In 1914 Cork city was known as “Loyal Cork”; within ten years the city and county would be rechristened “Rebel Cork”. This change in designation owed much to the fact that during the decade in question Cork saw more military action and experienced more bloodshed than any other county in Ireland. Some of the most traumatic events of the period, such as the burning of the city centre, the Kilmichael ambush and issues around possible sectarian murders, have long made Cork a topic of interest to historians.
John Borgonovo’s study focuses on the city’s experience of war and political turmoil between 1916 and 1918. It is the first in a proposed trilogy: the second and third volumes will deal with the 1919-21 and 1922-23 periods respectively. In this first book Borgonovo details the changes the city experienced in the final two years of the Great War. The greatest of these was the growth in popular support for a new wave of young nationalists and the eventual widespread rejection of Irish Parliamentary Party constitutionalism in favour of the more radical politics of Sinn Féin.
... Borgonovo’s perspective is confined to Cork City but, partly because of this, his study casts an interesting light on some long established questions associated with the period. Prominent among these are: What was the link between the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence? What were the results of the attempt to introduce conscription? Was it the 1916 Rising or the failures of the Irish party to achieve results in the 1916 convention that doomed constitutional nationalism? What were the significant differences between the IPP and Sinn Féin? In Borgonovo’s book these questions are considered again from the perspective of the country’s third largest city.
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