Cork

The Irish Revolution, 1912-23

Richard S. Grayson

Events in County Cork during the Irish Revolution point to there being 
many different Corks between 1912 and 1923. The county contributed 
some of the most prominent aspects of the Revolution’s central 
narrative: Clonakilty’s Michael Collins and his death at Béal na Bláth; 
the murder of Tomás MacCurtain; the hunger strike and death of 
Terence MacSwiney; and the actions of Tom Barry’s ‘flying column’ 
in West Cork. However, Cork was also home to prominent southern 
unionists and had a strong Crown forces’ presence. Notably, unlike other 
counties, Cork was divided between two parliamentary nationalist parties: 
William O’Brien’s All-for-Ireland League and John Redmond’s Irish 
Parliamentary Party. There were vast differences between city and county.

This is the first county-wide study of Cork’s experience of the Irish 
Revolution, into which the story of the First World War is carefully 
woven. Both strands of parliamentary nationalism supported the British 
war effort in different ways. This allied to a growing popular demand 
for a republic led to their replacement by Sinn Féin in 1918. This book 
takes a new approach to understanding conflict in Cork through analysis 
of patterns of death, spatially and chronologically. It also analyses in 
new ways the scale and nature of IRA operations during the War of 
Independence, and both IRA and National army activities during the 
Civil War. In so doing, this study argues that some past work has been 
overly focused on violence in West Cork, which was no more violent 
than the rest of the county; indeed, the bulk of deaths and operations 
took place in the area covered by the IRA’s Cork No. 1 Brigade, which 
was centred on Cork city.

Professor Richard S. Grayson is Executive Dean of the Faculty of 
Humanities and Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London, 
and has published extensively on Ireland’s 1912–23 period.