Defining an Irish Military Elite

Sweeney, Loughlin

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-19307-2_2

Loughlin Sweeney²

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Abstract

In the 1870s, the British officer corps was enveloped in an institutional crisis. Setbacks and inefficiencies during the Indian Rebellion and the Crimean War occasioned a number of reforms, notable among which was the abolition of the practice of purchasing officer commissions. From 1871 onwards, all officers would be promoted on merit—at least in theory. In Ireland, this provided an unprecedented opportunity for middle-class young men seeking to accumulate social capital by becoming military officers. The role of the British Army in Irish society is reviewed from a number of perspectives and difficulties relating to terminology are discussed—traditional histories of elites tend to conflate officers with the ‘Anglo-Irish’, which do not satisfactorily capture the surprising diversity of backgrounds in evidence in the officer corps and the subtle underlying class dynamics that directed the life of a British military officer. The case is made for the importance of class, empire, identity, and political and social context for arriving at a comprehensive understanding of Irish military elites in the complex and rapidly changing Ireland of the late nineteenth century.

If Irish national sentiment became respectable and was organised by respectable people, who would introduce sound principles into it, it would be a great power for good in our country.

—Viscount Powerscourt, Irish Guards, Lord Lieutenant of Wicklow, 1916

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Notes

1.
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2.
A. J. Semple, ‘The Fenian Infiltration of the British Army’, Journal for the Society for Army Historical Research 52:211 (1974), pp. 133–160.
3.
John Bew, The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin, 2009), p. 3; Terence de Vere White, The Anglo-Irish (London, 1972) passim.; Paul F. Power, ‘The Anglo-Irish Problem: A Matter of Which Question’, Comparative Politics 26 (1994) passim.; S. B. Cook, ‘The Irish Raj: Social Origins and Careers of Irishmen in the Indian Civil Service, 1855–1914’, Journal of Social History 20 (1987), p. 508; Jennifer Ridden, ‘Making Good Citizens: National Identity, Religion and Liberalism among the Irish Elite c.1800–1850’, unpublished PhD thesis, King’s College London (1998), p. 14; Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire 1939–1965 (Oxford, 2005); Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, 2004), p. 158; Bubb, ‘The Life of the Irish Soldier in India’, pp. 779–780; Silvestri, Ireland and India passim.
4.
According to Nigel Collett, the Irish connection of the Dyers, while it was identified by commentators at the time, was a misinterpretation, and the family actually had roots in Devon going back centuries. Reginald’s parents’ choice to send him to Midleton College was, according to Collett, ‘inexplicable’. See Nigel Collett, The Butcher of Amritsar: General Reginald Dyer (London, 2007), pp. 1–16 passim.
5.
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6.
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7.
The most extensive treatments of this topic so far are Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India: Nationalism, Empire, and Memory (Cambridge, 2009), and Kevin Kenny, Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004).
8.
Richard Doherty and David Truesdale, Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross (Dublin, 2000), p. 11.
9.
Oscar Gruzinsky, ‘Career Patterns and Characteristics of British Naval Officers’, British Journal of Sociology 26 (1975), passim. See also Aoife Bhreatnach’s excellent compendium of Irish garrison towns, for reflections on the visibility of soldiers in Irish society: <www.irishgarrisontowns.com>.
10.
For example, 253 students from the Queen’s University Belfast Officer Training Corps memorial, including twenty-eight recipients of the Military Cross, are not included in the dataset of 595 as little information on socioeconomic background, or further detail concerning educational background, was available.
11.
See Anonyous (William Cairnes), Social Life in the British Army (London, 1900), p. 168; Shane Leslie, The Irish Tangle for English Readers (London, 1946), pp. 150–151; F. P. Crozier, The Men I Killed (Belfast, 2002), p. 8; Steven O’Connor, Irish Officers in the British Armed Forces (London, 2014), p. 35; David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London, 1996), pp. 269–271.
12.
Catherine Nash, Bryonie Reid and Brian Graham, eds., Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands (Farnham, 2013), p. 26; John Bew unpacks these distinctions in The Glory of Being Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Dublin, 2009), pp. 3–4.
13.
Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan, The Rulers of British Africa, 1870–1914 (London, 1978), p. 91.
