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THE PETER HART AFFAIR IN PERSPECTIVE: HISTORY, IDEOLOGY, AND THE IRISH REVOLUTION

Part of: Historiographical Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2017

IAN MCBRIDE
IAN MCBRIDE*
Affiliation:
Hertford College, Oxford
*
Hertford College, Oxford, ox1 3bw[email protected]
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Abstract

Peter Hart's monograph, The IRA and its enemies: violence and community in Cork, 1916–1923, has been the subject of a rancorous debate in Ireland since its publication in 1998. In academic journals, in the press, and in the electronic media, Hart has been accused repeatedly of deliberately distorting evidence. The controversy turns on Hart's depiction of Irish revolutionary violence, and in particular upon a chapter entitled ‘Taking it out on the Protestants’, in which the IRA was portrayed as fundamentally sectarian. This article seeks to address a question that must occasionally trouble all of us: what are historical disagreements really about? To achieve a wider perspective on the Peter Hart affair it considers the famous row over historical ‘fabrication’ ignited by David Abraham's The collapse of the Weimar Republic (1981) and Keith Windschuttle's assault on Lyndall Ryan's book The Aboriginal Tasmanians (1981; 2nd edition 1996). The comparison suggests that when historians fall out over footnotes there is more involved than scholarly propriety.

Type
Historiographical Review
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 249 - 271
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 Hart, Peter, The IRA and its enemies: violence and community in Cork, 1916–1923 (Oxford, 1998), p. 288 Google Scholar.

2 www.historyireland.com/hedge-schools/.

3 See, for example, ‘Historians clash over Protestant massacre’, Sunday Times (Irish edition), 13 May 2012 Google ScholarPubMed.

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5 I am grateful to John Regan for permission to quote this passage from an unpublished paper presented at Trinity College Dublin on 28 September 2011. The comment quoted is aimed at Prof. David Fitzpatrick (Hart's supervisor) and Prof. Charles Townshend (who examined Hart's Ph.D. thesis).

6 Hart, Peter, ed., British intelligence in Ireland, 1920–1921: the final reports (Cork, 2002), pp. 49 and 102 (footnote)Google Scholar.

7 For reasons of space, I will not consider here John Regan's speculative attempt to connect Dunmanway to the abduction of three British intelligence officers in Macroom on the afternoon of 26 April 1922, just twelve hours before the massacre began. Regan suggests that Dunmanway Protestants might have been named as informers during the two-day interrogation of the British officers. It should be noted, however, that his case rests partly on the identification of the Dunmanway victims as the same ‘brave men, many of whom were murdered’ recorded in the Record of the rebellion as cited above: see his ‘The “Bandon Valley massacre” as a historical problem’, History, 95 (2012), p. 88 Google Scholar. But as Eve Morrison, David Fitzpatrick, and others have pointed out, Regan has misdated the Record of the rebellion. This document was in fact written before April 1922 and explicitly covers the events of January 1920 to July 1921.

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9 This paragraph is based on Keane, Massacre in West Cork, chs. 4–6, quotation on p. 137.

10 The original is in University College Dublin: Ernie O'Malley notebooks, P17b/112, pp. 74–83. It should also be noted that Busteed is, by general consensus, an unreliable source: see Meehan, Niall, ‘Examining Peter Hart’, Field Day Review, 10 (2014), pp. 126–33Google Scholar. There is no reference to the April killings in Busteed's application for a military service pension: see the Military Service Pensions Collection (www.militaryarchives.ie/collections/online-collections/military-service-pensions-collection), file reference MSP34REF4903.

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54 Novick, That noble dream, pp. 612–21. My discussion is no doubt biased towards defenders of Abraham, not for political reasons but because Charles Maier, Geoff Eley, Natalie Zemon Davies, and Arno Meyer are all innovative historians known very widely outside their own fields.

55 Macintyre, Stuart and Clark, Anna, The history wars (Melbourne, 2003), p. 1 Google Scholar. An account of the Windschuttle/Ryan spat can be found in ibid., pp. 160–70. See also Curthoys, Ann and Docker, John, Is history fiction? (Sydney, 2006), pp. 229–32Google Scholar.

56 My understanding of the Australian case, such as it is, owes much to conversations with Graeme Davison of Monash University, regarded as a moderate in the history wars.

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64 The issues raised by Kilmichael are also less interesting. When I asked an Israeli post-graduate some years ago for her response to the Kilmichael controversy she shrugged and said, ‘show me a war where nobody gets shot in the back’.

65 David Fitzpatrick's measured verdict is surely right: Hart was not always sufficiently careful ‘in his rush to be interesting, original and provocative’. Fitzpatrick, David, ‘Ethnic cleansing, ethical smearing and Irish historians’, History, 98 (2013), pp. 135–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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67 This trend can be seen in different types of literature, but one early example of what I have in mind is Christopher R. Browning's unforgettable Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland (London, 1992)Google Scholar.

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70 Kalyvas, Logic of violence, pp. 60, 246, 274, 304–9.

71 Hart, IRA and its enemies, pp. 17–18, 79, 88.

72 Kalyvas suggests that the targeting of informers is often highly inaccurate but nonetheless effective. ‘To achieve deterrence’, he writes, ‘political actors must convince the targeted population that they are able to monitor and sanction their behaviour with reasonable accuracy. In other words, they need to cultivate a perception of credible selection’ (Kalyvas, Logic of violence, p. 190, his emphasis).

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74 See n. 10 above (my emphasis). What is not clear is whether this remark was made by Busteed or O'Malley, or to which shootings it refers.

75 Moody, T. W., ‘A new history of Ireland’, IHS, 16 (1968–9), p. 251 Google Scholar.