four volumes have been published as four separate books.

This first volume of the original four examines the British army’s overall view of the war and has been edited to include what the original authors left out—material mentioned but not included in the original draft copies and details the authors got wrong, missed, or deliberately changed at the time.

This volume gives the Irish Command’s view of the conflict written by the men who fought it. Since it was originally written immediately after the Truce and Treaty, with the Civil War on going, it was an apology for the ‘lost’ war. Their frustration, anger, disgust is evident in the text and provides valuable insights to their actual views of what happened. In many respects, the first volume on operations represents the Irish Command’s justification for what was happening in front of them in 1922 as they prepared to leave forever."

9780716532200 Paper
9780716532194 Hard"

"everyone interested in the Anglo-Irish conflict will find this unique account worth reading." Charles Townshend, 8 March 2014, The Irish Times.

The Story of John Lafferty from Magilligan, Co. Derry, who fought in the GPO during the Easter Rising. Lafferty's story is typical of the post revolution northern IRA member - forced to emigrate due to a lack of opportunity in the new Northern Ireland state.

This paper is a short biographical sketch of Christopher 'Con' Butler a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising and member of the Irish Volunteers' F Company, 4th Battalion Dublin Brigade.

It is part of wider working project which aims to produce a similar portrait of each of the forty-two F Company men who were out during Easter Week 1916.

Accusations of academic fraud have been levelled at The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (1998), a brilliant, prize-winning monograph written by the Canadian scholar Peter Hart. The controversy turns on Hart’s depiction of Irish revolutionary violence, and in particular upon a chapter entitled ‘Taking it out on the Protestants’, which is in many respects the climax of the book.

This article aims to set the Peter Hart affair in a wider context by comparing it to two similar controversies over provocative monographs, one American and one Australian.  All three cases raise questions about professional ethics, methodology, and the use of evidence; all led to vendettas in which accusations of fabrication and dishonesty were pursued in the public sphere and rejected by most, though not all, academic historians.  In each case it has been assumed that the demonstration or allegation of specific factual errors invalidates a complex argument - which in reality depends on diverse insights and many, many, pieces of evidence.  The object of the article is not to enter the controversy over what actually happened in the ‘Bandon Valley massacre’ but to encourage a more comparative, theoretically-informed perspective on the debate.

A collection of personal and political papers accumulated by Capuchin friars from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The collection contains political papers covering the nationalist struggle for Independence including material relating to the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War

“We had a Mayfly of a Republic, all pitch and promise, but it quickly fell back into the water and carried away broken and dead, and we the worse for it all.” There were certainly revolutionaries fighting and being fought in North Mayo, during 1917-1923. Their political struggle was also driven by a deep hunger for land and social justice - unleashed by the violent collision between Republicans and the British (and later Free State) authorities. This book examines how a rural corner of the west of Ireland reacted, as the social order was severely threatened, during a unique period of modern Irish history - and whether the result was indeed a 'Revolution'...
[Introduction only available for download, but you can purchase a copy through mayobooks.ie or Amazon, or read online for free at the links below.]

It has become a commonplace to describe the period 1913 to 1923 in Ireland as a 'Revolution'. This working paper queries whether such a shorthand is altogether appropriate. Ten 'norms' of revolution are applied to the Irish case: '(1) State breakdown under pressure of international events; (2) The eruption of the masses into the political arena; (3) Class conflict; (4) Mutual radicalisation of revolution and reaction; (5) Moderation to radicalisation in leadership; (6) Coercion to create constituencies; (7) Purging of the state apparatus; (8) Significant transformation in the mode of production or at least property allocation; (9) The establishment of new norms so that the revolution is a foundational moment and a chasm exists with the past.' While it would be churlish to deny revolutionary aspects to the Irish experience it is perhaps better thought of as a "small international war".