14.
Nora Robertson, Crowned Harp (Dublin, 1960), pp. 37–38. Her father, a Colonel, was of course not an aristocrat; but as a career officer, the rural gentry milieu was the world into which he was socialised.
15.
Brian Inglis, West Briton (London, 1962), pp. 10–12.
16.
Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London, 1989), p. 91.
17.
An example of the networks of socialisation in clubland outside of Dublin can be found in Peter Hession, ‘Mapping the Establishment in Edwardian Ireland’ in Crowley, John, Donal Ó Drisceoil, Mike Murphy, and John Borgonovo, eds., Atlas of the Irish Revolution (Cork, 2017).
18.
Robertson, Crowned Harp, p. 74; Inglis, West Briton, p. 33.
19.
Homan Potterton, quoted in Robert Tobin, ‘“Tracing Again the Tiny Snail Track”: Southern Protestant Memoir Since 1950’, The Yearbook of English Studies 35 (2005), p. 178.
20.
See Eugenio Biagini, ‘The Protestant Minority in Southern Ireland’, Historical Journal 55:4 (2012), pp. 1163–1164.
21.
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22.
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23.
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24.
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25.
Bond, The Victorian Army, pp. 117, 122–123.
26.
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27.
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28.
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29.
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30.
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31.
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32.
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33.
Bond, The Victorian Army, pp. 146–147.
34.
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35.
French, Military Identities, p. 146.
36.
See Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire (Oxford, 2005).
37.
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38.
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39.
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40.
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41.
French, Military Identities, p. 32; Robertson, Crowned Harp, p. 102.
42.
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43.
Kevin Kenny, Ireland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2004), p. 93; Hiram Morgan, ‘Empire Building: An Uncomfortable Irish Heritage’, Linen Hall Review 10 (1993), pp. 8–11; for an opposing view, see Liam Kennedy, Colonialism, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Belfast, 1996); Stephen Howe, ‘Questioning the (Bad) Question: “Was Ireland a Colony?”’, Irish Historical Studies 36 (2008), pp. 138–152.
44.
See Jane Leonard, ‘The Twinge of Memory: Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in Dublin since 1919’ in English, Richard, and Graham Walker, eds., Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture (Basingstoke, 1996), passim.
45.
Robertson, Crowned Harp, p. 101.
46.
Dooley, Irishmen or English Soldiers?, p. 12.
47.
Crossman, ‘The Army and Law and Order’, p. 377; David Fitzpatrick, ‘Militarism in Ireland, 1900–1922’ in Bartlett and Jeffery, A Military History of Ireland, p. 379; see also Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India: Nationalism, Empire and Memory (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 126, 147.
48.
Fintan Cullen, ‘Marketing National Sentiment: Lantern Slides of Evictions in Late Nineteenth Century Ireland’, History Workshop Journal 54 (2002), p. 164.
49.
Soldiers from the Highland Light Infantry and the West Surrey Regiment were involved in assisting the Constabulary in quelling the riots. Mark Radford, ‘“Closely Akin to Actual Warfare”: The Belfast Riots of 1886 & the RIC’, History Ireland 7 (1999), p. 29.
50.
Lydia Redman, ‘Industrial Conflict, Social Reform and Competition for Power under the Liberal Governments 1906–1914’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014, pp. 183–186.
51.
Strachan, The Politics of the British Army, p. 74.
52.
Lawrence McBride, The Greening of Dublin Castle (Washington, DC, 1991), p. 11.
53.
Campbell, The Irish Establishment, p. 29.
54.
Peter Verney, The Micks: The Story of the Irish Guards (London, 1970), p. 15.
55.
Terence Denman, ‘The Catholic Irish Soldier and the First World War: The “Racial Environment”’, Irish Historical Studies 27 (1991), p. 358.
56.
T. G. Fraser, ‘Ireland and India’ in Jeffery, Keith, ed., An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), p. 78.
57.
Silvestri, Ireland and India, p. 125.
58.
Diary of Bryan Mahon, 1900. Mahon Papers, NLI.
59.
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60.
Strachan, Politics, p. 75.
61.
Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (Oxford, 2006), p. 20; Watson, ‘Professionalism’, p. 18. Wilson’s career, it should be noted, also benefited greatly from his early involvement in the Anglo-Burmese War.
62.
