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

The impending centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising has brought renewed, and intense, scrutiny of the revolutionary period in Irish history from 1916 to 1923. The centenary offers an opportunity to examine and re-examine all aspects of this period—not just the violent confrontations between guerillas and British forces, but also assessing the social, cultural, and political upheaval of these years. In the past, there have been frequent attempts to link the Rising with the Anglo-Irish War of Independence, treating the Rising as the ideological re-awakening of Irish republicanism and the war of independence as its maturation. This has often led to a relative neglect of the years between these violent events. In addition, the popular understanding of the Rising and Anglo-Irish War has sometimes mistakenly understood the events as being geographically limited to Dublin and certain rural areas.

John Borgonovo’s The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916-1918 aims to redress this imbalance through a dedicated study of the history of Cork City after the Easter Rising. Cork’s contribution to Irish independence is often assumed to have only begun with the ambush at Kilmichael, County Cork, in November 1920. Borgonovo undertakes an extensive study of the different communities living in the urban district. He writes in the introduction that in this short time frame “an entirely new political movement came to pre-eminence”; a primary goal of this study is to establish how one political movement replaced another.

The first two chapters identify many of the individuals active in local politics before 1914. These include such lesser-known, yet influential, Irish Party figures as Thomas C. Butterfield, the lord mayor of Cork, as well as the solicitor and coroner John J. Horgan. It also acknowledges the influence of relatively marginal republican figures, such as John J. Walsh and his supporters Tadhg Barry and Michael Mehigan, who reorganized the Cork County GAA on a professional level. Walsh became county board chairman in 1912 and, in 1914, was the only republican elected to the Cork Corporation, an indication of his popularity and visibility in the local political landscape. These two chapters illuminate the political background of Cork before the Rising. Throughout, Borgonovo perceptively investigates the overlap between different nationalist, republican, and trade unionist groups. This interaction might have been stressed even further, as communication between this close-knit nationalist community occurred on an almost daily basis, centered around the meeting rooms at An Dún on Queens Street. Throughout this period, the An Dún building was the epicenter of nationalism and republicanism in Cork City, and the close proximity it afforded to the Gaelic League, the post office staff, the Ancient Order of Hibernians-American Alliance, and the IRB provided an ideal breeding ground for ideas and nationalist communities.

Two of the later chapters deal with gender issues in Cork politics after 1916. The first provides a case study of the interaction between American sailors and Irish women during the war, relationships that caused huge controversies, and also caused mob attacks similar to the Cork riots of 1917. The public furore and vigilance committee reactions recorded here demonstrate that Free State attitudes toward the regulation of sex and toward censorship were well entrenched prior to independence. Borgonovo examines the rise of Cumann na mBan as an auxiliary of the republican movement, but also as a movement that developed militarily in its own right. In addition the author acknowledges throughout the role of soldiers’ wives, or “separation women,” in local politics. This community of women was not a distinct political organization, but nonetheless shared many political attitudes of the time. Especially commendable are Borgonovo’s discussions of those unpoliticized individuals who, taken together, represent a general shift in attitude in the several months following the Rising, as the wider population became increasingly frustrated with the war as well as the government’s suppressive policies. For instance...