The puzzle that is the Irish Revolution (1912-1923) is one which cannot be fully understood without a detailed examination of its constituent parts. Without a comprehensive study of the revolution as experienced at a local level, the revolution remains an unsolved historical puzzle.  The c. 450 interviews of former IRA Divisional Commandant, author, and intellectual, Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957) with veterans of said period provide illuminating insights into the manner in which the revolution unfolded in the localities, and its effect across the island of Ireland. Insights which are seldom found in other source material.
While conducting research for his memoir, O’Malley interviewed five veterans of the Irish Revolution who were either natives of, or active in County Wexford. These interviewees include notable figures such as Robert Brennan, Dr James and Mrs Máirín Ryan (née Cregan), Denis Allen, Thomas Brennan, as well as Mark Killilea, a Mayo native who was active in South Wexford. The range of topics discussed by the aforementioned interviewees cover a host of seminal events such as the 1918 bye-election in Wexford, the organisation and strength of same, the efforts of Irish republican diplomats to seek recognition of the Irish Republic, and a theme which is present in many of O’Malley’s interviews, the strength and influence of the IRB in the localities, with particular reference to the use of the organisation as a vehicle to drum up support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as well as the course of the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War in the county.

The Irish Civil War broke out when pro-Treaty forces opened fire on the Four Courts on June 28 1922.

As full-scale civil war developed in late June, the Republican campaign of destruction against the infrastructure of the nascent Provisional Government increased in its intensity.

Across the territory of the Free State, armed Republicans waged war against the nation’s rail network. In an attempt to bring the proto-Free State to a standstill, railway bridges and tracks were blown up, rails removed, locomotives derailed, rolling stock, signal cabins and even station buildings were destroyed.

Notwithstanding the colossal material damage incurred and the disruption of civilian daily life, the war on the railways pinned down Free State troops throughout the conflict, creating a frightfully tense atmosphere in which a routine journey could potentially have disastrous consequences.

This article examines an episode of the Civil War in County Wexford, an area which was by national standards a relatively quiescent county during the preceding War for Independence.

This paper looks at the evolution James Connolly's thought on the relationship between socialism and Irish nationalism, as reflected in the columns of the 'Workers Republic' newspaper between 1898 and 1903, and again between 1915 and 1916. It argues that his instincts and political priorities were primarily nationalist, based on his perceptions of Irish nationality and British imperialism.

In County Clare the Easter Rising of 1916 had little outward significance.  However, as historian Dr Tomás Mac Conmara argues, this must be understood in the context of a repressive political environment and a deeper reading of the political landscape, may present a far more rebellious inclination in the county.

The impact of the Irish Convention on the Labour movement was far greater than the impact of the Labour movement on the Convention. The acrimonious debate over participating in the Convention foreshadowed the split that would prevent the movement from being a decisive force in the Irish Revolution.

This article examines Evelyn Conlon’s short story “What Happens at Night,” published in Lines of Vision: Irish Writers on Art (2014), a beautifully illustrated anthology of new poems, essays, and short stories by a wide range of Irish writers – 56 in total, including John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Seamus Heaney, and Jennifer Johnston. The anthology was inspired by pieces in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. Novelist, short story writer, and essayist Conlon is the only contributor in the collection to engage with two works: Edwin Hayes’ An Emigrant Ship, Dublin Bay, Sunset (1853) and Sarah Purser’s A Lady Holding a Doll’s Rattle (1885). Conlon uses these two paintings as starting points to explore ideas about art, loss, women’s voices, dreams, change and memory. In engaging with two very different pieces of art, which Conlon nevertheless brings together, her literary response is wonderfully diverse in subject matter and tone. The purpose of this essay is to highlight her mediating role as writer, not only to explore multiple notions about what women have thought and may still think, but also to pay tribute to their mobilization of lives and memory through art.

This transcript is one of two interviews given by Slattery to former IRA commandant Ernie O'Malley. During the period from 1948-1954 O'Malley carried out c. 400 interviews across the country with former colleagues from the revolutionary period, concerning their experiences during said period. In many ways O'Malley's interview parallel the work conducted by the Bureau of Military History. However, O'Malley's unofficial remit gave him access to interviewees who declined offers, or were unapproached, by the Bureau. More significantly, unlike the Bureau interviews O'Malley's scope extended to the Civil War and beyond, providing a wealth of information replicated in few places elsewhere on the much contested event.

