Abstract
Ireland's Great War experience continues to be the subject of ever-expanding research and scholarship. In recent years, there has been significant growth in publications addressing various aspects of the war experience, with many studies moving away from military histories to focus more on social, cultural and economic life on the home front. The extent of the Irish mobilisation for the war effort and the motives for enlistment remain the source of debate, however, and this new book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Ireland's participation in the war effort. The Disparity of Sacrifice is co-authored by the historians Timothy Bowman, William Butler and Michael Wheatley, and they combine their respective strengths in Irish and British military history, and the nationalist movement in early twentieth-century Ireland to provide an engaging and rigorous analysis of Irish recruitment to the wartime British Armed forces. William Butler is the Head of Military Records at the National Archives UK and the book benefits from the use of extensive and previously neglected primary material from its collections.
This is the most wide-ranging study of Irish military recruitment yet published and it will be an essential text for anyone interested in this aspect of Ireland's war history. The service of Irish men in the British Army was not new in 1914, and the authors provide a very useful analysis of Irish recruitment in the decade beforehand, focusing on the period after the Anglo-Boer War, 1903–1914. It then moves into regional studies of Irish mobilisation for the war effort with chapter two focusing on the south and west of Ireland (areas associated with low recruitment) and chapter three exploring the rather different situation in Ulster where recruitment levels came closest to matching those of England. The process of recruitment and the organisations established to persuade men to enlist are examined in the next chapter, exploring for example the use of specific Irish imagery in propaganda posters in the second half of the war. Histories of Irish military service have tended to focus on the rank and file soldiers, rather than the officer class. The book offers a useful examination of Irish officers in the wartime British Army, tackling some of the common assumptions around this group such as their socio-economic, religious and political background. Finally, the book engages with one of the key questions surrounding Irish mobilisation – how did the recruitment of Irish men to the British forces compare to recruitment elsewhere in the United Kingdom? Did the Irish enlist in similar numbers before conscription was implemented in Britain? And if not, why not?
This study offers valuable insight into recruiting patterns in Ireland over the course of the war, revealing for example, that 25 per cent of all wartime recruiting in Ireland to the British military occurred in the first three months of the war. The authors note the general popular support for the war in Ireland, which has been substantiated in recent studies of the home front, but argue that this failed to transform into widespread military mobilisation beyond 1914. As has been noted in previous studies by David Fitzpatrick and others, Irish farmers were particularly reluctant to enlist, but the decline in recruitment was also seen in urban areas. In this way, the wartime enlistment resembled the pre-war military tradition which was clustered in towns and cities. The Easter Rising of 1916 is often assumed to have had a significant impact upon recruiting and to have precipitated the decline but Butler, Wheatley and Bowman find no evidence that the rebellion noticeably affected enlistment rates. The authors do however emphasise the importance of political conviction to the decision to enlist and the differences between Ulster and the rest of Ireland in all matters concerning recruitment. As with the voluntary war effort where there were separate Red Cross committees and sphagnum moss associations for the northern province, proto-partitionist mindsets were visible in the response to military recruitment. Historians have often spoken of the conditional unity created by the outbreak of war and the reprieve it offered from potential civil war conflict but Bowman, Wheatley and Butler emphasise the lack of common purpose and the widening chasm between Ulster unionists and the remainder of the population. Religion was another area of disparity: Irish Protestants made up 44 per cent of all Irish recruits despite comprising just 25 per cent of the pre-war population.
The relatively low mobilisation in Ireland is attributed in part due to the slow recognition of the government of the need to establish local recruiting efforts aimed at addressing the specific social, economic and political conditions in Ireland. When considering motives for enlistment, we often focus on the individual and their response to the circumstances. The authors however highlight the significant differences in the penetration of the mobilisation process across Ireland. In many parts of the south and west of Ireland, recruitment committees were not formed, and there were few public meetings held to encourage enlistment. The book provides a great wealth of detail on recruitment practices and the patterns of mobilisation to the British forces. It is less convincing in its brief references to other forms of mobilisation. There is a brief interesting discussion of Irish recruitment efforts for the Queen Mary Army Auxiliary Corps (QMAAC) and it would have been helpful to learn more about the relative success of these efforts and the extent of Irish female mobilisation for the auxiliary services. The QMAAC, established in July 1917 (titled the WAAC initially) to provide support services for the British Army, arose out of two voluntary organisations, the Women's Voluntary Reserve and the Women's Legion. These were founded by the Marchioness of Londonderry in 1914 and 1915 and drew in many Irish members. The Women's Royal Naval Service, and to a lesser extent the Women's Royal Air Force, also recruited women in Ireland. There has been substantial new research in recent years into civil mobilisation on the home front and I would have liked to see some more engagement with this literature which can further develop our understanding of the social and economic context of wartime recruitment. These minor points aside, The Disparity of Sacrifice makes a substantive contribution to our understanding of Ireland's First World War experience and the political turmoil and division that followed in the years after the Armistice.