Easter 1916

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend, 359 pages

One hundred years ago, a small force of armed men (and a surprisingly large number of women auxiliaries) seized control of the center of Dublin on Easter Monday and proclaimed the birth of the Irish Republic.  The British authorities, at first taken entirely by surprise, soon responded vigorously, and within a week the rebels were dead, under arrest, or in hiding.  The surviving ringleaders were almost all executed as traitors to the King.  But many Irish continued to recognize the Republic as the legitimate government of Ireland, and the Easter Rising became the inspiration for a guerrilla war which led to independence - though not as a republic - five years later.

A history of the Rising is difficult for a number of reasons.  The near-mythic status of the Rising as the founding event of Irish Independence and the subsequent prominence of participants like Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera clouded the memory of what actually happened even for people who were there.  Furthermore, the secrecy surrounding the planning of the insurrection and the subsequent deaths of everyone involved in that planning leave unanswered key questions - most importantly, whether the planners understood at the outset that the Rising had no real chance of success, and therefore whether it was a doomed struggle or blood sacrifice.

Townshend is fully cognizant of these difficulties, manages to overcome many of them, and is candid when they are insurmountable.  One of his central concerns is placing the Easter Rising into the broader context of World War I.  Obviously, for the Irish nationalists "England's difficulty" was "Ireland's opportunity", but this created tremendous pressure among nationalists who believed it was "now or never", and splintered the nationalist movement between those who believed in a self-governed Ireland within the UK and the republicans who demanded total separation.  The War also aggravated the economic differences between Ireland and England, while the simultaneous establishment and suspension of Home Rule eviscerated the moderates' support, and the continuing threat of mass conscription not only contributed to the radicalization of the populace but also the Catholic clergy who supported Pope Benedict XV's calls for peace.  Perhaps most important historically, the War conditioned the British response to the Rising, transforming the perception of it from a primarily Irish affair into an attack on the UK as a whole in collusion with her continental enemies.  The result was a broad crackdown that further weakened the moderates and strengthened the republicans.

Overall, Townshend is remarkably successful in balancing the many revisionist views on the Rising and its key figures, and is commendably willing to admit that some facts are unknown and some will never be known.