[quote=“Mr. Totti, post: 663468”]
+1.[/quote]
Noted. There is every evidence to suggest that Collins was a bloodthirsty megalomaniac
Liam Neeson seemed awful upset about it in the film
Indeed it was particularly sly the way Collins gave Childers a gun then a few months later the Staters executed him for bearing arms against the government. Only a stater could do that.
Good topic. I know little about the civil war despite having a degree in history and uncles and great grandad who fought in it.
That’s literally all I have to contribute unfortunately. Which doesn’t seem right.
What exactly do they teach on these history degrees TASE and Thraw? 
Sounds like The Boxer Rebellion gets more of an airing than our Civil War.
huzzah mate-do you find it irksome seeing people with no qualifications talk on these matters too?
I don’t know SS, I didn’t go to most of my lectures. It was mainly very broad stuff anyway, usually covering 100-500 years, such as Rome to Renaissance or The Birth of the Modern World. There was an Ireland 1910-1923 module but I was asleep when registration opened up and ended up with poxy modules like The Kingship of Tara and The Politics of Modern Healthcare.
I came across this book on the civil war in Limerick the other day:
http://www.mercierpr…28MHICW%29/507/
Might be a worthwhile read?
Edit: It actually seems to be one of a series of books on the period.
Republicans should never have agreed to a truce in Limerick, they had the Castle and most of the other strongpoints. They fell for a bluff by the Staters who carried in dozens of black pipes which they pretended were Lewis Guns. Think they actually recycled the same troops aswell so it looked like columns and columns of Staters were marching in for half an hour when in fact there were the same troops who went around in a wide circle. After Limerick fell, the Staters only held two places in Co Limerick. Bruff town and Rockbarton House. Republican leadership was extremely poor, no military stragegy whatsoever. After Limerick, the game was up and they should have dumped arms.
What about the legendary ‘southern line’? Surely the problem for the republicans was that the population didn’t support them to the extent that they were supported in the previous conflict, and that they had no hope whatsoever of winning a conventional war?
Do you mean The Munster Republic? Looked lovely on paper I’d say. Republicans hadn’t the same support, especially when they started blowing up bridges etc. Most of the safehouses and dug outs that had served them well during the Tan War were compromised if even one guy in a brigade turned Stater. From what I read they never really set up a credible rival government and exerted control over areas like the Free State did. Not sure if they could have won a conventional war but I doubt it. Their resistence petered out fairly quickly really.
My mother was a primary school teacher (and very much a Fine Gael supporter). She thought the history curriculum was hilarious, Finn McCool and Cuchulainn taught as historical fact and the entire WOI and civil war glanced over. Its an absolutely fascinating period in Irish history and justice has never been fully done by it, in particular by the state broadcaster, to make it more relevant to the public, not just as academic text.
Like most people, I know very little about it.
One of the things that been aluded to on this thread that I find interesting about it is how politics was or wasn’t shaped by it for decades to come. I think it would have to have been, given that many of the main political protagonists, right up to Lemass, fought actively in both wars. For them to then spend years in political discourse with men they shot at when younger must have influenced them in some way.
So what one book would you recommend to me as a decent starting point? (Please no one mention TPC’s Michael Collin’s, I’ve read it and its brutal).
I think by the time the Civil War started, a lot of protagonists on both sides were blood thirsty loons at that stage, throw in petty feuds and access to arms and it was inevitable it was going to end badly.
DeValera’s behaviour was despicable in the lead up to the Civil War.
Don’t think Ireland has been a shining example as a small republic since independence but revisionism is a great things. Only 80 years before independence Irish people died and emigrated in their millions.
The independent state has never been formed properly though. rampant me feinism has blighted the Irish republic since it’s foundation. Very little thought has been put into what type of republic the state should be.
A lot of what is being said here about the post independence state falls into the that’s all very well category. We are only 90 years old as a State. Ninety years after their revolutions France was being overrun by Prussians, America was fighting a Civil War over Slavery and Russia had completely unpicked her revolution.
It’s too early to tell how our revolution worked out. And you are looking at it now from the perspective of a recession. If you asked the same question 7 years ago when we were strutting around the world like the Billy Big Balls’s of Europe, you’d have said the revolution had worked out just fine.
None of that negates that we were rode up a stick by the church, quite literally, while the powers that be stood by, and to some degree still stand by. Until we throw off the influence of that most backward institution we are going no where.
+1. Vomit inducing stuff.
cue that pomposity Gola misquoting Mao te Tsung
still stand by???
And give them a say in this country. Particularly in education pal, It’s sickening how they continue to poison the minds of this country.
There was no revolution, there was merely a shift in power from British political elites to Irish political elites. That’s not to say it wasn’t important, of course national self-determination was important, but revolutionary it wasn’t. The land wars of the late 19th century were more ‘revolutionary’ than anything that happened from 1919-1923.