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: #295082 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.

fascinating study of a turbulent time
I read a review of this book in the Times back in 1998 when it came out, and kept meaning to read it. Finally I did. Rarely have I encountered a book that has caused a furore amongst historians as this one.
He has been accused by his detractors of being disingenuous with the facts and also supporting his arguments by selecting or deselecting texts in order to give fluency to his arguments. He has also been accused of being untruthful about his anonymous interviews (footnoted throughout the book).

Whatever, this still remains an important book in documenting Irish history and sheds a light in some of the dark corners of the nations birth. He demolishes the myth that the old IRA was totally made of clean limbed broth-of-boys pursuing a noble cause. Rather, some of them had a propensity for cold blooded murder and were quite adept at this.

The book is very academically written and well foot noted, sometimes to the point of ad nauseum. As I have said this book has caused much upset and Hart has defended it in his many interviews since. In the book he labels Tom Barry as cold blooded killer, who may well have shot British Soldiers under a white flag; this accusation has caused outrage amongst some Irish people. I won't argue it here, but I will say that Barry was noted as being a "hard man" who probably was capable of shooting without compunction. It must be remembered that Barry was a decorated NCO who fought and was gassed in the WW1, so he was a battled hardened soldier before joining the volunteers. Bearing in mind that the Black & Tans were also made up of Officers from the great war and that their brutally whilst in Ireland is well documented, surely it must follow that Barry been of the same ilk would behave no differently in combat.For me the irony of this seems to have been lost on Hart and his critics: here was Barry fighting against those he nearly died beside in the trenches.

Hart referred to him as a serial killer in a subsequent interview, this is an unfortunate choice of phrase, hardened killer he might have been, but he was not a serial killer. Hart has claimed that he was a minor player in the war of independence. I beg to differ. The bravery and doggedness of him and his men has seen proved to have been one of the pivotal successes during the war.

In the book he claims that there was something of a pogrom against the Protestant population in West Cork, which resulted in a number of them murdered in cold blood. This has been refuted by others as nonsense, rather as being the result of the aforesaid victims as being on a list of informers.

Whatever ones viewpoint, I found this book fascinating, apart from the middle section where Hart goes into painstaking and overtly academic detail analysing the makeup of the IRA by social class etc. We, all of us, were brought on stories of the brutally of the Black & Tans, this book shows us also how brutal the old IRA were. The book opens with the murder of a popular RIC man, shot twice in the back. One wonders how actions such as this advanced Ireland both morally and democratically down the road for independence, not one iota I think. But then maybe it's a case of the old adage "the past is a foreign country where they did thing differently!


Read it and make up your own mind

Very Interesting
A very interesting insight into activities of the IRA in Cork during the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War.
The book is well researched and whilst not particularly flattering in its portrayal of the IRA it does seem well balanced and factually based.
It covers a time in history that has been mythologized in Ireland to a large extent and this book provides a more realistic picture of the period.