Hogan, James (1898–1963), revolutionary, historian, and political scientist, was born 16 October 1898 at Cloonmain, Kilrickle, near Loughrea, Co. Galway, seventh child among four sons and five daughters of Brigid Hogan (née Glennon) and Michael F. Hogan, a considerable farmer and chief inspector with the estates commission. James Hogan's older brother, Patrick (qv), was minister for agriculture in the Cumann na nGaedheal government. His sister Nora was a founding member of the Missionary Sisters of St Columban (1922).
Educated by the Jesuits in Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare (1910–15), Hogan left an account of his schooldays in his ‘Memoir’ (O Corráin, 186–202). One of three students studying Irish, he declined to be recruited into the Officers Training Corps. Matriculating for the NUI in 1915, Hogan enrolled as a student of history and law in UCD. He was active in the Literary and Historical Society and An Cumann Gaedhlach. Among his teachers were Thomas MacDonagh (qv) for English, John Marcus O'Sullivan (qv) and Mary T. Hayden (qv) for history, and James A. Murnaghan (qv) for jurisprudence and Roman law.
Hogan joined the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of Volunteers in 1915. While on holidays in Co. Clare he learned of the 1916 insurrection in Dublin and noted its unpopularity in the immediate aftermath. In 1918 he sat his BA, taking first-class honours and first place in history, and studied for his master's degree in history, 1918–19. His career was interrupted by the outbreak of the war of independence and he attached himself to the East Clare flying column, taking a leading part in military engagements in Co. Clare, Co. Galway, and east Co. Limerick.
Though Hogan was absent from formal studies during 1920–22, he finished his MA thesis, ‘The separatist movement in Irish history during the period 1640–1691’, and had it published in three articles in Studies (1920). His first book, Ireland in the European system (1500–1557) was published by Longman & Green the same year. His application for the chair of history in UCC in April 1920 was successful. President P. J. Merriman (1877–1943) granted him leave of absence in October 1922 ‘for work of national importance’ (minutes of governing body, UCC archives). He did not take up his professorial duties until the second semester of 1924.
Hogan supported the Anglo–Irish treaty and served as an adviser to Arthur Griffith (qv) in the inter-government negotiations held in London May–June 1922. He witnessed the outbreak of hostilities in the civil war at the Four Courts in Dublin in June 1922 and postponed his retirement from his post as assistant adjutant-general at GHQ, Beggar's Bush, Dublin. Michael Collins (qv) involved him in negotiations concerning north-east Ulster which were interrupted by Collins's death (22 August 1922). Until the end of 1922 Hogan occupied the post of general officer in charge of inspection at army headquarters in Dublin. The following year he was prevailed upon to remain on as a director of intelligence and reorganise that section. In August 1923 he submitted a report to Gen. Seán MacMahon (qv) and was granted his request for demobilisation. He returned to academic and scholarly activities.
Hogan viewed the destruction of the Public Records archives in the Four Courts as a national disaster. With Eoin MacNeill (qv) and Dr Timothy Corcoran (qv), SJ, he persuaded the government in 1928 to establish a state agency for the recovery and publication of Ireland's written historical records, the Irish Manuscripts Commission. Hogan became its most influential and active member, serving as general editor of Analecta Hibernica 1930–63. In 1929 he advised the minister for defence on collections of army documents 1780–1921, and later served on the advisory committee for the bureau of military history, where written and spoken testimony from survivors of the war of independence and the civil war were deposited.
Hogan briefly participated in active politics 1933–6. In August 1933 he joined the Blueshirts, an offshoot of the Army Comrades Association of which he was a founder-member, and in September he was nominated a vice-president of the newly founded Fine Gael party. Attracted to the Blueshirt movement because of its advocacy of organising society along vocational or corporate lines, in August 1934 he resigned from the Fine Gael national executive ‘as the strongest protest I can personally make against the generally destructive and hysterical leadership of its president, General Eoin O'Duffy [qv]’ (quoted in Maurice Manning, The Blueshirts (1970), 148). His resignation precipitated the collapse of the Blueshirt movement. In 1936, on the death of his brother Patrick, he unsuccessfully contested the vacant dáil seat in Galway for Fine Gael. He served briefly as a joint honorary secretary of Fine Gael in 1938. In middle and later years he detached himself from all political parties and was critical of successive governments' failure to confront emigration. He remained a vigilant academic politician, serving for several decades on the senate of the NUI, consistently advocating an impartial appointments system for academic posts and high standards in the awarding of postgraduate degrees.
His scholarly work falls into four areas: his youthful studies in the early modern period of Irish history; his formative studies in early medieval Irish history; his books on modern Irish politics, Could Ireland become communist? (Dublin, 1935), Modern democracy (Cork, 1938), and Election and representation (Cork, 1945); and his own publications in Analecta Hibernica and for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. His view of history was pessimistic, influenced by his experience of the civil war and by his exhaustive examination of communism, Marxism, and totalitarianism. An enlightened progressive in his studies of democracy and cultural nationalism, he challenged his students to think independently.
Hogan married (1935) Mary O'Neill (b. 1916) from Belgooly, near Kinsale, Co. Cork. She became his greatest support and was a welcoming presence to his students at the Hogans' house, Cluain Meadhon, in Ballintemple. They had six children: Ita (Beausang), Nora, Mary, James, Patrick, and Edmund (biographer of his father; Ó Corráin, 1–34). After a long illness, Hogan died at home, 24 October 1963. On hearing of his death, Hogan's former student, Professor John A. Murphy, wrote: ‘I stood quite still for a long time, overwhelmed by reflections on the man who had been the most profound intellectual and scholarly influence on my life and career’ (ibid., 38).