As Britain mobilized for war in August 1914, British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey judged Ireland “the one bright spot,” as nationalists and unionists temporarily set aside their differences over home rule to fight German aggression. By the time the war ended in November 1918, however, nationalist Ireland was undergoing a political revolution that would soon see republicans take up arms against the state. Using Cork, Ireland's third largest city, as a case study, John Borgonovo attempts in his new book, The Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916–1918, to delineate how and why this revolution came about.

Borgonovo contends that policies designed in London to ensure that the United Kingdom won the Great War caused fresh grievances and had numerous unintended consequences in Ireland. While the United Kingdom officially fought the war to protect the freedom of small nations such as Belgium, hypocritically the Defense of the Realm Act was used to suppress calls for Irish freedom. Deficit spending to finance the war effort caused price inflation, thus encouraging disgruntled workers to join militant and sometimes nationalistic trade unions, a movement also swelled by the introduction of mandatory arbitration legislation designed to avoid costly strikes. Food rationing introduced in 1918 panicked a country scarred by the Great Famine of 1845–51. Finally, the attempt to impose conscription provoked a virtual rebellion. “Ultimately the government prioritised winning the prolonged war, not placating Ireland,” he writes. “It is unclear if it could have done both. While Britain emerged victorious, its wartime policies irrevocably damaged its administration in Ireland” (233).

When the Great War broke out, republicans were a small minority in Cork City. Their organizations, such as Sinn Féin, were of little significance. The political scene was dominated by the Irish Party, a moderate nationalist organization dedicated to achieving home rule or limited autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom. Republicans did have a role in the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist militia formed to counter unionist opposition to home rule, but the organization was effectively controlled by the Irish Party. “The Cork public almost fully backed the war effort for the first twelve months of hostilities,” writes Borgonovo. Between 6,000 and 7,000 city residents served in the British armed forces during the conflict—this was at “the higher end of national figures”—and around 1,400 died (27–28). Reduced to a rump in late 1914 following a split caused by the Irish Party's support for the war, 143 of 300 of the city's Volunteers mobilized for a nationwide rebellion on Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916, only to be thrown into confusion by contradictory orders from the republican leadership in Dublin. Borgonovo shows that opposition to the execution of the rebel leaders following the suppression of the revolt was immediate and not merely the result of the prolonged and secretive nature of the process. Later, when their peaceful rallies were dispersed by the police, republicans responded by rioting in the streets. The city witnessed thirteen such riots in 1917, sometimes involving thousands of people.

As the Irish Party suffered from its association with an increasingly unpopular war, republicans in a rejuvenated Sinn Féin went from strength to strength. Borgonovo challenges David Fitzpatrick's argument that there was little difference in the class composition of the Irish Party and Sinn Féin leaderships; the latter, Borgonovo argues, was dominated by artisans and the lower middle class, whereas the former tended to be constituted from large merchants and professionals. Contra Fitzpatrick, Peter Hart, and Joost Augusteijn, who have argued that membership of the Irish Volunteers was motivated mainly by collective factors such as communal loyalty and family influence, Borgonovo emphasizes personal factors, such as separatist ideology and a desire for adventure, though he concedes that family and friendship did play roles, too. The Cumann na mBan, the organization for republican women, engaged in fund-raising for the independence movement. Its leadership was dominated by the lower middle class, and though it seldom championed gender issues, Borgonovo contends, “the act of political mobilisation itself seemed to have raised a gender consciousness within members” (153).

Alongside the rise in republican strength, Cork witnessed an explosion in labor militancy. Wartime inflation eroded workers’ living standards, provoking them to join trade unions, especially the aggressive Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. When spiraling food prices and shortages led to fears of famine in early 1918, labor activists and republicans successfully pressured cattle traders and butchers into ceasing the export of meat and offal to Britain.

A few months later, republicans and labor were part of the widespread opposition to the introduction of conscription in Ireland. While Sinn Féin and the Cork Trades Council held mass meetings and organized a one-day strike, the Irish Volunteers, now under a more working-class leadership, planned violent resistance. The government's promise to scrap conscription if 50,000 men voluntarily joined the British Army failed to appease the opposition. By the time of the Armistice, only 840 men had volunteered from Cork City and the county. Keith Jeffery called the 1918 recruiting campaign a success, but Borgonovo judges it an unmitigated flop.

Borgonovo disagrees with the assessments of Tom Garvin and F. S. L. Lyons that the Irish Party's organization was wasting away by the time of the 1918 general election. Rather, he argues, its problem lay in its too close association with an unpopular war and government. In what would prove a prescient move, it proposed dominion home rule as a means of solving the Irish question. Sinn Féin, the Irish Party's main challenger, denounced the war and promised to abstain from Westminster while appealing to the Paris Peace Conference for recognition of Irish independence. Sinn Féin enjoyed landslide victories in both constituencies in Cork City, aided by the female vote, a “key swing constituency” won for it by the Cumann na mBan (232).

Making use of an impressive array of sources, The Dynamics of War and Revolution will be indispensable to those interested in the impact of the First World War on Ireland, especially the rise of republicanism.