Conor McNamara. War and Revolution in the West of Ireland: Galway, 1913-1922. Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2018. 243 pp. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78537-159-2.
Reviewed by Aoife Bhreatnach (Independent Scholar)
Published on H-War (January, 2020)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey (Air University)
The Irish revolutionary period is the subject of many books both by professionally trained historians and local studies enthusiasts. Tensions between those groups are also common, particularly when more dispassionate historians interrogate precious local narratives, suggesting that some stories may be more mythical than truthful. Thankfully, the interminable, rancorous public debate sparked by Peter Harte’s The IRA and its Enemies: Violence and Community in County Cork 1916-23 (1998) has not deterred historians from publishing county studies of the conflict between 1912 and 1922.
McNamara’s study of County Galway joins a growing list of work that explores political change and violence within the geographic, cultural, and social boundaries of a county. Such studies chronicle how the contrasting landscapes and populations of counties affected political engagement and outbreaks of violence. This book opens with a pen sketch of the county, describing the distinct areas of West, East, and North Galway, the languages spoken, and the demographic features of the population. This chapter would have benefited from a map or two to illustrate the salient features of County Galway. The complexity of local politics, where deep divisions opened between personalities as well as ideologies, is often difficult to argue without losing narrative coherence, but McNamara handles the stories of local political power brokers well. He includes enough biographical information in the narrative to sketch out their importance, ensuring this study will be a useful reference for scholars of the Irish revolution interested in factionalism in local politics.
In general, the book concentrates on the rural aspect of County Galway, with little attention paid to urban dwellers of Galway city. The rural experience is at the heart of the study, with McNamara devoting a chapter to the agrarian agitation that convulsed the county before 1916. Galway, along with Clare, experienced exceptional levels of agrarian violence in the early twentieth century. He argues that agrarian disturbances were important to political change in Galway but does not explore if subsequent insurrectionary violence owed any debt to well-established traditions of intimidation and property destruction. Perhaps a quoted contemporary description of a “Galway habit of firing at persons” was merely flippant (p. 94). However, McNamara’s observation that senior figures in the Irish Parliamentary Party had advocated violence throughout their careers shows how difficult it was to distinguish between young, violent republicans and their political predecessors. The complexities of the generational cleavage in Irish nationalism emerge particularly strongly in first half of the book.
The chapter on armed IRA activity in Galway locates violent encounters between the IRA and Crown Forces in the countryside, showing how the landscape and agricultural economy affected men on the run. Fighters in flying columns depended on the civilian population for food, shelter, and information but it was not always a comfortable relationship. Unsurprisingly, the men fighting in West Connemara shared the privations of a poverty-stricken civilian population, eating and drinking nothing but tea for days at a time (p. 126). While McNamara carefully outlines who fought in the columns and some of their important military engagements, he spends less time conceptualizing the relationship between civilians and the IRA. In the Bureau of Military History (BMH) records that underpin his analysis, participants hinted at the reluctance of civilians to pay IRA “levies” that funded arms and ammunition (p. 129). The relationship between insurrectionary fighters and the civilians who sheltered them was central to the success of the IRA campaign, and the Galway gunmen cited here were generally positive about civilian support. The subtle relationships established between civilians and fighters and the role of violence therein is not foregrounded in McNamara’s analysis.
However, as McNamara’s other chapters show, violence against civilians was not unusual during the war of independence. Unfortunately, determining who killed whom, and why, remains the most methodologically difficult and politically contentious part of narratives regarding 1920s Ireland. The intensity of violence varied from county to county and within counties, as some IRA columns were more active than others. One ambush described by McNamara was planned by men “eager to prove their ruthlessness” (p. 132). A zealous commanding officer from the Crown Forces could precipitate cycles of violence with raids, arrests, and reprisals. Civilians were killed by both IRA and Crown Forces, with both sides blaming the other in a heated propaganda war that did not end with the Truce. Former IRA combatants justified their violent actions committed thirty or more years earlier for the BMH collection. The “other side” of the conflict recorded its explanations and justifications in contemporary police reports, whose flaws McNamara openly if belatedly acknowledges (p. 139). A frank exploration of the problematic nature of these sources would have strengthened the study. The book does not include an explicit methodological statement, even though interpreting motives for killings during irregular conflict is often tricky. How do scholars of violence adjudicate between the contradictory opinions of “the community,” families of victims, insurrectionary fighters, and various branches of the state? McNamara acknowledges the work of scholars studying gendered violence during the 1920s but the methodological implications of that approach do not permeate his narrative. The ebb and flow of violence is well described in a chronological structure that also highlights the role of organizers and fighters from outside the boundaries of County Galway.
The final chapter describes the impact of the revolutionary years on Galway’s minority Protestant population. The toxic debate over “ethnic cleansing” in the Irish revolution rumbles on while historians struggle to conceptualize sectarianism in counties outside Ulster. McNamara agrees with other scholars that “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are inappropriate and inaccurate terms to apply to the small numbers of killings or the significant emigration of Protestants (p. 162). He describes a diverse population of Anglican landowners and Presbyterian professionals that formed recognizable subgroups according to their geographic location. Some groups were apparently “well integrated” though it is not clear what that means (p. 163). McNamara outlines how sectarian resentment in some towns came to the fore during the conscription crisis in 1918 but faded from public rhetoric before inflammatory language led to violence. After the Truce was agreed in the summer of 1921, all forms of policing authority collapsed, leaving Protestants vulnerable to violent attacks. Even if this spasm of violence was short-lived and not explicitly ideological, it could reveal much about communal identities. A local study is the perfect opportunity to explore the web of interpersonal relationships, economics, and landscape that motivated neighbors to kill each other. While the killings and intimation are clearly described, McNamara does not draw much attention to the significance of motivating factors. Perhaps his desire to describe all serious attacks left less space for careful analysis. It is a pity that he omits Galway’s other important minority population—Irish Travellers—who were also categorized as IRA victims by Peter Harte. Since Galway’s Traveller population was more numerous than that of County Cork, it would have been an excellent opportunity to explore the communal politics of exclusion during violent conflict.
This book is a through outline of the conflict in County Galway during the eventful years leading up to Irish independence. There is an emphasis on the rural parts of the county, with land and contests over its ownership running throughout the book. It is an accessible read, even though the chapters feel more like distinct entities than part of a larger narrative. I was anticipating a long, comprehensive concluding chapter to draw themes together but the final piece was a little brief. It was a shame that there were no maps included in this book. For readers unfamiliar with Galway, maps would be an essential guide to the places frequently mentioned. It is difficult to interpret the landscape of a county without a map outlining distinct regions such as North or East Galway. Since the IRA flying columns operated in geographic areas, the omission of maps impoverishes those chapters on violence in the war of independence. Missing maps aside, it is a clearly written, well-organized account of the violence experienced and perpetrated in Galway during the revolutionary period.
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Citation:
Aoife Bhreatnach. Review of McNamara, Conor, War and Revolution in the West of Ireland: Galway, 1913-1922.
H-War, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53181
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