From Patrick O'Sullivan

I have posted - as separate emails to the Ir-D list - basic Table of
Contents information about new issues of two journals, Irish Studies
Review and History Ireland.

Also, the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies - under editor Bernice
Schrank - continues, as it were, to catch up with itself, with the
appearance of two issues, Volume 24, No. 1, July 1998, and Volume 24,
No. 2, December 1998.

The fact that I have posted this information here does not preclude our
dealing with these issues of these journals in greater detail at a later
date - if time allows. I just thought that people would like to have
the basic information now.

P.O'S.
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Patrick O'Sullivan
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From Patrick O'Sullivan


Our thanks to Peter Gray, for making this Table of Contents available...

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Table of Contents: HISTORY IRELAND 7/4 (Winter 1999)

Colm Culleton, 'From Barrow Boy to Viscount: the story of
Matthew Barnewell'
Tony Canavan, 'Interview with Michael Houlihan, Director of
National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland'
Hiram Morgan, 'Overmighty Officers: the Irish Lord
Deputyship in the Early Modern British State'
Tont Canavan, '"Illoyal, lawless, irreligious banditti":
The Hearts of Steel - an Ulster insurrection' [1769-73]
Mark Radford, '"Closely akin to actual warfare": the
Belfast riots of 1886 and the RIC'
Daniel Mulhall, 'Ireland at the turn of the century'
[1899-1900]
Barry McLoughlin, 'Delegated to the "New World": Irish
Communists at Moscow's International Lenin School, 1927-37'
Kevin Whelan, 'Sources: New light on Lord Edward Fitzgerald'

Reviews of:
M. O Siochru, *Confederate Ireland, 1642-9*, by Hiram Morgan
M. Ward, *Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: a life*, by Mary Clancy
M. Anderson and E. Bort (eds), *The Irish border: history,
politics, culture*, by Frank Foley
T. Reilly, *Cromwell: an honourable enemy*, by Eugene Coyle
F. McGarry, *Irish politics and the Spanish Civil War*, and
R. Stradling, *The Irish and the Spanish Civil War 1936-9*,
by Brian Hanley

----------------------
Peter Gray
Department of History
University of Southampton
pg2[at]soton.ac.uk

'The Memory of Catastrophe' Conference
Southampton, 14-17 April 2000
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ko/

From Patrick O'Sullivan

------- Forwarded message follows -------

IRISH STUDIES REVIEW

Volume 7 Number 3 December 1999

ISSN 0967-0882

Tara Brabazon and Paul Stock, 'We Love You Ireland': Riverdance and
Stepping through Antipodean Memory 301

Fergal Gaynor, 'An Irish Potatoe Seasoned with Attic Salt': The Reliques of
Fr. Prout and Identity before The Nation 313

Gerard Moran, The National Brotherhood of St Patrick in Britain in
the 1860s 325

Máire ní Fhlathúin, The Irish Oscar Wilde: Appropriations of the Artist 337

Jerry C. M. Nolan, Standish James O'Grady's Cultural Nationalism 347

Gavin Murphy, 'Keaning the North': The Paintings of John Keane and
Political Conflict in Northern Ireland 359

Reviews 371

Title-page and contents, volume 7 431

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From Patrick O'Sullivan

Our thanks to Patrick Maume for the very appropriate note on the death
of George V. Higgins - see below.

I did think hard about drafting something for the Ir-D list, as I saw
the Higgins obituaries. I do think that there is something very
interesting about Higgins' work - and about the processes which, for
example, turn the novels of James T. Farrell, but not Higgins, into
classics of Irish Americana.

In the end it was a workload problem - I could see no easy way forward.
This is a problem that I hope will soon see some resolution, when we
have better technology here. So much of what we see comes on paper, and
could be scanned for onward transmission. We could also make better use
of Web addresses - listing, for example, the Web addresses where people
who are interested in George V. Higgins can find obituaries and comment.
And, of course, we have first to find those Web addresses.

I also, deep in my being, find it somehow wrong that we only notice such
people when they are dead.

On that note, I have posted to the Ir-D list a notice about J.M.
O'Neill's last novel, published posthumously...

And a note on the recent sad death of film maker Ellie O'Sullivan...

P.O'S.

