Book Review: The Development of British Naval Aviation, 1914-1918 by Alexander Howlett

Abstract

National Volunteer recruitment into the British army, via local parades, witnessed only in West Belfast, Derry City, and Enniskillen. This exclusion of a considered study of Irish Nationalism in Ulster looks decidedly odd, given that an entire chapter is devoted to the experience of the wider Irish diaspora, especially those in Australia and Canada. Gallagher rightly makes much of the importance of Irish newspapers in her study and the digitisation of many has made them an easily accessible source. However, the problem that all Irish historians face is that, as the events of 1918 were to show, the editorial policies of many were not in line with the political views of their readership. Inevitably, many of the primary sources used represent the views of middle-class men and women and the extent to which these can be seen as representative of Irish society as a whole is debatable. Extensive use has apparently been made of archival sources but newspaper sources seem to have been prioritised over these, for reasons which are not made clear. Indeed, there are remarkably few references to the minutes of local councils, boards of guardians, educational establishments, or charitable associations. With regard to historiography, some important works have been omitted. Fionnuala Walsh’s, Irish Women and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) obviously appeared too late to be considered in this work, but the PhD on which it was based was completed in 2015. Gallagher’s study of the response of the Irish in Canada, especially the tour of Ireland in 1917 by the Irish-Canadian Rangers, which she discusses in exhaustive detail (pp.113–129), needs to be contextualised with M. G. McGowan, The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War, 1914–1918 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017). The brief chapter 2 on commemoration, contains no references to works by Nuala Johnson and Catherine Switzer. Patrick Callan’s rigorous work on Irish recruitment is absent from the footnotes and bibliography as is Stephen Sandford’s authoritative work on the 10th (Irish) Division. Some works appear but receive a little discussion. David Fitzpatrick’s many publications deserved more serious consideration, especially as his argument that men enlisted largely due to their membership of various ‘fraternities’, rather than due to their political or religious affiliations appears to be highly relevant to the concept of ‘civil society’. Similarly, Patrick Maume’s influential works on the demise of the Irish Parliamentary Party receive a very limited discussion. Gallagher concludes that ‘The Ireland of 1915, as well as wartime 1914, was much more united in a common purpose than it would be at any other point in the twentieth century’ (p.172). This, I think, is to rather overstate the case, as the limits of nationalist involvement in the British war effort, as witnessed through recruitment rates and activity by the Irish National Volunteers, had been reached by the Spring of 1915.