‘Everyday Violence’: A Chronicle of the Irish Civil War

On September 20, 2023, the Irish Studies department of Boston College hosted Dr. Gemma Clark for a seminar entitled “‘Everyday Violence’ in Ireland: Harming People and Property in the Irish Civil War, 1922-23.”

The seminar took place in the ornate Connolly House just off campus, amidst nostalgic paintings, crosses, and the musty smell of old books and wood varnish—just the right setting for a history lecture. Despite prominent poster advertising, the student population did not avail itself of this lecture on Irish history; most of the attendees appeared to be faculty, and the rest were department students.

The broad focus of the seminar was on the daily occurrences of violence, especially arson and property damage, during the turmoil of the Irish Civil War between the British and Vatican-backed Provisional Government (or Free State) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The Irish Civil War continues to have profound effects on Irish society, although Dr. Clark argued that it has somehow remained on the margins of Irish history in study and that a proper historical treatment has only just begun recently, especially during the centenary years of the conflict.

Most of the contemporary coverage of the war focuses on the more public and prominent riots and conflicts, usually involving firearms, which have been memorialized in many different media such as statues and songs. Dr. Clark leveled her focus on the more obscure but, in her opinion, very important daily instances of arson and damages.

She argued that one of the primary reasons for arson in the Irish Civil War was its nature as a public spectacle, capable of enforcing community standards by intimidation and expressing frustration about land situations; the main targets of arson were often crops and the houses of the well-off religious minority.

Moreover, although arson was typically viewed as a shameful tactic, evident in how rarely it is memorialized compared to other means of warfare, Dr. Clark argued that in many cases it was high-risk and high-effort, especially when the targets of fires were castles and solid homes made of stone.

She zeroed in on the motives for arson and for violence in general, to discuss not only how the war was fought, but the basic question of why people hurt others. Intimidation and frustration seemed to be the most prominent reasons for the latter.

A large portion of the seminar was dedicated to explaining the methodology of Dr. Clark’s research, which included deliberate methods of careful numbering, mapping, and categorization of the incidents logged.

For example, census records in particular showed that in many counties, Protestants were steeply reduced in number over the course of the Irish Civil War, and were a disproportionately large target of arson, though the arson was rarely lethal. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, Catholics suffered a larger-scale systematic treatment of a similar kind.

The motive for this methodology, Dr. Clark explained, was to understand the history of the war more from the perspective of the participants as the events unfolded than from the retrospective view of contemporary scholars and readers.

Dr. Clark’s seminar was highly informative about a bitter conflict that continues to influence Irish politics and merited good attendance, especially in a school such as Boston College with such a rich Irish legacy.