Irish War Research Articles

Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett by Nels Pearson

<i>Irish Cosmopolitanism: Location and Dislocation in James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett</i> by Nels Pearson

Campaign Journals of the Elizabethan Irish Wars. David Edwards, ed. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2014. xxi + 310 pp. €40.

Campaign Journals of the Elizabethan Irish Wars. David Edwards, ed. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2014. xxi + 310 pp. €40.

The Irish revolution, 1916–1923. By Marie Coleman. Pp 169. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 2014. £18.99 paperback. - The I.R.A. on film and television: a history. By Mark Connelly. Pp 273. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &amp; Company, Inc. 2012. $55 softcover. - Revolutionary Ireland, 1912–25. By Robert Lynch. Pp 182. London: Bloomsbury. 2015. $34.95 paperback. - Guerrilla warfare in the Irish War of

The Irish revolution, 1916–1923. By Marie Coleman. Pp 169. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 2014. £18.99 paperback. - The I.R.A. on film and television: a history. By Mark Connelly. Pp 273. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &amp; Company, Inc. 2012. $55 softcover. - Revolutionary Ireland, 1912–25. By Robert Lynch. Pp 182. London: Bloomsbury. 2015. $34.95 paperback. - Guerrilla warfare in the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921. By Joseph McKenna. Pp 300. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &amp; Company, Inc. 2011. $65 softcover. - Truce: murder, myth and the last days of the Irish War of Independence. By Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc. Pp 384. Cork: Mercier Press. 2016. €17.99 paperback. - Volume 40 Issue 158

Pedestrian perils on the road to Irish identity in Joyce and Bowen

This article identifies and explores some major facets of an important theme in the works of James Joyce and Elizabeth Bowen that adds to our understanding of the complex ways in which both writers construed Irishness. Striving to acknowledge what they saw as the value of walking without embracing its English nationalist or Romantic associations, these modernists depict walking in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland as a beneficial means of expressing and experimenting with different permutations of Irish identity, largely because of the opportunity it presented to negotiate a variety of dangers. By emphasising walking’s taxing and often perilous material realities, Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses and Bowen in Seven Winters and The Last September recast the idealised English Romantic view of walking as a darker and more menacing activity that nevertheless offers a useful strategy for articulating fluctuating conceptions of Irishness during the tumultuous period lasting roughly from the death of Parnell through to the Irish War of Independence.

‘The Magna Hibernia’: Irish Diplomatic Missions to South Africa, 1921

In 1921, during the height of the Irish War of Independence, two Irish diplomats were sent to South Africa as representatives of the Provisional government or Dail Éireann. Colonel Maurice Moore and Patrick Little's missions coincided with the zenith of the Irish Republican Association of South Africa (IRASA), a group who had more than 13 branches located throughout the country. The primary motive behind the visit of the Irish envoys was to influence the stance which Jan Christian Smuts would take at the Imperial Conference in London in June of that year. While on the one hand Moore would open up discussions with Smuts and other South African politicians, Little on the other, toured the country informing the Irish diaspora of the situation in Ireland. Moreover, his presence and speeches also pushed the so-called ‘Irish question’ into South African affairs, if only briefly. Determined to maintain his influence internally, Smuts responded by undertaking a personal visit to Dublin and actively played a role in the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations. The visit of Moore and Little, and by extension the role of the IRASA and Smuts, offers a transnational perspective of the Irish revolution.

Living on the Hyphen: How Elizabeth Bowen Portrays the Predicament of the Anglo-Irish in The Last September

This paper explores the portrayal of the Anglo-Irish in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September. Bowen writes from personal experience with a strong sense of irony to explore the relationships of this declining class and their relationship with their adopted homeland. As an inhabitant of an Anglo-Irish Big House, Bowen writes from the perspective of the Anglo–Irish but views their deteriorating existence with the clarity of one far more removed. Bowen’s life mirrors that of the protagonist Lois, struggling with issues of identity and escape from an antiquated society. The essay notes the effects this lack of identity has on the characters in the novel and the Anglo–Irish class as a whole at the time it is set. Issues of detachment from land and heritage, lack of communication and relationships between characters, and the ignorance of a middle and upper social class, the Anglo-Irish, to understand their deterioration during the years of the Irish War of Independence are also explored.