The Men Will Talk to Me is a collection of interviews conducted and recorded by famed Irish republican revolutionary Ernie O’Malley during the 1940s and 1950s. The interviews were carried out with survivors of the four Northern Divisions of the IRA, chief among them Frank Aiken, Peadar O’Donnell and Paddy McLogan, who offer fascinating insights into Ulster’s centrality in the War of Independence and the slide towards Civil War.

The title refers to the implicit trust that shadows these interviews, earned through Ernie O’Malley’s reputation as a fearsome military commander in the revolutionary movement – the veterans interviewed divulge details to O’Malley which they wouldn’t have disclosed to even their closest family members. Startlingly direct, the issues covered include the mobilization of the Dundalk Volunteers for the 1916 Rising, the events of Bloody Sunday (1920), the Belfast Pogroms, and the planning of historical escapes from the Curragh and Kilkenny Gaol.

The Men Will Talk to Me is an insightful and painstaking reflection of the horror of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War; in words resolute and faltering, the physical and psychological debts of the revolutionary mindset – those of hardened Pro- and Anti-Treaty veterans – are fiercely apparent.

http://irishacademicpress.ie/product/the-men-will-talk-to-me-ernie-omalleys-interviews-with-the-northern-divisions/

Two Irish republican women of the revolutionary period, Maud Gonne (1866–1953) and Ella Young (1867–1956), were lifelong friends, artists, feminists, and activists. Gonne was an adept community organiser, launching creative political protests in Dublin, visiting families experiencing eviction to draw international press attention to the plight of the rural poor, advocating for political prisoners, and organising fellow Dubliners in support of striking workers and hungry schoolchildren. Young travelled throughout Ireland, immersing herself in myth, folklore, and the Irish landscape. She taught children, created new religious organisations, and authored numerous books. Gonne was declared Ireland’s Joan of Arc, and, though she converted to Catholicism in 1903, her religion was a syncretic mix of Catholicism and Western esotericism. Friends described Young as a Druidess and she listed her religion in the 1911 census as Pagan. This transdisciplinary, micro-historical study centres the Gonne-Young friendship and explores the unique relationship between revolution and revelation in their lives and legacies. It illuminates how Gonne and Young adapted characteristics from Western esotericism and Irish myth and folklore to fight what their compatriot Constance Markievicz identified as the ‘double battle’ facing Irish women: the struggle against patriarchy and the British Empire

This essay examines the enlistment of southern Irish loyalists into the British Colonial Service during the Irish Revolution and aftermath. First, it assesses the revolution’s impact on their decisions to enlist, focussing on the way in which colonial service provided a convenient route out of Ireland for loyalists (Protestant and Catholic) unable or unwilling to remake their lives under the new dispensation. Secondly, it interrogates their loyalist credentials, arguing that while most were loyalist by birth or conviction, a significant minority had loyalty thrust upon them by circumstance. Predominately Catholics born outside the Irish Unionist tradition, they were unwillingly or unwittingly draped in the loyalist mantle despite their indifference or opposition to the loyalist cause. Finally, it examines enlistment in the 1930/40s, when the disproportionate Irish Protestant enlistment derived from a sociocultural communal identity steeped in imperial affinities, and a Colonial Service recruitment policy favouring Ireland’s former loyalist class.

This paper will explore the significance of photography in the political controversies generated by the Irish Civil War. This conflict, fought between those who accepted and those who rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty (which offered Ireland Dominion status in the British Empire) was a key moment in the development of an independent Irish state. Memories of the civil war remain traumatic, not least because of some of the grave atrocities committed during the conflict.

