The Battle of Kinsale (review)

Battles ought to be decisive. The siege actions and climactic engagement fought at Kinsale (on the coast of southern Ireland) in October-January 1601/2, destroyed for centuries the realization of Irish independence. Or did they? This magnificently appointed volume features a score of scholars who ponder the context and significance of the battle.

In terms of production values, this is a paradigm of what military history books should be: solid scholarship profusely illustrated (141 images, including 13 contemporary maps in color, a dozen manuscript reproductions, engravings, paintings, stained glass, even tiles depicting marching tercios). These are buttressed by ten appendixes that contain arcane, inaccessible and newly discovered information. Wordwell Ltd., deserves accolades and attention from historians on the west side of the Atlantic.

This book illuminates from many different angles: economic, biographical, comparative, literary, ideological, archaeological, etc. One finds some strikingly original essays. Particularly useful for incorporation into traditional military history are those by editor Morgan, John McGurk, Enrique García Hernán, Kenneth Nicholls, Vincent Carey, Clare Carroll, Ciaran O'Scea, David Edwards, Michelle O'Riordan, and Damian Shiels. However, there is neither an order of battle to sort out the combatants nor a genuinely comprehensive bibliography to facilitate further study.

The actual battle receives attention primarily in an essay by Morgan (pp. 101-41) that promises "a combined analysis of the English and Spanish sources" (p. 101). The former are the "fullest" evidence extant and are housed in Kew, outside London, in the National Archives (formerly the Public Record Office) as State Papers Ireland (SP 63). The calendar to the State Papers for this period was compiled in 1912, and like the calendar of the Carew Papers in the Lambeth Palace Library (London), is a rich source for studying the Nine Years' War. However, a substantial weakness in all previous accounts of the campaign and the battle has been dependence on these calendars rather than the original manuscripts. The best treatment of Kinsale, according to this book (p. 35), was that of Hayes-McCoy. He, however, did not employ footnotes, and thus one cannot be entirely sure on points of detail and the evidential validity of his conclusions.

As for this book, there is nothing wrong with mixing calendar references with citations from the manuscripts themselves. But some essays in the volume are constructed entirely from calendar accounts, and Morgan's chapter on the battle overwhelmingly cites calendar references where manuscripts ought to have been consulted. The relevant volumes from SP 63 are easily available on microfilm, and might have been bought for the equivalent of a few hundred dollars. The definitive chronicle of the battle of Kinsale must be written from these manuscripts, as well as from the evidence discovered in Spanish (and recently French) archives. In this volume (as in Silke's groundbreaking campaign history published in 1970) the "foreign" sources are used more rigorously than SP 63. Therefore, this book is neither comprehensive nor definitive, despite its title and implied assertions to the contrary.

Still, this is the most important work on Kinsale to appear in the last thirty years, perhaps since 1912. It helps elevate the battle of Kinsale, and the military history of Ireland, to their rightful places, while exhibiting the many contours of military history in the twenty-first century.