Localities and HeroesHarry Boland's Irish Revolution, 1887-1922 by David Fitzpatrick; County Longford and theIrish Revolution, 1910-1923 by Marie ColemanReview by: Michael HopkinsonThe Irish Review (1986-), No. 32, Thinking in Public (Autumn - Winter, 2004), pp. 128-130Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29736259 .

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of Methodist women in the eighteenth century, there is a greater focus on

individual spirituality. She does make clear that, despite its radicalism, Methodism

still reaffirmed the traditional family responsibilities. The collection concludes with a discussion of the future of women's history in

Ireland by Alan Hayes. He rightly praises the pioneering work of Margaret MacCurtain and Mary Cullen. The seminal Women in Irish Society, the Historical

Dimension (1978), edited by Donnchadh ? Corr?in and Margaret MacCurtain, and featuring essays by Joe Lee, Mary E. Daly and Mary Robinson, is, in some

respects, the model for this collection. However, the 1978 work is more impressive

in its sophistication. In a sense, this new book allows us to assess how far we have

travelled since 1978. Undoubtedly, an enormous amount of work has been done.

As Margaret MacCurtain points out in her characteristically perceptive foreword,

subjects such as 'family, religion, the techniques of using oral testimony of oral

history in recalling the recent past, emigration, infanticide and mental illness can

be explored in a manner which would have been peripheral to the mainstream of

Irish history in the 1970s'.Yet, while scholars such as Caitriona Clear rightly point out the influence of the (mainly male) medical profession and Dianne Urquhart is

very sensitive to the role of male politicians in the lives of aristocratic political hostesses, there is still a sense that this is women's history, rather than gender

history. Is the Todd approach, where men and women are seen in all their

complexities, the way forward?

MARGARET ? h?GARTAIGH

Localities and Heroes

David Fitzpatrick, Harry Boland's Irish Revolution, 1887?1922. Cork: Cork University Press, 2003. ISBN 1859182224. ?39.00 hbk.

Marie Coleman, County Longford and the Irish Revolution, 1910-1923. Dublin: Irish

Academic Press. 2003. ISBN 0-7165-2703-0 ?45.00/?35.00/$52.50 hbk.

In the last few years three books on Harry Boland have been published. It is

difficult to believe that in the forseeable future there can be any improvement on

David Fitzpatrick's biography: a formidable achievement both in terms of the depth of research and the soundness of judgement. A biography of Boland is a vital and

inviting subject. A revolutionary Fenian born and bred, GAA player and administra?

tor, proud Dubliner and the leading political fixer in Sinn F?in ranks, Boland was

one of the crucial figures in the Irish Revolution. He is the only man who did not

play an active role in the IRA during the War of Independence who was viewed

without contempt by Volunteer colleagues. Boland achieved the unique distinction

of being a close friend and confidant of both deValera and Collins, and his part in

the strange romantic triangle with Collins and Kitty Kiernan adds to his attraction.

128 H0PKINS0N, localities and Heroes', Irish Review 32 (2004)

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Fitzpatrick appears an unlikely biographer of a nationalist hero. His earlier

published work was notable for path-breaking approaches on social and economic

themes, a long way removed from the Irish taste for a

sympathetic narrative

account of Republican struggle. His massive scholarship and detached viewpoint,

however, place this on a different level from almost all earlier biographies of

leading figures. Crucial is Fitzpatrick's access to the Boland Papers, which include

Harry's lively diary and correspondence ?

a long way removed from the guarded,

defensive tone of deValera in his private papers.

The book begins with a brilliantly written chapter on Boland's funeral and his

establishment in the Republican pantheon. The Fenian history of Boland's family is traced; Fitzpatrick is surely correct to place the attachment to the secret society

and its philosophy as central to an understanding of Boland's career. The book

captures how Boland's and Collins' IRB work combined friendship and camaraderie

with ruthless planning of violent actions and gunrunning. It was a time in which

obscure young men -

Collins, a bank clerk, deValera, a schoolteacher, and Boland,

a tailor ?

became celebrities almost overnight. Rarely has the intimate world of

the Republican revolutionary been so accurately depicted.