------- Forwarded message follows -------


From: Patrick Maume
Subject: George V. Higgins


From: Patrick Maume
Dear all,
As there regularly seem to be inquiries about why X or Y's death
has not been noticed on Irish lists, I thought I might as well note
the recent death of George V. Higgins, the Boston writer of thrillers
(e.g. THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE). The Boston lowlifes about whom he
wrote may not be an aspect of the diaspora of which we are
particularly proud, but they unquestionably belonged to it. (By the
way, Eoghan Harris's SUNDAY TIMES column has been quoting some of
Higgins' vitriolic comments about radical-chic American IRA
sympathisers in his novel PATRIOT GAMES - no relation to the Tom
Clancy horror whose cinematic version appeared on our TV screens again
recently, though it does show disconcerting signs of a belief that
Northern Ireland is located in "Connaught" as well as Ulster. I
wonder if that represents his entire position on the matter? In his
short story collection THE SINS OF THE FATHERS there is a sympathetic
portrait of an old IRA gun-runner, clearly based on Michael Flannery,
as seen by two detectives who are staking out his house. Do we have
here a dichotomy between respect for the old-style IRA and dislike for
the contemporary "leftie" variety?)
Best wishes,
Patrick Maume


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From Patrick O'Sullivan


RELLIGHAN UNDERTAKER BY J.M. O'NEILL
- - J.M. O'Neill, who died earlier this year, created in this novel a
world of mystery, of strange deaths among young people in a small
town in Ireland, of a beautiful but essentially evil woman whose past
is shrouded in mystery and who contrives to project an aura of great
piety. The solving of the mystery, and the terror it brings in its
wake, is left to the local detective, Coleman, who eventually
receives the help of the eponymous Rellighan. The atmosphere of
dread and danger is well sustained in this excursion into the occult.
(Brandon Press, ISBN 0-86322-260-9, pp221, IR8.99)

This notice appeared in
BOOKVIEW IRELAND
_______________________________________________________________________
Editor: Pauline Ferrie November, 1999 Issue No.52
=======================================================================
This monthly supplement to the Irish Emigrant reviews books recently
published in Ireland, and those published overseas which have an Irish
theme. Back issues are on our WWW pages

P.O'S.
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From Patrick O'Sullivan

I want to comment on the news of the sad death of Ellie O'Sullivan,
1947-1999, film maker - of cancer, long suffered. No relation, of
course - just one of the many Sullivans and O'Sullivans who are now
appearing in public life, as we spread out from Cork and Kerry.

Ellie's story is - in many ways - a recurring Irish Diaspora story. Her
own mother, who is usually described as 'a serving girl from Kerry', had
a long term relationship with a married man in Dublin. Ellie and her
sister were never acknowledged by this man, their father, or by her
mother's family. The mother moved to London, where she worked as a
waitress to support the girls - who, at one time, were lodged in a
convent boarding school. Ellie's own route forward went through early
motherhood herself - then the discovery of education. She became a
teacher in London and a film-maker.

Her first film, A Place Away, concentrated on her mother's story, and
was well received at the 1989 Cork film festival. Her films since then
explored what you might call the family experience, the fragile nature
of families and family relationships.

Our condolences to Pete Benjamin and Ellie's daughter, the journalist,
Charlotte O'Sullivan.

Patrick O'Sullivan

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From Patrick O'Sullivan

From personal emails, received earlier this week...

An 'exile', visiting Dublin, watches the first episode of The Irish Empire
television series...

'I went home [I'm originally from Howth area] to view the Irish
Empire as I had an early start the next morning. I must say I was not
very impressed with Irish Empire but I have only seen the first one. I thought the
Famine was dismissed out of hand and they ought to have had some scholar on
there and not O'Toole of the Irish Times as he had no background in Irish
History or specifically the Famine. In fact, to be honest, I was offended at
some of his remarks i.e 'the people who died were marginalised anyway'. I
also thought that the interviews were boring sometimes. I watched it with my
brother who wanted me to switch off the channel and watch another programme on
black holes!'

'Good to hear from you. I was concerned that some of my remarks were too much from
the hip but I had had discussion about the programme with other people in Ireland
before I left who also felt that it was a disappointment and not well researched.
I think the Famine part soured it for me and it did all seem to be all over the
place as you said. I hope I get a chance to see later episodes.'

EXTRACTS END
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From: "Marion R. Casey"

Subject: Re: Ir-D O'Neill Boot/Shoemaker



Paddy's mention of John O'Neill's 1869 autobiography, 'Fifty Years
Experience of an Irish Shoemaker in London' reminded me to pull out notes
on another Irish shoemaker, John Burke in New York City. His "Diary and
Recollections of John Burke" was written in 1891 and donated to the
New-York Historical Society in 1944 by his great-granddaughter.

