Ireland’s Revolution Could Have Taken a Radical Turn

Review of Spirit of Revolution: Ireland from below 1917–1923, edited by John Cunningham and Terry Dunne (Four Courts Press, 2024).

Ireland is now emerging from the “Decade of Centenaries,” commemorating the events of a century ago during which the fight for national independence reemerged as insurrection in 1916 and a protracted guerrilla war in 1919–1921, followed by a civil war in 1922–23. The program of commemoration was sponsored by the state, leaned heavily toward official Ireland, and even had an eye to packaging our heritage for tourist dollars.

But it also provided space for genuine popular engagement with the history, and a crop of new explorations of it. Spirit of Revolution: Ireland from below 1917–1923, a newly published book of essays, provides us with an excellent introduction to popular mobilization during Ireland’s revolutionary period, giving far more emphasis to class and gender than much of the traditional historiography.

Traditionally, the focus on this period has been overwhelmingly military. Dashing tales of republican ambushes and heroic valor used to dominate the portrayal. Even the “revisionist” school of anti-republican historians did little more than turn the picture inside out, replacing a positive saga of heroism with a negative deprecation of militarism. While more recent historians have dialed down the derring-do, the military aspect is usually well to the fore.

Ireland was anything but immune to the wave of radical optimism across the world in the wake of the…