Which Side Are You On? Political Violence and Partition in Ireland 1920-1921

Analysis of a quasi-natural experiment produced by the circumstances of the 1921 partition of Ireland reveals that although partition did significantly decrease violence against civilians on Northern Ireland's side of the border as compared to the Irish Free State side, violence against civilians in the border areas as a whole increased. Using an original dataset of political violence incidents during the Irish War of Independence, this paper offers the first causally identified micro-level examination of the dynamics of political violence and partition in that conflict.

Book Review: Ground Truths: British Army Operations in the Irish War of Independence by W.H. Kautt

Book Review: <i>Ground Truths: British Army Operations in the Irish War of Independence</i> by W.H. Kautt

For God and Ireland: The Fight for Moral Superiority in Ireland 1922–1932 by M. P. McCabe (review)

For God and Irelanet The Fight for Moral Superiority in Ireland 1922-1932. By M. P. McCabe. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Distrib. ISBS, Portland, OR. 2013. Pp. x, 310. $89.95. ISBN 978-0-7165-3162-3.)During an ineloquent but pious contribution to the parliament of the Irish Free State in June 1929, Fianna Fail's SeanT. O' Kelly asserted, We of the Fianna Fail party believe that we speak for the big body of Catholic opinion. I think I could say, without qualification of any kind, that we represent the big element of Catholicity (p. 244). The party he spoke for was then just three years old, and its parliamentarians had taken their seats only two years previously, but during the glorious centenary of Catholic emancipation, they were not going to be found wanting in expressions of the ferocity of their faith. Their holy declarations also fulfilled another purpose; just six years after the end of the civil war, it was necessary to begin the process of repositioning Irish republicans who had fought considerable verbal battles with Catholic bishops during that conflict.This book seeks to document and analyze these tensions in the first decade of the Free State's existence. The book's title is well chosen, given the frequency with which religious and spiritual images and words were used by republicans to justify their opposition to the compromise treaty signed with Britain to end the Irish war of independence in December 1921 and validate their civil war actions from 1922 to 1923.The author, writing his first book, succeeds in locating and unearthing fascinating private and public utterances and correspondence to underline the intensity of the religious and political battles being fought and the intricacies of ham-fisted and naive Vatican interventions in Irish politics during this period. But the book is severely undermined by uncertainty on the author's part about the craft of the historian. Instead of presenting his evidence with clarity as a worthy end in itself, he suffuses his narrative with unnecessary, clumsy assertions and generalizations and an immature judgmental tone.His contention is that there has been a tendency to grant the Catholic Church and especially its leaders, a large measure of amnesty regarding political activity during this period, and he refers bitingly to authors who have restricted themselves to abiding by the decisions of the [Catholic] Hierarchy (pp. 4-8), a dubious and unfair dismissal of the work of a previous generation of historians, produced when archival access was extremely limited, but work that has nonetheless paved the way for his. He favors histories that are genuinely objective and critical of the Catholic Church in its involvement in Ireland beyond the scope of religion (p. 6). There is a basic contradiction inherent in this assertion; it should not be the role of the historian to conduct research with such an agenda; what is required is presentation and analysis of the evidence as opposed to adopting a skewed and confrontational approach to the historic subject matter, fuelled by contemporary values. …

The Black &amp; Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence by D. M. Leeson (review)