John Burke, from Mitchelstown, Co. Cork, emigrates via Liverpool in April
1847. In New York he works as a shoemaker for Kimball & Rogers and O.
Packalin before going out on his own. He brings two of his six brothers
into the business, eventually sending them to operate a branch in San
Francisco, while the others have careers in Chicago, Georgia, and New
Orleans. Burke says, "I alone held onto New York and fought all
difficulties and disappointments to gain first place in the shoe trade."
He has opinions on lots of subjects, and closes with a poem of his own
composition: "I feel the acute Sciatic pain, when Jupiter Pluvius orders
rain...."

Wouldn't a comparison of the autobiographies of O'Neill and Burke be a
nice little project for someone someday?

Marion Casey
Department of History
New York University

From Patrick O'Sullivan

I thought that the Irish-Diaspora list would like to know what we have
learnt about the Irish Australian welfare bureaus.

There are three (Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong). They receive some
limited funding from the Irish government. They are heavily involved in
visiting elderly Irish migrants and in general welfare duties for the
large Irish population, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.

Sydney Irish Welfare Bureau
64 Devonshire Street
Surry Hill NSW 2010
006 018 433 661
9763 2552

00612 9746 6467
PO Box 445, Rochdale 2216


Melbourne
Australian Irish Welfare Bureau
President: Tony Rogers
Administrator : Marion O'Hagon
440a High Street
Northcote VIC 3070
006 03 94823865
Fax : 006 03 9482 3922

Wollongong
Australian Irish Welfare Bureau and Resource Centre
President: Phil Plunkett
006 042 627878
Fax 006 042 617502
PO Box 689
Dapto NSW 2530

P.O'S.

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From: Enda Delaney

Subject: Irish in nineteenth-century Britain


Dear Paddy,

Please find below a brief description of our project which
might be of interest to some of the members of the Ir-D list.

Many thanks for your help with this.

Best wishes

Enda Delaney

_______________________________________________________________

The Irish in late nineteenth-century Britain, 1871-1891: a pilot study

Dr Enda Delaney & Professor Liam Kennedy

School of Modern History
The Queen's University of Belfast


This pilot study investigates the feasibility of a large-scale
project which will examine the demographic and socio-economic
profile of the Irish-born population in late nineteenth-century
Britain from 1871 until 1891. In the first instance, the 1881
census data for Lancashire have been obtained from the History
Data Service at the University of Essex and we are focusing on
Liverpool. Our interests lie primarily in demographic and social
history, and therefore the features of the Irish-born population
which we are examining include household and family structure,
age, gender, religious and socio-economic profile and lastly,
residential patterns. Working with colleagues at the Cambridge
Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
(CAMPOP), we are developing a comparative research strategy in
order to compare and contrast the Irish-born and Scottish-born in
Liverpool in 1881, and in due course, other areas in England.
This was add a new and innovative dimension in that it will be
possible to engage in comparative analysis of two migrant
groupings in late nineteenth-century England.

Enda Delaney
e.delaney[at]qub.ac.uk

From Patrick O'Sullivan

Eileen Sullivan and I have been dealing with a query from an O'Sullivan
family in - where was it again?... - California.

They had been researching their antecedents, in Adrigole, County Cork,
and Glengariff. Their specific query had to do with turn of the century
trans-Atlantic passenger lists - but, as is often the way, the answer to
the specific query would not have helped them much. What they really
needed was plugging into the O'Sullivan/Sullivan networks.

Not hard...

But looking again at the specific query... It is a long time since I
looked at the passenger lists. I notice that we are seeing new research
based on them - eg Maureen Murphy in Bradley & Valiulis, 1997, which
looks back to Mageean in Drudy, 1985. As far as I can make out Maureen
Murphy's passenger list data is based on her own sampling.

Have there been developments that I am not aware of? What is the
current state of play as regards the availability of the passenger
lists? Is there something on the Web that could be looked at?

P.O'S.
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From Patrick O'Sullivan

These two economics papers look like they might have added something to
recurring debates about the Irish in pre-Civil War ('Antebellum') United
States...

P.O'S.


