DONAL HALL and EOIN MAGENNIS
Four Courts Press
€22.45
ISBN 9781801510806
Reviewed by Patrick Mulroe
Patrick Mulroe is a recipient of a Royal Irish Academy Decade of Centenaries Bursary looking at Northern Ireland in 1922.
This is the latest in the series from Four Courts Press examining individual counties in the revolutionary period. Like other such titles, the Armagh book is a well-researched body of work using an impressive range of sources. The text follows the familiar chronological template, looking at the Home Rule crisis, the First World War, the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, the Treaty and the Civil War. Interwoven within the chapters are discussions of the labour movement, feminism and social and economic history. It is a huge undertaking to cover such a diversity of topics in a relatively short publication, just 124 pages. Nevertheless, that neat chronological structure, with relatively short chapters, makes things digestible for the expert and lay reader alike. That said, those that have read multiple county histories may at this stage find the format a little staid.
Armagh as subject-matter will undoubtedly attract additional readers owing to its prominence during the more recent Troubles. North Armagh was part of the notorious loyalist ‘murder triangle’, whereas south Armagh was seen as a republican stronghold, pejoratively labelled ‘bandit country’. The intergenerational aspect of the conflict is not really explored. Nonetheless, the evidence presented by Hall and Magennis does not paint a picture of a particularly violent area in the 1920s, belying the popular notion that Armagh, or part of it, was perennially disturbed. Indeed, in terms of violence as measured by fatalities, the authors position Armagh as a mid-level county, with 33 fatalities between 1917 and 1921. Interestingly, Crown forces killed more than the IRA in the county, which again differs from the situation during the more recent Troubles. The overall assessment is that the response of the government, including the mass mobilisation of the Protestant population into the Ulster Special Constabulary, meant that the IRA ‘struggled to pose a threat in the county’—a very different situation than in the 1970s and 1980s.
In terms of broader understanding of conflict, the case-study of Armagh offers some good insights. Often civil war-type situations are erroneously presented as a binary struggle between competing monolithic blocs. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in contemporary Northern Ireland, where we are forever told of ‘two communities’. A welcome feature of this work is that Armagh is presented in a much more nuanced way. Divisions within the nationalist community are particularly well analysed. Hibernianism was strong in the county. Indeed, John Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party said that ‘South Armagh is about the most favourable seat for us in Ireland’. These intra-nationalist divisions went deep but sometimes only manifested as social disharmony, such as the example of Hibernians and Republicans refusing to play in the same GAA teams. But ‘violence or the threat of it was never far away’, according to the authors. The scene recounted of Eamon de Valera being attacked by pike-wielding Hibernians near Crossmaglen does make the clashes seem comical, almost performative. The danger was real, though. Of the eleven people killed by the IRA in Armagh during the War of Independence, two were leading Hibernians, shot dead as alleged informers.
Another strong section deals with the events of 1922. This covers the murder of nationalists by the ‘Specials’, the infamous IRA reprisals at Altnaveigh and the events that drew Frank Aiken’s 4th Northern Division into the southern Civil War. It was a difficult task for the authors to cover the latter. Most of the Armagh IRA moved to camps just across the border in early 1922, meaning that a lot of their Civil War activities are dealt with in volumes relating to neighbouring counties. Nonetheless, key events, like the taking and retaking of Dundalk barracks, are still addressed. Incidentally, the Louth volume in the series was penned by Donal Hall, and presumably he would have added much more detail on events south of the border if this was a stand-alone offering.
Overall, this is a very impressive publication with innovative use of sources. The Padraig Quinn papers, in particular, give a good insight into the somewhat mythical joint northern offensive by the pro- and anti-Treaty IRA. These papers are housed at Kilmainham Jail Museum but are surprisingly used infrequently by historians. There are also real nuggets of detail that come from the diligent research. When, for instance, six Protestant civilians were killed by the IRA at Altnaveigh, a weapon was left at the scene. This gun was one of those handed over to the pro-Treaty faction by the British. This detail, which in this reviewer’s mind seems to further implicate the Free State side in the killings, was not previously made public and the authors only discovered it in a relatively obscure Public Records of Northern Ireland file.
Despite all the positives, there are still themes addressed in the Armagh book that are underexplored. This is not a criticism of the publication itself—more a recognition that the overall structure of the series is, and with good reason, limiting. For instance, the intergenerational legacies of conflict hinted at in this review are not addressed. Meanwhile, of the 72 internees in the county, the cases of only eight are briefly explored. Moreover, the files of Ulster Special Constabulary personnel—which are incredibly difficult to access—were not viewed. The point being made here is that neither the Armagh study nor any other contribution to the counties series should be viewed as an end-point. There is still much more that can be learned from further small-area studies of the period.