The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 [Paperback]

Peter Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0198208065 | ISBN-13: 978-0198208068

This book explores the lives, deaths, enemies, and victims of the most powerful guerrillas of twentieth-century Ireland: those of the Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923. Drawing on an unprecedented body of sources, including numerous interviews this is a uniquely intimate study of revolution, guerrilla war, and ethnic conflict.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Irish historians have written extensively about the 'Troubles' of 1916-23, but few have done so as masterfully or with as much originality as Hart. Nor have many writers shows, with as much skill and thoroughness, what the conflict was really like for those who experienced it firsthand....An illuminating, often gripping account that students of modern history, politics, and sociology will find immensely useful....Highly recommended."--Choice

About the Author

Peter Hart is at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198208065
• ISBN-13: 978-0198208068
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,127,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More questions than answers, September 30, 2005

By 

Ernest O'Malley "Ernest" (Cork, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Paperback)

Professor Hart is an industrious researcher and a good writer who is perhaps over attached to his thesis that the IRA fought a sectarian war during the Irish War of Independence 1919-21. So much so, he does not allow awkward contrary facts to disturb his narrative flow. The reader is left with the impression of a well crafted and well written study. But perhaps too well crafted. Reality does not have a linear flow. The story of the past, however, requires the imposition of narrative structure so that the reader is guided to the events and personages that the historian thinks relevant to the point being made. Professor Hart tells his story well, so well in fact that the substantive gaps in his story line took some time to emerge.

As the years go by more and more people are asking more and more questions about Professor Hart's methods. Irish historian Meda Ryan (Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter, Mercier Press 2003) has asked an important question: how was it that in The IRA and its Enemies Professor Hart interviewed a participant in the Kilmichael ambush of November 1920 some days after the last known survivor died in November 1989. She and others ask this and other questions of Professor Hart in History Ireland (March April to September October 2005, available on the web). In History Ireland, and in the Irish Political Review, another Irish historian, Brian Murphy, questioned Hart on clearly misleading presentation of evidence.

Professor Hart has not answered the questions, which are receiving increasing support from within the academic community of historians. The recent publication in paperback of a new edition of Meda Ryan's Tom Barry IRA Freedom Fighter (Mercier 2005) and the open clash between her and Professor Hart in History Ireland has set sparks flying in such a way as to make readers seek out both books anew. Increasingly opinion is coming down on the side of Meda Ryan's defence of the reputation of Tom Barry and the conduct of republican forces during the War of Independence. In doing so she has had to defend her own reputation from the assault upon it by Professor Hart (who is perhaps operating under the old adage that attack is the best form of defence). However, his recent attack on Ryan did not impress the neutral observer and this is reflected in the latest (Sept-Oct 2005) edition of History Ireland.

If you buy this book, buy Meda Ryan's Tom Barry IRA freedom Fighter (Mercier Press, Cork 2005) as well.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but misses the point, March 13, 2007

By 

Hanna Hagström "Sean Kenny" (Rep of Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Paperback)

I find Amazon's book description of "similar terrorist organisations" rather offensive and somewhat ignorant of a company that deals primarily in the commendable area of knowledge supply. The I.R.A of those years were given a direct mandate by the Irish electorate during the Dail elections of 1919 against an occupying force. It amazes me that this resistance army that was fighting for a democratic republic, elected in a democratic underground government is still so ignorantly called "terrorist". It is a word now used to describe insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon probably Iran, while British and American invading, occupying forces will be called "liberators."

17 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exploding the myth of 'the lads' ..., November 27, 2000

By 

Toby Joyce - See all my reviews

This review is from: The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Paperback)

'The lads on the hill' was how the local IRA battalion was known in my home area, and the affectionate terms 'the lads' or 'the boys' seems to have been prevalent throughout Ireland for the young guerillas who opposed British Rule in the period 1919-21, and the Irish Free State in 1922-23. This will become the classic work on how the mythos of 'the boys' was built, and as it explains the myth, it also (of course) destroys it. Hart shows it was the communal bonds of extended families, neighbours and parishes that sustained the IRA when repression forced many to leave to leave the movement in the 1918-19 period. The riots and repression by the RIC also gave these men the steel to begin killing 'outgroups' - at first the RIC, then the British Army, later Protestants, 'spies' and 'informers', many innocent. Hart's prose brings home the moral wasteland of many of the guerilla's activities. On both sides IRA and their opponents, Auxiliary policemen and 'Black and Tans' killed without hesitiation or discrimination. Hart could have explained more, I believe, the contradiction between a 'national' struggle, and the small community versus metropolitan air of much of the IRA men's statements at the time. Certainly, the bonds of community were unable to prevent the total victory of the Free State in the Civil War. If anything, this should destroy the smug republican propaganda of 'the IRA were never defeated'. For one thing, the Free State were even an even more implacable foe than the British State, and the ex-servicemen and former labourers who made up the Free State's army (around a core of ex-IRA men)were much more effectively led in a political sense. So the small 'parish republics' of Cork went down before the centralising state. Hart's book is of immense value to those who are interested in Irish history and nationalism generally, but also to the military historian who studies guerilla warfare and why men fight. Highly recommended.