1.
Explorations in Economic History
Vol. 34, No. 3, July 1997
ISSN: 0014-4983

The Entry into the U.S. Labor Market of Antebellum European Immigrants,
1840-1860

pp. 295-330

Joseph P. Ferrie

Department of Economics, Northwestern University, NBER IDEAL Related
Articles

Abstract

This study examines the occupational mobility of antebellum immigrants
as they entered the United States. White collar, skilled, and
semiskilled immigrants left unskilled jobs more rapidly after arrival
than farmers and unskilled workers. British and German immigrants fared
better than the Irish; literate immigrants in rapidly growing counties
and places with many immigrants fared best. These findings have
implications for (1) the accuracy of estimates of immigrant occupational
mobility, (2) the size of the human capital transfer resulting from
antebellum immigration, and (3) the causes of the difficulty experienced
by some immigrant groups in transferring their skills to the United
States.

*This is an extensively revised version of Chapter 4 of my dissertation
(Ferrie, 1992). For comments on an earlier version, I am grateful to
Stan Engerman, David Galenson, Denis Kessler, Bruce Meyer, Joel Mokyr,
Clayne Pope, seminar participants at Brigham Young University, Indiana
University, and the 1994 NBER/DAE Summer Institute, the editor, and
three anonymous referees.

2.
Explorations in Economic History
Vol. 32, No. 3, July 1995
ISSN: 0014-4983


Occupational Evidence on the Causes of Immigration to the United States,
1836-1853

pp. 383-408
Raymond L. Cohn

Department of Economics, Illinois State University IDEAL Related
Articles

Abstract

The recent view that European immigrants to the United States before the
Civil War were not fleeing economic distress is investigated. This
literature uses information on male occupations to infer the causes of
immigration. The method by which other researchers generate their
samples of data on occupations is critiqued in this paper. New estimates
are presented and used to show that most English and Irish immigrants
were fleeing distress-though many others were not-while few German
immigrants were fleeing distress.Copyright 1995, 1999 Academic Press



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From: Sara Brady
Subject: Interesting Irish Echo article



Those interested might want to check out a four-part series currently
running in the New York-based Irish Echo newspaper about the "new wave of
immigrants at the millennium" to the States. You can check it out online at:

http://www.irishecho.com/files/article.cfm?id=4560

Sara







Sara Brady
Managing Editor, TDR
Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, 6th floor
New York, NY 10003-6807
212-998-1626 phone
212-998-1627 fax

Read TDR on the Web at:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/TDR

From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
Subject: Vector Map of Ireland


Dear Ir-D List Members:

Does any one of you have a vector-based map of Ireland's counties that you
would be willing to share? In a vector based map, you can click on each of
the counties separately and do various manipulations with them (e.g, copy
the county map individually). I just want to use such a map for various
purposes in Powerpoint presentations.

Thanks.

Tom
Thomas J. Archdeacon, Prof. Office: 608-263-1778/1800
Department of History Fax: 608-263-5302
University of Wisconsin -- Madison Home: 608-251-7264
5133 Humanities Building E-Mail: tjarchde[at]facstaff.wisc.edu
Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1483

From Patrick O'Sullivan

It is right to pause for a moment to acknowledge the unfolding of
happier, more peaceful, events in Northern Ireland, and the falling into
place of the various elements of the Northern Ireland agreement.
Including, yesterday, the formal change to the Constitution of the
Republic of Ireland - the Taoiseach/Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, signed
away the Republic's territorial claims to the North.

As ever, it is easier to say unhelpful things than helpful. (Like...
Why did the film footage of Martin McGuinness in his new office remind
us so irresistably of Viva Zapata? And why did the IRA announcement
last night remind us of that time when Jean-Luc Picard was captured by
the Borg?)

A very interesting interview last night on Channel 4 news, here, with
Seamus Heaney, who was trying to say helpful things. Some of them were
the sort of things that only poets can say - like... 'We can't go on
writing elegies...' Helpful, nonetheless. The full text of that
interview can be found at http://www.channel4.com/news.

P.O'S.
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From Patrick O'Sullivan

This Web site might be useful...

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

Publishers of scholarly journals, Taylor and Francis, Carfax, Routledge
and E&FN Spon, have amalgamated their Web sites at that address.

So, for example, Irish Studies Review is now one of the Carfax titles.

The new Web site gives contents pages for all journals, links to related
sites, guides for authors - and, in some cases, links to the full text
of articles, when the full text is available.

Further developments are planned, including e-commerce for
subscriptions, an author resource centre, and online sample copies of
journals,

P.O'S.
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Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit
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From: "Marion R. Casey"

Subject: Irish in Film


This review was taken off the web this morning. 2by4 has just gone in to
a limited theatrical release in the NYC area.

