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Events in County Cork during the Irish Revolution point to there being many Corks between 1912 and 1923. The county contributed some of the most prominent aspects of the Revolution’s central narrative: Clonakilty’s Michael Collins and his death at Béal na Bláth; the murder of Tomás MacCurtain; the hunger strike and death of Terence MacSwiney; and the actions of Tom Barry’s West Cork ‘Flying Column’. However, it was also home to prominent southern unionists and a strong Crown forces presence, and was divided between two parliamentary nationalists parties. There were vast differences between city and county, and within that county between west and north, coast and inland.
This book, the first county-wide study of Cork’s experience of the Irish Revolution, takes a new approach to understanding conflict in Cork through analysis of patterns of death, spatially and chronologically, during the conflicts of 1912–23. It also analyses in new ways the scale and nature of the Cork IRA’s operations during the War of Independence, and both IRA and National army activities during the Civil War. In so doing, it argues that some past work has been overly focused on violence in West Cork, especially a few specific incidents. Overall, West Cork was no more violent than the rest of the county; indeed, the bulk of deaths and operations took place in the area covered by the IRA’s Cork No. 1 Brigade centred on Cork city.
The story of the First World War is woven into that of the Irish Revolution, showing how the two informed each other. Cork had two strands of parliamentary nationalism (particularly William O’Brien’s All-for-Ireland League but also the Irish Parliamentary Party), both of which supported the British war effort in different ways, ultimately leading to their replacement by Sinn Féin in 1918.
Professor Richard S. Grayson is Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, and has published extensively on Ireland’s 1912-23 period.
