Eunan O’Halpin is Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College Dublin and the Spring 2023 Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies at Boston College.

Professor O’Halpin’s lecture will challenge the conventional chronology of events in Ireland in 1922-23. The government’s attack on the Four Courts on 28 June 1922 is generally held to mark the start of the civil war. Yet hundreds of Irish civilians had already been killed in the preceding six months – far more than were to die during the civil war proper, which was almost exclusively a fight between two armed forces. And the majority of those civilian deaths were the result of targeted violence.

O’Halpin will also ask why political violence waned so swiftly and dramatically across the island following the armed conflict. It can be argued that the Cosgrave government’s comparatively tolerant treatment of its defeated foes explains why the new Free State stabilized so quickly. In Northern Ireland, by contrast, policy towards the nationalist minority generally remained unyielding, even when political violence had all but disappeared. But in Northern Ireland, as in the Free State, tranquility quickly succeeded chaos. Why?

The evening will begin with a wine, beer, and hors d'oeuvres reception at 4:45pm in the Burns Library Irish Room. The lecture will follow at 6:00pm upstairs in the Thompson Room.