This is a fine collection of essays written over a ten-year period on various aspects of the Irish revolution. Some of the articles have appeared in other versions elsewhere; others are published here for the first time. All are original contributions to the historiography of the Irish revolution as is to be expected from one of the most talented scholars working in this area. Peter Hart's first book The IRA and Its Enemies received both extensive praise and considerable criticism after its publication in 1998. The IRA at War has not garnered quite the same headlines, despite it being as impressive in many ways as his earlier work. Perhaps this is because much of both the praise and criticism of The IRA and Its Enemies was motivated by political considerations, and Hart's new book is less open to hijacking for polemical point scoring. Critics of Hart's earlier work concentrated to an excessive degree on his treatment of two incidents during the revolution in Cork, the Kilmichael ambush where eighteen auxiliary policemen were killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the killings of thirteen Protestants in the Dunmanway area during April 1922. Many critics refused to accept that the IRA could either shoot men after they had surrendered or engage in sectarian activity against Protestants. Elements of the criticism became hysterical. On the other hand, some of those most effusive in their praise for The IRA and Its Enemies were quite frankly looking for arguments for use against contemporary Irish republicans and were no less hysterical at times than Hart's critics. Many of them regarded the Irish revolution as little more than a sectarian pogrom anyway, and Hart's book, selectively quoted, was used as a weapon in this argument. His work deserves better as The IRA at War shows.

The first three articles look at the overall perspective of the revolution. In “A New Revolutionary History,” Hart argues for the incorporation of studies of Ireland from 1916 to 1923 into wider examinations of insurgency in Cuba, Palestine, and Vietnam, among others. In outlining the vast ranges of sources now available to historians there is a perceptive frustration that so many writers continue to cling to a familiar and comforting view of the period. While this is correct it might be noted that many of the celebrated debunkers of mythology are as content to take comfort in their views. In the “Geography of Revolution” and “The Dynamics of Violence,” Hart seeks to explain why certain areas, largely in Munster and Dublin city, were areas of intense violence and others less so. Bandon, a small town in west Cork, was according to Hart, the “Gaza strip of the Irish intifada” (31) producing eleven times as many casualties as the whole county of Antrim. Some of Hart's most controversial and best work has been in actually seeking to explain how and why violence was carried out during the revolution. The celebrated ambushes and engagements of the War of Independence were the exception rather than the rule. Most deaths on both sides occurred through close-range assassination. As the conflict went on, both sides' tactics were heavily inspired by a desire for revenge; cycles of retaliatory violence were key to the war. As in Hart's earlier work there is a contention that ex-British soldiers were a key target for IRA violence. I believe that newer evidence may point to a greater role for ex-soldiers within the IRA. A valuable feature of almost every article is the extensive sets of statistics on violence and its victims or the social and geographical background to the revolution. In “Paramilitary Politics in Ireland,” Hart examines why the political crisis in Ireland took the form of violent insurgency after 1916 when earlier upheavals such as the Land War had not done so. Contradicting some leading historians of the revolutionary period, Hart argues that the 1916 Rising must be seen as more than simply a “blood sacrifice”; the rebels were not “some mystical republican cult” (105).

The activities of the IRA in Britain have been largely forgotten. Yet in comparison to many of their units in Ireland the IRA was highly active in both England and Scotland. Perhaps embarrassment at later IRA campaigns in Britain has played a role in the lack of popular attention this area. As Hart notes their story is part of a wider British postwar radicalization, and many IRA volunteers there were also trade unionists, socialists, or communists; it clearly needs to be examined. Hart also looks at the background to the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson in 1922. Two Irish Republican Brotherhood members in London killed Wilson, a Unionist hard liner, believed by many nationalists to be involved in organizing pogroms against Catholics in Belfast. Numerous accounts have linked Michael Collins to the killing, but Hart concludes that the evidence does not support this thesis. In fact the killing need not at all be seen as part of wider conspiracy as for “two young idealists to take matters into their own hands … was not a particularly unusual political act in the summer of 1922” (220).

I would regard the difference in tone between Hart's two final articles as significant. The first, “The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland,” was first published in 1996, while the final chapter, “Ethnic Conflict and Majority Responses,” is more recent. The first chapter leans toward contending that a form of “ethnic cleansing” against Protestants took place in southern Ireland during the revolution, that “sectarianism was embedded in the language and syntax of the Irish revolution” (220). Yet in his later piece Hart is more cautious and balanced, arguing that the fact that the IRA claimed to be nonsectarian and a “great many” of its activists took this seriously did act as a brake on sectarian activities. In comparison this “brake” did not exist for Unionist activists. Yet Hart continues to argue that ethnicity was a central feature of revolutionary violence in Ireland. Those who disagree would do well to study Hart's work carefully as he once again has produced a superb book that adds considerably to our knowledge of the Irish revolution.