Reviewed by: The Black & Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence by D. M. Leeson Peter James Cottrell Leeson, D. M. – The Black & Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 318. The cycle of political violence begun on Easter Sunday 1916 which culminated in the creation of an independent Irish state in 1922 can still stir strong emotions and whilst memoires, histories and novels emphasising a Nationalist perspective abound; relatively little exists giving alternative perspectives. Even less has been published dealing specifically with the infamous ‘Black and Tans’ and ‘Auxies’ whose activities, despite the passage of ninety-three years, have come to rival arguments over British culpability for the Great Famine (1845-52) as “…the most emotive subject in modern Irish history…”(p.157). In seeking write about these controversial groups and scrape away some of the patina of myth, even after the passage of so much time, Leeson inevitably strays onto dangerous ground. It is, however, a foray to be welcomed. So, who were the eponymous ‘Black and Tans’? Such is their infamy in parts of Ireland that even one of the names used for this period is ‘The Tan War’ and the colours of the ribbon of the campaign medal issued to the conflict’s IRA veterans were inspired by them. Were they really the violent scrapings of English gaols; traumatised flotsam of the Great War; foreign freebooters wreaking genocidal [End Page 822] havoc across Ireland or does the truth lie elsewhere? By going back to primary sources, Leeson tries to find out. Ultimately, two things hamper his investigation. The first is that in reality, there was no such organisation as the ‘Black and Tans’, instead the term was coined by an unknown Limerick wag to describe newly enlisted policemen at a time when kit shortages reduced the RIC to making up deficiencies by issuing surplus Army clothing. The second is that nationalist folklore conflates the memory of these men with the ex-officers of the Auxiliary Division—the ‘Auxies’—who joined as Temporary Cadets on the princely sum of £1 per day, plus allowances. Whilst the men remembered as ‘Tans’ were, in reality men who had joined the RIC on short term contracts as Temporary Constables working alongside regular policemen the ‘Auxies’ were altogether different. Never fully integrated into the RIC, this expensive and well paid force was raised to “…wage a war to the death…” (p. 214) against the IRA’s guerrillas. As very little has been published that deals specifically with either group Leeson’s book inevitably adds to the historiography of the conflict; drawing together information that appears elsewhere as well as original research and making it available to the general reader. By focusing on the men who joined the RIC in October 1920, at the height of the War of Independence, Leeson is able to shed light on the sort of men they were. Unsurprisingly, the majority had seen service in the recently ended world war; most were also working class men in their twenties making them almost a decade or so younger than the average Irish career policeman. Whilst the RIC had never been an exclusively Irish force it did not actively recruited outside of Ireland until January 1920 as a response to losses caused by the IRA. Undoubtedly, the influx of thousands of ‘British’ recruits had an impact on the nature of, what had been, an overwhelmingly Irish Catholic constabulary but focusing on what Leeson terms the ‘British’ police he not only sidesteps the internecine nature of the conflict but also ignores one of the most fascinating, and indeed controversial aspects of both the ‘Tans’ and ‘Auxies’. Many of them were Irish. Leeson offers no explanation of why men like Cully Tynan O’Mahoney—father of Irish comedian Dave Allen, doyen of 1930s Dublin’s literary society and sometime managing editor of the Irish Times—joined the Auxiliaries, glossing over the fact the only ‘Tan’ to be executed by the British for murder was also a Dubliner, William Mitchell (Pp.199-200). They were not alone and by 1921 almost a quarter of those who joined...

Eric B. Song Dominion Undeserved: Milton and the Perils of CreationDominion Undeserved: Milton and the Perils of Creation. Eric B. Song. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Pp. vii+215.

<i>Eric B. Song</i> Dominion Undeserved: Milton and the Perils of Creation<i>Dominion Undeserved: Milton and the Perils of Creation</i>. Eric B. Song. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Pp. vii+215.

The Irish Catholic clergy, Stuart sovereignty and the 1650 appeal to the Duke of Lorraine

This article seeks to explore the wide range of Irish Catholic political thinking in the early modern period by looking at its role in shaping events at a moment of particular stress during the British and Irish wars of the mid-seventeenth century. The article focuses on the “Lorraine interlude” when most of Ireland’s Catholic leadership, guided by the clerical hierarchy, were willing to suspend Stuart sovereignty to ensure they received assistance from the Duke of Lorraine in the war against the parliamentarians. This episode revealed that the Irish Catholic attachment to the Stuarts was far from unquestioning. The ‘hidden transcript’ of Irish Catholic political thinking, shaped by the Irish Catholic clergy, intruded into the public sphere and revealed perceptions of faith, nation and state that historians have largely ignored because they do not fit the pre-existing historiographical model of what constituted Irish political thinking in the early modern period.