Any reservations felt about the book relate to the fact that it has been so heavily

dependent on its sources. The detail sometimes is intimidating and the pace

unrelenting. This is particularly true of the exhaustive and exhausting account of

the complex abortive peace negotiations of the spring of 1922. The general reader

particularly may find parts of the narrative hard going, and some might wish for

the supply of more background material.

Fitzpatrick's attitude to Boland is ambivalent, warming to his extrovert, warm

personality while bringing out his no-holds-barred political methods and his naive

campaign to stage a worldwide 'race war' against Britain. As arms-smuggler and

propagandist, Boland was much more than de Valera's secretary during his long

American stay. The study of Collins's divorce from Boland mirrors the divorce of

Free-Stater from Republican, while Boland's relationship with deValera appears to

survive all strains.

Marie Coleman's study of County Longford is a valuable addition to the fast

growing work on localities in the revolutionary era, which began in Clare with

David Fitzpatrick's Politics and Irish Life and includes Peter Hart's volume on Cork, The IRA and Its Enemies. Longford appears as the odd one out when considering

why counties were active or not with regard to IRA activity during the War of

Independence. Despite the absence of any substantial Fenian or Land League

tradition and a lack of involvement in the early days of the Volunteers, and during the Rising, it was amongst the few regions outside Munster and Dublin to see any

substantial guerrilla activity. Coleman persuasively attributes much of this to the

South Longford by-election campaign in the spring of 1917, which saw a massive

increase in Volunteer recruitment in the county and the Sinn Fein and Volunteer

leadership focusing their attention on the county. It was then, and aided by their

attraction to the Kiernan sisters in Granard, that Collins and Boland began their

link with the county. Coleman does not find much evidence, in contrast to Hart in

HOPKINSON, localities and Heroes', Irish Review 32 (2004) 129

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Cork, of sectarianism motivating revolutionaries in Longford, and she contests

Fitzpatrick's dismissal of the importance of local leadership as a key element in

explaining the health of IPJ\. resistance. The IRA in Longford was never again the

same force after the arrest of Sean MacEoin and the death of Sean Connolly in the

spring of 1921.The contrast between the active IRA in the less fertile north of the

county compared with the larger fields of the south points to a degree of

geographical determinism in the analysis.

Perhaps Coleman too readily accepts Fitzpatrick's interpretation of the rise of

Sinn F?in and the fall of the Parliamentary Party as a case of old wine in new

bottles. In its methodical, somewhat cautious, approach the book is an obvious case

of a Ph.D. thesis, converted with few changes. There is little sense conveyed of the

individual character of the IPJV and Sinn F?in leaders - she is particularly short on

the seemingly charismatic Sean Connolly. It is more than a little surprising that no

map of the county is included. Nonetheless, the scholarship is impressive and the

argument clearly expounded. In their different ways both these books testify

hugely to the fine state of research on the Irish revolution.

MICHAEL HOPKINSON

New Histories and Soggy Pottage

J. R. Hill (ed.), A New History of Ireland: VII Ireland 1921-84. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-821752-8. ?125.00 hbk.

Gabriel Doherty & Dermot Keogh (eds.), De Valeras Irelands. Cork: Mercier Press, 2003. ISBN 1-85635-414-8. ?15.95 pbk.

The aim of the New History of Ireland is to make accessible the best of modern

scholarship on Irish history in order to remedy the dearth of good general histories and to stimulate further research. 'If history at its best is not made

available to the educated public as a whole,' as T. W. Moody,

one of the founding

fathers of the New History once wrote, 'it fails in one of its essential social

functions.' His remarks are particularly relevant to the period covered by the

seventh volume, which marks the chronological end of the series. A lot of material

is being published on post-independence Ireland, but too much of it is lazy in its

thinking, shoddy in its research and dismaying in its reliance on reductionist

clich?s.The volume has come not a moment too soon.

It is unlikely that a series of this length and scope will be published again. When

this particular volume was commissioned, over thirty years ago, the study of social

and economic history, women's history, religion and popular culture, to name but a

few areas, was still in its infancy. Since then other subject areas, notably local history

and the history of sport and medicine, have arrived on the scene. Volume VII tips the scales at over a thousand pages, but, however unwieldy, it is valuable to have so

130 McMAHON, 'New Histories and Soggy Pottage', Irish Review 32 (2004)

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