Product Description

What is it like to be in the I.R.A. - or at their mercy? This fascinating study explores the lives and deaths of the enemies and victims of the County Cork I.R.A. between 1916 and 1923 - the most powerful and deadly branch of the I.R.A. during one of the most turbulent periods in twentieth-century Ireland. These years saw the breakdown of the British legal system and police authority, the rise of republican violence, and the escalation of the conflict into a full-scale guerilla war, leading to a wave of riots, ambushes, lootings, and reprisal killings, with civilians forming the majority of victims in this unacknowledged civil war. Religion may have provided the starting point for the conflict, but class prejudice, patriotism, and personal grudges all fuelled the development and continuation of widespread violence. Using an unprecedented range of sources - many of them only recently made public - Peter Hart explores the motivation behind such activity. His conclusions not only reveal a hidden episode of Ireland's troubled past but provide valuable insights into the operation of similar terrorist groups today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #371641 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Paul Bew, Spectator
"brilliant book"

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 ... an illuminating, often gripping account that students of modern history, politics, and sociology will find immensely useful. (Choice )

Hart writes with sensitivity, sociological insight and, when necessary, controlled passion ... An instant classic. (Roy Foster, Spectator )

Peter Hart has produced a study which, for exploitation of sources and for disciplined and multifaceted analysis, stands comparison with Charles Townshend's The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-1921 (1975) ... he has set a standard of forensic documentary research which other historians, whether those preparing local studies of the Irish revolution, or those rushing to the defence of the good name of Cork Republicanism, may conceivably emulate but will surely not surpass. (Eunan O'Halpin, Times Literary Supplement )

Winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for 1998

Hart has written a book worthy of the widest readership among those interested not only in the history of armed revolution but in the history of collective and individual violence in troubled times. (Crime, History & Societies )

Hart's book contributes immensely to our understanding of the generation of civil war through a methodology that deserves replication in studies of violence in other areas of social life. The historical sensitivity of his account is captured in his depiction of the background culture in which this violence developed. (Crime, History & Societies )

Hart's study is a model of reconstruction of the forces on both sides, the events, the resources, the strategies, the toll and the destruction ... the richest dimension of the book lies in its excavation of mentalities and perceptions of those who became able to kill in the cause of independence, and of their victims. (Crime, History & Societies )

Outstanding excavation of the ground-level struggles of a war of independence ... Only an assiduous historian like Hart can document so persuasively the extent of misinformation, anxiety, fear that pervades civil conflict and renders it murderous. (Crime, History & Societies )

Brilliant book. (Paul Bew, Spectator )

A superb, multi-layered history of the "intimate war" of this dark, iconic period in Cork ... a vivid deeply affecting book. (Mic Moroney, The Irish Times )

Customer Reviews

Forensic cherry picking
The strength of Peter Hart's book is that it contains much empirical data in the form of tables, charts etc., that would save any researcher into this period considerable time. Some have aptly described it as 'forensic'. However, its great weakness is its cherry picking of the results. Two central pillars of his work - his claim that Tom Barry was a serial killer who ordered a massacre at Kilmicheal and that protestants were shot in Dunmanway in a sectarian war, have been called heavily into question recently. It now seems he was wrong on both counts, inexcusable for someone who had taken such meticulous care in assembling the data. Those interested in finding out more should see eg. Ryan, Meda. 'Tom Barry - IRA Freedom Fighter'. Mercier Press. Cork: 2003. There are also innumerable articles and reviews posing the same questions, which researchers relying on Hart's work should be aware of. His book has ushered in new standards of historical research in this area however, despite its shortcomings in dealing with the information at its disposal. I would give it more stars except for the fact that it reneges on its own methodology in ignoring facts that don't fit the theory.

A Devils Advocate?
Reading Hart's work one is left feeling there should be a section of books classified as `Devils Advocates', that is to say books which we do not agree with but challenge our accepted assumptions. Hart does this with great success. His work is well researched but again, the term cherry-picking should be applied to his use of facts. For history students this work provides a good exercise into the art of reading behind the text and looking at the type of sources used, the use of statistics and personal accounts. An example of this can been seen in the section where Hart claims Tom Barry raised the Union Jack at the 1919 commemoration of the end of the Great War a year earlier. The keen-eyed reader who follows this information into the footnotes will see that the source for this information was "coloured by considerable personal animosity " against Barry.
His extensive foot-notes and bibliography show that Hart has done his research, though as his critics rightly claim the main body of the text is selective and appears to approach the reader with an agenda. At the end I was felt Hart had an important point to make but ruined it by adding sensationalist claims to his work.
For historians an interesting study, for students a work which should be approached carefully, for the general public a good work to question old assumptions. A successful Devils Advocate.

Brillaint dissection of terror warfare and its effect of its victims
This is an excellent work of forsenic history writing. Hart examines the war of independence through close study of actual events. He is unbiased and reasons with an absolute devotion to truth. His detractors cant call themselves real historians as they only see history through the prism of their own political sympathies. This book does not favour any one side over another, it shows war/terrorism to be a dirty grubby business. No one emerges with any real credit, the ira with its penchant for arbitrary murder and the state responding with clumsy attempts to deal with an insurgency it does not quite understand. it buries the ideal of a brave and noble conflict and demonstrates quite ably the mixed emotions of those who seek to maim and murder for political objectives. It is a seminal work in debunking the myth of a glorious war of independence and seeks to throw light on the murky origins of the Irish state by those who would prefer to subscribe to a rather simplistic view of history. it is not perfect, it can be a little starchy and overburdened with facts and figures but that said I challenge any one to read the opening chapter describing the murder of a neighbourhood policeman in Cork during the war of independence and still see it as some glorious feat in the annals of irish history. Read this book it can only add to our understanding of Irelands history.