Muenger, The British Military, p. 24.
63.
French, Military Identities, p. 50.
64.
Robertson, Crowned Harp, p. 74.
65.
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66.
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67.
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68.
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69.
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70.
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71.
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72.
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73.
French, Military Identities, pp. 50–53.
74.
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75.
Peter Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922: Suborned or Subordinate?’, Journal of Social History 17 (1983), p. 36.
76.
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77.
Cited in Strachan, Politics of the British Army, p. 15. The three categories listed above are not mutually exclusive.
78.
Muenger, The British Military, p. 25.
79.
In India, the Cantonment Acts, passed in the same year (1864), provided for an even more overt system of official army brothels, staffed by Indian women. See Philippa Levine, Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004); Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York, 1995).
80.
Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘“Troops of Largely Diseased Women”: VD, the Contagious Diseases Acts, and Moral Policing in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, Irish Economic and Social History 26 (1999), pp. 1–14; See also Sjoberg and Via, Gender, War, and Militarism.
81.
Jeffery, Henry Wilson, p. 51.
82.
Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester, 2004); Ian F. W. Beckett, ‘Women and Patronage in the Late Victorian Army’, History 85:279 (2000), pp. 463–480; Katherine Lyttelton, ‘The Memsahib in British India’, The New Review magazine, 1892. Lyttelton Papers, Queen Mary University of London Library NL/38/18.
83.
Stephen M. Miller, ‘Duty or Crime? Acceptable Behaviour in the British Army in South Africa, 1899–1902’, Journal of British Studies 49:2 (2010), pp. 311–331; Philippa Levine, ‘Rereading the 1890s: Venerial Disease as “Constitutional Crisis” in Britain and British India’, Journal of Asian Studies 55:3 (1996), p. 601.
84.
See Con Costello, A Most Delightful Station: The British Army on the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland 1855–1922 (Cork, 1996).
85.
Verity G. McInnis, ‘Indirect Agents of Empire: Army Officers’ Wives in British India and the American West, 1830–1875’, Pacific Historical Review 83:3 (2014), pp. 378–409.
86.
Alfred Turner, Sixty Years of a Soldier’s Life (London, 1912), pp. 222–223.
87.
Muenger, The British Military, p. 39.
88.
Turner, Sixty Years, p. 179.
89.
Timothy Bowman, Carson’s Army: The Ulster Volunteer Force, 1910–22 (Manchester, 2007), p. 46.
90.
Muenger, The British Military, pp. 113–114; John Ross of Bladensburg to Augustine Birrell, 19 August 1914, Balfour Papers, British Library.
91.
Hubert Gough, quoted in Ian F. Beckett, The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914 (London, 1986), p. 37.
92.
Miles Dungan, Irish Voices from the Great War (Dublin, 1998), p. 85.
93.
Fitzpatrick, ‘The Logic of Collective Sacrifice’, pp. 1027–1028.
94.
Ibid, p. 1022; Tom Johnstone, Orange, Green and Khaki: The Story of the Irish Regiments in the Great War, 1914–18 (Dublin, 1992), p. 89; Henry Hanna and Bryan Mahon, The Pals at Suvla Bay: Being the Record of D Company of the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers (London, 1917).
95.
Dan Finlay, ‘Outflanked by Easter Week: Death in the Flemish mud’, Books Ireland 226 (1999), p. 311.
96.
Clara Cullen, ed., The World Upturning: Elsie Henry’s Wartime Diaries, 1913–1919 (Sallins, 2013), p. 4.
97.
Ibid. p. 311.
98.
Nevil Macready, Annals of an Active Life (London, 1923), p. 82.
99.
Ibid. p. 171.
100.
A. D. Harvey, ‘Who were the Auxiliaries?’, The Historical Journal 35 (1992), p. 667; D. M. Leeson, The Black and Tans (Oxford, 2011), pp. 107–108.
101.
Hubert Gough, Soldiering On (London, 1954), p. 23.
102.
Strachan and others refer to these men as ‘Anglo-Irish’, though I explain elsewhere why this term is generally a vague and unhelpful one when examining the social history of the Irish officer corps.
103.
Strachan, Politics, p. 115.
104.
Ibid. p. 147.
105.
Leonard, ‘The Twinge of Memory’, p. 100.
106.
Robertson, Crowned Harp, p. 153; Jane Leonard, ‘Survivors’, in Horne, John, ed., Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Dublin, 2008), p. 219.

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Sweeney, L. (2019). Defining an Irish Military Elite. In: Irish Military Elites, Nation and Empire, 1870–1925. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19307-2_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19307-2_2
Published: 06 August 2019
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