Padraig Og O Ruairc, Revolution: A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923.
Laberge, Yves
Padraig Og O Ruairc, Revolution: A Photographic History of
Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923. Cork: Mercier Press, 2011. 288 pages.
25.00 [pounds sterling] GBP (cloth).
Irish historian Padraig Og O Ruairc has gathered in his third book
an impressive amount of vintage photographs from a troubled era in
Ireland, showing the signs of a rising conflict, the early Irish
mobilization from 1913, the Easter Rising of 1916, the War of
Independence 1919-1921, the bitter Civil War of 1922-1923, and the IRA
ceasefire. As the author explains in his Introduction, this intense
decade from 1913 to 1923 has seen many drastic political and social
changes which are portrayed in this illustrated book: 'The
disappearance of Home Rule from the Irish political agenda, the struggle
for women's rights, the birth of Irish Trade Unionism, partition
and the creation of Northern Ireland in 1920, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of
1921, the Civil War and the transition of the southern Irish state from
British dominion to independent Republic' (p.9).
This book 'made in Ireland' includes an unspecified
number of B&W images, certainly more than 300 rare photographs taken
from various archives (especially the Mercier Archives), military
museums, many private collections, and newspapers like the Irish Daily
Mirror (see p.48). The author acknowledges the fact that there was a
popular demand for photographs and memorabilia of these troubled
moments, during and right after these tragic events: 'The demand
for memorabilia in the wake of the Easter Rising led to a number of
souvenir photographic booklets being published' (p.10). Some of
these booklets' covers like The Sinn Fein Revolt Illustrated, from
1916, are reproduced here in the first pages of the Introduction (p.10).
Furthermore, O Ruairc explains that some photographs of Republicans who
were executed in 1916 were later used as political propaganda, under the
form of postcards, during the struggle for independence (p.11).
Incidentally, the possession of such postcards of Irish heroes could
lead their owners into big trouble: some of them had their houses burnt
by the British army (p.11). In another section, the author mentions a
case of photographic manipulation or disinformation: an official
photograph of a group of Republican veterans where two unwanted persons
were 'erased' from the original image, a strategy often used
elsewhere under Stalinism in order to negate the existence or presence
of certain persons (p.277).
Except for the first seventeen pages, this visual history of
Ireland is told chronologically (see the detailed chronology, pp.18-23).
Each of the following eight sections focuses on one or two years, ending
with Truce, Civil War, and its aftermath. Even though we get many
photographs of combat, armed men and soldiers, other images depict
portraits, demonstrations, or everyday life in a decade of conflicts and
fighting. Because these sad events occurred almost one century ago,
comments made by the author are most valuable, and about each photograph
gets its contextualization, in other words, the story behind the
picture. Otherwise, these old images would be meaningless for the
twenty-first century observer. For example, the author describes the
uniform worn by a Lieutenant from the IRA, aptly noting that he was
wearing 'a British army officer's tunic' because the IRA
were then lacking uniforms and equipment: 'The IRA were hampered by
the shortage of uniforms and equipment during the war and often used
captured British uniforms and equipment which they altered to suit their
own needs' (p.114).
The most valuable pictures testify some history-making moments like
the 1919 Armistice Day Parade in Dublin (pp.108-109) or the tragic
fighting in the devastated streets of Dublin during the Civil War, in
July 1922 (pp.6-7). Elsewhere, another picture from the early 1920s
shows a group of Protestant Unionist workers harassing Catholic
Nationalist workers along York Street in Belfast; here again, the
author's comments and useful data situate this violent context:
'Although Catholics made up only 24% of Belfast's population,
they accounted for almost 70% of those killed and a similar number of
those wounded during political violence in the city' (p.179).
Unexpectedly, some odd images from a bygone era are shown as well, for
example two carrier pigeons which were used during the Irish postal
strike in 1922 (p.251).
For many historians, the 'Aftermath' section will appear
as one of the most interesting in this book, reflecting about how some
of these events were represented, remembered, and commemorated during
the following decades. For example, half a century after the rising, a
group of veterans from the Irish Citizen Army gathered, and the comments
related to this more 'recent' photograph of elders (of the
Dublin District Council) mention that 'For many years the role of
the Citizen Army and other Socialists in the struggle for Irish
independence was conveniently overlooked at a time when Socialism and
Communism were considered taboo' (p.281).
Most scholars in Ireland will be familiar with these events and
might even recognize some of these vintage images. But for this outside
observer living on another continent and unaware of most of the detailed
events depicted here, this moving book provides a clear and vivid
portrait of these dark years of about one century ago. Of course,
Revolution: A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland is not only
made for war historians. Students in memory studies, visual history,
media studies, and colonial studies will obviously learn from it. Senior
citizens and non-scholars will easily be able to follow all the
explanations as there is no jargon. My only quibble would be about the
small size of the selected images, which in many cases could have been
much bigger (see pp.35, 94, 144, 169, and 250). But in fact, Revolution:
A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland was meant to serve
neither as a 'book of nice old images' nor as a coffee table
book: it is just too informative, and because there are explicit and
disturbing examples showing the consequences of war (violence, arms,
desolation, wounds, and corpses), young children should not be exposed
to these images. Nevertheless, because it allows these hard-to-find
visual archives to be available to everyone in a single volume, this
Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923 by Padraig Og O
Ruairc is a first-rate historical document.
DOI: 10.3366/iur.2013.0072
YVES LABERGE
Universite europeenne de Rennes 2
