The events of Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, are generally regarded as having marked a decisive turning-point in the military struggle between the British forces and the IRA, the military wing of the underground Dáil government. Three separate but connected events occurred on Bloody Sunday. First came the killings by Michael Collins’s ‘squad’ of twelve … Read more
Over the course of the Easter Rising of 1916, amongst reinforcements moved from England to assist those troops already in Ireland were two battalions of the Sherwood Foresters, recruited from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. One of the Sherwood battalions had been grievously mauled by the Irish Volunteer snipers defending Mount Street bridge, which controlled the route … Read more
Sir—David Fitzpatrick’s article in the Summer 2002 issue (HI 10.2), ‘De Valera’s Performance as a Convict 1916–17’, is valuable as an examination of some important documents relating to the development of twentieth-century Irish history, but is nevertheless open to criticism on several points. The title, which accepts the English designation of the Irish prisoners as … Read more
Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43 Emmet O’Connor (UCD Press, €25) ISBN 1904558208With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the archives of the Communist International (Comintern), comprising some 55 million pages of documents, long closed to all but a very few trusted scholars, were finally opened to all. … Read more
Marie Coleman (Irish Academic Press, E45) ISBN 0716527030 The War of Independence, 1919–21, was anything but a ‘national’ revolt; the areas of activity were in Munster (principally Cork and Tipperary), Dublin and, most interestingly, the small midlands county of Longford. Marie Coleman’s meticulously researched and thoughtful study has filled an important historical lacuna in explaining … Read more