An Cosantóir

| 29 www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE The publication by Cork University Press of the "Atlas of the Great Irish Famine," and "Atlas of the Irish Revolution," are in the realm highly significant in their contribution to Irish Historical studies, because of the breadth, and depth of topics examined by a multitude of highly regarded Historians and writers. The latest publication in this series "Atlas of the Irish Civil War," completes this trilogy and has eminently maintained the superb standard of its predecessors. It is a genuine Magnum Opus. Previous works on the Irish Revolutionary period tend to only briefly discuss The Civil War, such as in Moody and Martin's 'The Course of Irish History' (2011) or focus on key events such as the outbreak of conflict or the death of Collins, as in Foster's 'The Oxford History of Ireland' (1989). It is not just the overall histories that fail to discuss The Civil War in detail, but this observation also applies to military histories of Ireland or the Irish soldier. Bartlett and Jeffrey's otherwise excellent 'A Military History of Ireland' (1996) allows only a few lines on The Civil War, with the same for Bredin's 'A History of the Irish Soldier' (1987). Even works that discuss Civil Wars tend to focus on Ireland post 1969, such as in Walter's 'How Civil Wars Start and How To Stop Them' (2022). From an Irish Defence Forces Professional Military Education (PME) perspective it appears seldom that The Civil War is included as a case study in any counterinsurgency campaign, as most focus is placed on The War of Independence or the Northern Ireland 'Troubles'. It is this latest work that completes the "Atlas Trilogy" which fundamentally addresses this arguable lacuna in examining this traumatic period and as Diarmaid Ferriter has noted to 'confront' the silences around this most contested period in the birth of our nation and how "many drank from the well of 1922 for decades afterwards, but often privately and silently." Though the deaths during The Civil War, at around 1,600, are comparatively small when compared to the likes of the contemporary Finnish Civil War, context remains all important as resonates throughout the work. When writing about the War of Independence, the Historian Charles Townshend states that "ideas and attitudes are as relevant as legal definitions and statistical indices' and that 'the domestic context is obviously crucial to understanding the war". This observation can equally apply to The Civil War and as Clifford poignantly noted in a 2023 Cork Examiner commemorate piece on the Civil War that "years fail to cover over the senseless waste of young lives." Where this complementary volume really resonates along with its predecessors is in the superbly generated maps contained therein, allied to a plethora of previously unassessed photographs and contemporary documents. This review doesn't allow a complete overview of this Atlas such is the depth and variety contained therein. But there is a wonderful analysis of how the Civil War impinged on Arts and Culture and how as part of the propaganda war fought by both sides, the "Cartoon War" played such a crucial role. Indeed Grace Gifford, widow of Joseph Plunkett executed in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising was a gifted and subversive artist for Anti-Treaty cartoons directed at the Free State Government. Professor Terence Dooley of Maynooth University (MU) provides one of the most interesting contributions in this work in addressing the destruction of the "Big Houses" of the Anglo-Irish Aristocracy, many of which were destroyed amidst the crucible of violence and counter- violence perpetrated by all sides during the revolutionary period. He notes that during the Civil War such burnings dwarfed the destruction during the preceding War of Independence. These arson attacks during the revolutionary years were not always as straightforward as it might appear, and while ostensibly many of the burnings were associated with political upheaval, many of them equally coalesced around local agrarian disputes. There were mirrored in long standing local enmities and often petty hatreds, where the mantle of republicanism was a convenient cloak for many arsonists. In essence, this in effect created "micro social revolution" throughout the country. The 1923 Land Act introduced by Agricultural Minister Patrick Hogan gave the nascent state under the aegis of the Irish Land Commission the power to compulsorily acquire lands belonging to the former landlord class for redistribution, in effect hastening the end of the "longer revolution" that had begun with the Land War of 1879. A significant contribution of this work is the role of women activists, the vast majority of Cumann na mBan were irrevocably and unrelentingly opposed to the Treaty and for which they suffered considerable opprobrium. They were in many respects subsequently airbrushed from the history of the Revolutionary period, this work 'resets' their critical role both on the Anti-Treaty and Pro-Treaty divide. Indeed, the legacy of the Cumann na mBan split is vital to acknowledge in our remembering of the Irish Civil War, as it was a war not only of brother against brother, but also as Mary McAuliffe of UCD has poignantly noted, of sister against sister. In this regard Laura McAtackney's article on Graffiti of the Women in Kilmainham Jail is particularly poignant. While no side of the conflict had a monopoly of violence one of the most disturbing and traumatic examinations is on the use of violence by the Free State Government especially in Kerry during the "Terror Month," of March 1923 that witnessed the Ballyseedy Massacre outside Tralee and other related extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the nascent Free State army. Sean Enright's article on the "Execution Policy" is simply chilling. The use of execution by the Irish Free State in the Civil War was relatively harsh compared to the recent British record. In contrast with 81 official executions by the Irish Free State government, the British had executed 24 IRA volunteers during the 1919–21 conflict. In January 1923 alone 34 are executed. W.B Yeats in his poem "Meditations in Time of Civil War" spoke of how "we had fed the heart on fantasies; the heart's grown brutal from the fare." BOOK REVIEW ATLAS OF THE IRISH CIVIL WAR Publisher: Cork University Press (2024) Editors: Hélène O'Keeffe, John Crowley, Donal Ó Drisceoil, John Borgonovo and Mike Murphy ISBN: 9781782055921 Reviewed By Dr Rory Finegan

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