numerous books including The Decline of the Big House in Ireland.
Dooley applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution, and reported the following:
From page 99:Learn more about Burning the Big House at the Yale University Press website.It was also the case that the desire for revenge, particularly in the spiral of violence that characterised the War of Independence where IRA ambushes led to reprisals from the British armed forces, served to spotlight country houses as legitimate targets for retaliatory counter-reprisals. Once again, this is typical in independence struggles. Pashman tells us that when the rebels in the American Revolution ‘saw an occupying army burn towns and turn families out of their homes, New Yorkers came to share a desire to strike back at those responsible for such calamities.’ In 1914–18, architectural destruction on an industrial scale had become an everyday occurrence across Europe, familiar to people in Ireland from newspaper photographs, cinema footage, and even from postcards sent by soldiers from the Western Front. Irish people had also witnessed the centre of their own capital city razed by British artillery in 1916. When, during the War of Independence, the Black and Tans burned villages and towns such as Balbriggan, Trim, Knockcroghery, and Cork, it reminded people of the worst excesses in Europe. Retaliation in the form of dismantling symbols of imperialism in Ireland was inevitable. Thus, Ireland in the 1920s was no different to New York in the 1770s where, in both cases, the lust for recrimination was enough to regularly unleash an orgy of arson.When Marshal Zerinque approached me to write a piece to test whether Ford Madox Ford’s attributed maxim - ‘Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you’ - might apply to my most recent book, I was rather sceptical. How could the random selection of page ninety-nine possibly provide a casual browser with a strong sense of what the book was about? That is, until I read page ninety-nine and to my surprise found that it very much encapsulated the central theme of the book – the reasons for the burning of the Irish aristocracy’s country mansions.
For instance, Tom Barry led the most successful IRA ambush of the War of Independence at Kilmichael in Cork on 28 November 1920, in which eighteen Auxiliaries were killed. This gave rise to retribution by the crown forces in the south-western counties, including the introduction of an official reprisal policy that allowed for the burning of houses of suspected Sinn Féin or IRA sympathisers. Barry later reflected that when the British authorities agreed this policy, they ‘forgot to take into consideration [that] Ireland was studded with the castles, mansions and residences of the British ascendancy who had made their homes here.’31 He triumphantly recalled the burning of several mansions including Cor Castle, Mayfield, Bandon, Dunboy and the Earl of Bandon’s Castlebernard that ‘blazed half a day before it crumbled in ruins.’ He went on to boast in a passage that unveiled several possible motivations:Castles, mansions and residences were sent up in flames by the IRA immediately after the British fire gangs had razed the homes of Irish Republicans. Our people were suffering in this competition of terror, but the British Loyalists were paying dearly, the demesne walls were tumbling and the British ascendancy was being destroyed. Our only fear was that, as time went on, there would be no more Loyalist’s homes to destroy, for we intended to go on to the bitter end. If the Republicans of West Cork were to be homeless and without shelter, then so too would be the British supporters. West Cork might become a barren land of desolation and misery, but at least the Britishers would have more than their full share of the sufferings.
Around 300 houses were maliciously destroyed by Irish revolutionaries, both political and agrarian, between 1920 and 1923. On page ninety-nine, it is evident that one of the reasons is that such mansions were regarded by republicans as symbols of British imperialism and so were detested by IRA leaders such as Tom Barry who rejoiced in burning them in reprisal for atrocities carried out by the British forces during the War of Independence. But there were many more reasons other than ancestral grievance and counter-reprisal and from this page onwards they are explained, in the process debunking existing myths and providing an additional dimension to the scholarly understanding of the Irish revolution it in all its complexities and often murkiness.
Moreover, on page ninety-nine the reader’s attention is drawn to the similar experiences of New York loyalists during the American revolution in the 1770s. 184 pages later, one of the main conclusions points to the need for further comparative studies. Thus, while Ford’s assertion may not always apply, in this case it is not overly far-fetched.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