IRELAND’S SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 1899–1902

It has been estimated that around fifty thousand Irishmen fought during the South African War, many of whom were at the forefront of a number of key engagements, serving in Ireland’s thirteen infantry battalions and three cavalry regiments. Ireland’s Imperial connections were further reinforced by the country’s impressive civilian contribution to the war effort. At least thirty-three militia battalions were mobilised during the course of the war, with seven units being despatched to the front, thirteen companies attested for the Imperial Yeomanry, many civilian Irish nurses and doctors enrolled into the army medical services, and tens of thousands of pounds were raised through various Irish war charities. Notwithstanding the immense Irish military contribution and contemporary civilian interest in the war, very little modern research or public knowledge exists on the subject. The dearth in research is perhaps due to Irish Nationalist historiography and sensitivity during the twentieth century, which has arguably distorted our perspective of Ireland’s shared history with the British Empire. Therefore, it is the purpose of this article to present an alternative Ireland, which has largely been ignored, by discussing Ireland’s military contribution and experience during the course of the war. In addition, the article attempts to recall the Irish public’s active demonstration of Imperial support and highlights the relationship that existed between Ireland and the British Empire during the conflict

The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921 David Leeson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi+294 pp. £30 (hardback).

<b><i>The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921</i></b> David Leeson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi+294 pp. £30 (hardback).

Language revival and conflicting identities in the Irish Independent

An important feature of the Irish Independent newspaper at the turn of the twentieth century was its use of a bilingual platform for the promotion of the Irish language revival movement. Having pledged its “heartiest support … to the Irish Language and Industrial Revival Movements, as to every movement for the National and material regeneration of Ireland” in its first edition (Irish Independent, January 2, 1905), it was clear from the outset that the Irish Independent would foster the core values of nationalism, economic progress and cultural revival as promoted by the “Irish-Ireland” movement. However, the Irish Independent was also aware of its vital role as the harbinger of news and information within the realm of the British Empire. In the period immediately preceding political independence, against the backdrop of the First World War, the Irish War of Independence and the co-operation movement, the Irish Independent promoted the “Irish-Ireland” ideology and its related aims of language and cultural revival, while also functioning within the paradigms of the imperial regime. Through an analysis of both Irish and English language articles, along with bilingual advertisements, announcements and reports concerning the Irish-speaking districts, the role of women and the high moral tone of the nationalist movement, this article will explore the function of this bilingual forum as a voice for the emerging new Irish language community. Conflicting identities and cultural variances within the Irish Independent during this period mirror the framework created for nationalist identity, while also retaining cultural and economic links with the British Empire.

The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921. By D. M. Leeson.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xxii+294. $55.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921. By D. M. Leeson.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xxii+294. $55.00.Joost AugusteijnJoost AugusteijnLeiden University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 85, Number 4December 2013New Directions in Legal and Constitutional History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/672545 Views: 113Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Ernie O'Malley, William Shakespeare's Sonnets, and the Book as Closet Object

Preoccupations with secrecy, concealment, imposture, and hiding in plain view are vividly present in Ernie O'Malley's memoirs of the Irish War of Independence and the ensuing civil war, On Another Man's Wound (1936) and The Singing Flame (1978). These preoccupations are particularly manifest in O'Malley's treatment of books, which are the quintessential ‘closet objects’ in his work. This essay will consider the extent to which the book functions as a closet in O'Malley's accounts, asking what that entails for the queer readability of his own paired volumes? It pursues this through close readings of sequences where a text with massive queer resonances in Western culture – Shakespeare's Sonnets – is read in the ruins of Dublin's Four Courts in 1922 and, later, to a wounded, convalescing O'Malley in Portobello Barracks. What kind of work, this essay will ask, does the invocation of the Sonnets and their setting in scenarios of desperate, ruined and wounded homosocial adhesion, do in O'Malley's autobiographies? This essay hopes to participate in an inquiry into the extent to which queer drives are entrenched in, and endemic to, how Ireland has cast and reimagined the liberation and the civil war.

Exodus: The Emigration of Southern Irish Protestants During the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War

Exodus: The Emigration of Southern Irish Protestants During the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War

The Irish Wars: Laborer Feuds on Indiana's Canals and Railroads in the 1830s

The Irish Wars: Laborer Feuds on Indiana's Canals and Railroads in the 1830s

D. M. Leeson. The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 294. $55.00 (cloth).

D. M. Leeson. The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 294. $55.00 (cloth).