Although I grew up and received all of my primary and secondary school education in Ireland, I do not remember hearing anything about Michael Collins until I went to university in Texas in the mid-1960s. It was not so much that he was written out of Irish history, but rather the fact that twentieth-century Irish history was not taught in school at the time. It was still less than forty years since the Civil War of 1922–3 and it seemed that the wounds were still too raw to cover the period in school. That was understandable enough, considering that in Texas the wounds of the American Civil War, which had ended a century earlier, were still apparent.
My first introduction to this period of Irish history was while taking a course on European history between the two world wars. I wrote a term paper on the causes of the Irish Civil War. I had thought it was fought primarily over the partition question and was stunned to learn that the conflict had essentially nothing to do with partition. I went on to write a master’s thesis on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and a revision of that was published in the Capuchin Annual 1971, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty.
Since then I have written over twenty books on Irish history, and this book is the final part of a trilogy covering the life of Michael Collins. Michael Collins: The Man Who Won the War dealt with his early years and his part in the War of Independence, ‘I Signed My Death Warrant’: Michael Collins & the Treaty covered his involvement in the Treaty negotiations of 1921, and this book . deals with the final eight months of his life leading up to the Civil War and his untimely death.
In 1990, I was invited to take part in an RTÉ discussion programme. Other panel members were Tim Pat Coogan, Mary Banotti and the late Brendan O’Reilly. As a historian I felt distinctly uncomfortable when the programme began to sound like a case for the canonisation of Collins and, to some extent, the demonisation of Éamon de Valera. When I remarked that Collins was no saint, Joe Duffy, who was chairing the programme, joked that Mary Banotti – a grandniece of Michael Collins – had just fallen off her stool.
Some weeks later I received a letter from Liam Collins – who had given me access to the papers of his uncle Michael Collins – mentioning that he had heard the programme. ‘I was very taken aback at the time by your contribution,’ he wrote. ‘Since then I have decided to read your publication The Man Who Won the War. And quite frankly I am very glad I did so. As I see your book, it recognises in quite a fair and honest way the pluses and minuses of the man.’
Having written and read so much about Collins, I did not expect any surprise findings while researching this study, especially as so much has been written about him in recent years, but I was to be proven wrong. Collins has become an iconic figure of twentieth-century Irish history. Like President John F. Kennedy, he was assassinated at the height of his career and the similarities do not end there. There have been many conspiracy theories surrounding both men’s deaths and their love lives. For decades it seemed that nobody could suggest anything critical of Collins. However, his triumphs and failures should be kept in perspective. . What I found most surprising during my research was not that Collins was involved in the taking or holding of human hostages for political purposes, but that this has essentially been ignored by history. What was even more surprising was that history has also ignored the fact that Winston Churchill retaliated against Collins by sponsoring the same kind of hostage-taking.
My aim in my three books on Collins has been neither to deify nor to demonise the man, but to present a balanced picture of an individual who lived in exciting times, his many contradictions and the phenomenal range of responsibilities that he undertook during his relatively short life.
T. RYLE DWYER
Tralee