The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916–1918 by John Borgonovo (review)

John Borgonovo’s The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916–1918 offers an extended consideration of the ways Cork politics were transformed during the two years after the Easter Rising. During this period, Cork’s public turned away from constitutional Nationalism to hearty engagement with revolutionary Republicanism. The thoroughness of the change was confirmed by the strong public support of Sinn Feín as it came to power in the 1918 General Election. Although its rise was surprisingly rapid and perhaps incomprehensible to some, Borgonovo demonstrates that early indications of the final outcome were apparent and offer themselves to worthwhile historical analysis even nearly a century later.

A winning dimension of Borgonovo’s analysis of the rise to power in Cork of those parties and figures most immediately responsible for the Irish revolution is his recognition that their success depended in large part on the international political context of the Great War and particularly on the general neglect of normal politics on the part of the British government during the war years. In this sense, this book is a study of British administrative failure, and one can imagine it rewritten with greater emphasis on the catalogue of missteps: misapprehensions of Irish sentiment by the crown; a general lack of attention to and support for less radical Irish political parties and leaders; and underestimations of the degree to which public discontent would motivate functional and well-organized resistance to British imperialism.

The book’s shape is dictated largely by timeline, beginning with descriptions of pre-War and pre-Rising political attitudes in Cork. Although the city was traditionally understood to be rebellious, Borgonovo shows that Cork was fairly tranquil immediately before the Rising and generally supportive of the war in its first year. After the Easter Rising, however, expressions of anti-British sentiment became more regular and included the street violence that culminated in city riots in 1917. The consequences of that early unrest are made apparent via a presentation of two narratives treated individually, but finally inseparable: the rise of Irish Republican politics and the decline of the less radical Irish Party, which, although it remained strong administratively, was eviscerated as a voting bloc by the end of 1917. This volume also weighs other factors, such as the exacerbation of Irish indignation regarding the war because of the alleged moral problems attendant on the presence of American sailors on shore leave, the nature of the Cork Cumann na mBan as a growing public voice concerned primarily with nationalist rather than gender issues, the often conjoined roles of economic pressures (Cork was woefully impoverished even before war shortages) and the demands of organized labor, and fears regarding a lack of food. Throughout his presentation of each of these topics, Borgonovo exhibits extensive knowledge and firm control of the relevant evidence, offering insightful and engaging accounts of Cork’s often tangled political interests, public figures, and financial concerns.

The book’s last chapters are especially notable because they attend directly to the fear of conscription that was the strongest motivation in the radicalization of Cork politics. Irish resentment of Britain’s expectation that Irishmen would join the Allied cause had no single origin, but few people failed to recognize the irony that Irish troops fighting on the behalf of Britain were engaged in a war that was allegedly undertaken in the interest of preserving self-determination for small nations, whereas the small nation of Ireland was denied self-determination. By 1918, fear of and anger about possible conscription spurred development of an organized resistance supported by the majority of the population, with the result that the post-Armistice General Election yielded a strong Republican victory.

The values of this book, then, are several. Perhaps most importantly, The Dynamics of War and Revolution is a testament to the necessity of historical assessments taking the measure of both international...