Approaches to studying the Irish Civil War have been predominately conservative, utilising high political analyses which focus on the personalities of the war’s generals and politicians. Only recently have historians, such as Gavin Foster [see The Irish Civil War and society (Basingstoke, 2015)], examined the conflict through the framework of social history. This paper will examine the Civil War, through photographs, a type of source that has generated very little interest in Irish historiography and has been relatively under-explored in military history and interdisciplinary studies of conflict. Photographs, nonetheless, provide an illuminating source-base with which we can examine the Irish Civil War. Due to the growth of cameras and photographs as consumer products in 1920s Ireland, photography had a significant social and political impact on the emergent Irish state. The presentation that accompanies this paper will therefore be rich in photographs and other visual images.

During the Civil War, outbreaks of military indiscipline, such as the Ballyseedy Massacre, were ‘grave matters’ which bordered on serious atrocities. Although photography had a number of political applications during the Civil War, this paper will focus on the significance of photography in combating negative perceptions of the pro-Treaty National Army. It will show, for instance, how photography constituted a vital part of the battle for ‘hearts and minds’ within the conflict and helped to project a ‘respectable’ ‘soldierly’ image of the National Army. It will also show how photography could be deployed subtly for surveillance purposes and ensure that the National Army followed internationally-recognised rules and standards of warfare.

Wars are vital processes in the formation of identities and memories, and the Irish Civil War was no exception. Some of the more serious atrocities committed continue to be traumatic and controversial, and remain a site of continued resentment in Ireland today. By utilising a methodology of ‘discourse analysis’ this paper will highlight the complexity of the relationship between the identities, memories and debates associated with conflict, and visual culture. I will thus close the paper with an examination of the implications of this methodology.

This paper thus offers a theoretically informed approach, grounded in ‘alternative’ sources, to a deeply controversial period in Irish history. The identities formed by the traumatic Irish Civil War remain bitterly strong today, and will be strengthened by the conflict’s centenary in five years time. Utilising visual sources allows us to deconstruct these identities further, and better understand the bitterness that military conflict generates.

It has been said of the Irish Revolution (1913-1923) that few if any towns, parishes, or villages remained untouched by the events of that tumultuous period. In this respect the district of Inchicore-Kilmainham was no different. In the early twentieth century the area and its constituents played host to a number of revolutionary events encompassing the social, political, and militaristic strands of the prevailing struggle. Several of the prevailing nationalist, cultural and revolutionary groupings were represented by branches in the district and its surrounding areas. The Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) had branches in both Inchicore and nearby Chapelizod, yet it was in the quaint village of the former where the nucleus of revolution was formed. The Irish Republican Brotherhood’s Wolfe Tone circle operated from McCann’s (Black Lion) public house in the village centre, whilst Sinn Féin, Na Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan, the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers all had active branches in the suburb. Many of those from the local area who took part in the Easter Rising and subsequent War for Independence shared cross-membership of the various organisations throughout the revolutionary era.

These closing reflections were presented at Writing the Irish Revolution: Counties in Perspective, a public symposium held at the DCU St Patrick’s Campus, Dublin, Ireland, on 25 January 2020. The symposium featured talks by contributors to the Irish Revolution series published by Four Courts Press. The closing reflections provide an overview of the symposium's proceedings.

Eoin MACNEILL (1867-1945) was the first academic historian of early medieval Ireland; he is frequently considered to be the founder of the discipline of early Irish history. He was also a prominent nationalist activist, a revolutionary, and a minister in the first Irish Free State government. This paper will consider the shared inspirations for MACNEILL the politician and MACNEILL the scholar. In particular, it will focus on MACNEILL's belief that the medieval past of Ireland was the making of its national character and the foundation of its right to independence from the British Empire. This brought him into conflict with the great unionist historian of Norman Ireland, Goddard Henry ORPEN. Their debate, revolving around contested pasts, proved to be troublesome for later generations of historians who were concerned to write an Irish history free of political bias.

NOTE: Available on open access from De Gruyter (click on the link https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110546316/9783110546316-010/9783110546316-010.xml). This preview contains only the first and last page of the publication.