Marion Casey

-------------------

2by4 (Jimmy Smallhorne, dir., 1999)

A small, gritty indie centered on Irish immigrants that steals whole pages
out of Brit realist Ken Loach's book, Jimmy Smallhorne's 2by4 has a great,
spontaneous feel. Focusing on both the banalities and pleasant rhythms of
real labor (in this instance, mundane construction work) as movies (even
Loach's) rarely do, 2by4 never drops the ball in terms of making our
experience feel authentic. The dank lighting is real, the compositions
lifelike and haphazard, and the blue-collar pub patter on the mark. Loach
(Poor Cow, Riff Raff, My Name Is Joe, etc.) is invoked formally, but
unfortunately his modesty and dedication to class issues is wholly absent.
Star-director-co-screenwriter Smallhorne is too busy satisfying his own
ego and fleshing out his own specific experience as a downtrodden bisexual
Irishman. The hero's gay excursions become not only the movie's tiresome
raison d'etre at this stage in the game, is simply having same-gendered
sex still interesting enough to propel an entire movie? but the
narrative's psychological crisis.

Johnny (Smallhorne) has a girlfriend (Kimberly Topper) he treats like
trash and a hustler boytoy (Bradley Fitts) he apparently prefers, and for
some undisclosed reason this is causing him enough heartaches to warrant a
good deal of Sturm und Drang, and some hairy sleepwalking nightmares.
(That he is a member of a closely knit cadre of Celtic immigrants who,
when they aren't working, are drinking themselves bleary and going crazy
on coke, may seem like a reasonable justification.) But Johnny is not
afraid someone will find out (he admits his bisexuality now and again),
and he is not tortured by his impulses he clearly, comfortably enjoys
them. So what's Johnny's beef? You find out in the end, and you'll wish
you hadn't: It's Psychosexual Plot Cliche 101 (buried memories, anyone?)
and unfair as a justification for gayness to boot. Smallhorne seems to be
suggesting his own yen for men is the malformative result of trauma. It
may be for him, but it surely isn't for the majority of gays, and if
Smallhorne had wanted to make a truly autobiographical film, he should've
left out the psychodramatic baloney and thought deeply about why he is the
way he is, and whether anyone else should really care.

This doesn't mean Smallhorne isn't a talented filmmaker, and actor's
director he gets telling, honest bits out of the real-life construction
workers as well as the professional performers. It just means he needs to
forget about himself and his loins (which are on gratuitous display), and
get someone else to write him some material. In fact, the background
characters in 2by4 are more compelling and indelible than Johnny is. I
particularly liked Joe Holyoke as a lumbering bully with a heinous lust
for coke and a secret habit of writing verse. It should be mentioned that
Strand Releasing has decided to subtitle Smallhorne's thickly accented
movie, but too often the titles are distracting you can't help but read
them even when you don't need to. In any case, although what is being said
is never less than believable, it just doesn't add up to more than
uninterrogated crotch gazing.



- --Michael Atkinson [reviewed for www.mrshowbiz.go.com]

NR

From Patrick O'Sullivan


I have been asked for some information on Peter Hart, THE IRA AND ITS
ENEMIES Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923, OUP, £40 ISBN 0 19
820527 6

The book has been well reviewed - I have picked up and posted to the Ir-
D list, a sample review, by Roy Foster. The book seems to make the IRA,
in Cork, much more 'Whiteboy-ish'. So to speak.

There is an earlier Hart essay, which some people might be able to look
at...

Title: The geography of revolution in Ireland, 1917-1923.

Summary: A study of geographic elements concerning Ireland's revolution
of 1917-1923 can enhance understanding of the revolution's violence and
outcomes.
Source: Past & Present
Date: 05/1997
Citation Information: (n155) Start Page: p142(35) ISSN: 0031-2746
Author(s): Hart, Peter

P.O'S.

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From Patrick O'Sullivan

This review appeared in...

TIMES
May 21 1998 BOOKS
Roy Foster on the intimate enmities of rural Ireland

Hope for peace? Allegiances are passed down the generations as the
present resonates with the past
Things change; but not violence
THE IRA AND ITS ENEMIES Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923 By
Peter Hart OUP, £40 ISBN 0 19 820527 6
This is an enthralling and disturbing book. Peter Hart is a young
Canadian scholar who for nearly a decade has been investigating the
experience of the war of independence and the subsequent civil war as it
affected the communities of Co Cork from 1916 to 1923; he has brought to
the task not only historical gifts of a high order but remarkable
subtlety, insight, intelligence and compassion.
The excitement, fellowship and derring-do of revolutionary times in
Rebel Cork have often been recollected and replayed; and Hart handles
this dimension with great empathy and gives those legendary guerrillas
(and balladeers) their due. But Cork - in many ways the crucible of
violent revolutionary experience in this era - was also notable for a
high proportion of Protestants, living in small farms and urban cottages
as much as in Big Houses. Hart's reconstruction explores and recalls the
experience of the losers, the victims, the apathetic and the wrongly
accused. His work stands as the most probing analysis I have read of how
"tit for tat" killings operate in enclosed rural communities, and the
processes whereby neighbours become strangers and eventually enemies.
The book's prologue explores a case-study: "The Killing of Sergeant
O'Donoghue". A popular "decent" local policeman, he was shot dead on the
street in November 1920; later that night the homes of his suspected
assailants were raided by his enraged comrades, and three further deaths
ensued. Hart constructs the networks of family background, social
geography and political assumptions which underlay the communities of
Cork - using a rich range of sources, including the investigations
compiled by the sergeant's relatives just after the event and his own
interviews with survivors.
The mirror-imaging of intimate enmities is also explored by the last
chapter of the book, on "Spies and Informers". These descriptions, Hart
shows, could mean anything or nothing (playing in the wrong band,
talking to a policeman on the street). Yet the identifications are still
used, surreptitiously, tagged on to children and even grandchildren; in
the mind of the locality, many of these events could have happened
yesterday.
Yet the versions of how they happened are imprisoned in mutually
conflicting world-views. Hart is too scrupulous - and too subtle - to
make easy extrapolations to conflicts further north, a half-century
later, but the assonances are unmistakable.
The sergeant, and his like, were Irish, Catholic, and came from
families deeply integrated into the community. So, ostensibly, did the
small Protestant farmers, drapers, schoolteachers; but they also became
"targets" for reasons which had less to do with political affiliation
than atavistic ethnic conflict ("Taking it out on the Protestants").
This happened particularly after the Treaty of 1921, when the civil war
loosened the bonds of discipline imposed by republican authorities
during the heroic fellowship of the war of independence.
But even during the earlier struggle, conflicts of definition were
being fought out. Time and again, in oral evidence or newspaper reports
or reported altercations between neighbours on different sides, the
phrase recurs: "I am as good an Irishman as you." By 1921, the idea of a
"good Irishman" had been redefined; certainly those moderates who had
supported Redmondite Home Rule were disqualified, let alone those
representing the acquiescent Unionism of small Protestant communities.
The extent to which they fled the area in the early 1920s has never been
documented so closely before; in doing so, Hart extends and redefines
what was meant by "the revolution in the village".
He also analyses the backgrounds, world-views, achievements and
disappointments of the revolutionary generation: the Collins guerrillas
who brought off famous coups like the annihilation of 17 Auxiliary
cadets at Kilmichael - "a brave, daring and even brilliant ambush that
turned into a massacre". It was the archetypal rebel victory: Hart
points out that it also redefined the struggle in terms of "war" rather
than episodic terrorist acts. By painstakingly deconstructing the many
conflicting versions given, Hart also shows how and why rationalisations
after the event emerged. The IRA claim that the Auxiliaries offered a
false surrender, and the British statement that survivors were hacked to
death, are equally exposed.
From such incidents, using ballads, memories, and the tools of
anthropological research as well as an astonishing range of local and
archival records, Hart recreates the contemporary mentality. In another
tour de force he traces "the rise and fall of a revolutionary family",
the resourceful Haleses of Ballinadee: the climax, where the crippled
patriarch is carried out of the flames as the Black and Tans burn his
beloved farmhouse to the ground, and the civil war turns brother against
brother, strikes echoes of stories as old as time. It is a rare
achievement to write a first book that is also a classic, but Peter Hart
may have done it.

END

From: Patrick Maume
Subject: Re: Ir-D Peter Hart


From: Patrick Maume
Peter Hart also has an article on the Protestant experience of war &
revolution in Co. Cork during the War of Independence in Richard
Englis & Graham Walker (eds.) UNIONISM IN MODERN IRELAND (Gill &
Macmillan/Macmillan/St. Martin's Press, 1996). He is currently based
at the Department of History, Queen's University, Belfast.
Best wishes,
Patrick


On Sat, 04 Dec 1999 20:33:00 +0100 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
wrote:
> From:irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk> Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 20:33:00 +0100
> Subject: Ir-D Peter Hart
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>
>
> From Patrick O'Sullivan
>
> I have been asked for some information on Peter Hart, THE IRA AND ITS
> ENEMIES Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923, OUP, 40 ISBN 0 19
> 820527 6
>