- Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion
The events of Easter 1916 have a place in Irish history analogous in some ways to that occupied by the storming of the Bastille and the Boston Tea Party in two other national narratives. That they remain politically sensitive is indicated by the care that Charles Townshend takes to justify his title, specifically his use of "rebellion," which some will regard as pejorative, rather than "rising" or "insurrection," arguing that the former "contains the term for its makers, and that term—'rebels'—carries a charge of romantic glamour which was wholly appropriate to their minds" (p. xviii).
These rebels took their stand against British occupation at a moment when Irish "Home Rule" seemed to have been conceded—with implementation deferred to war's end—although it was apparent that a fragmented Ireland was in prospect, because of the fierce resistance of Ulster unionists. This resistance, and the reaction to it, are addressed here in an impressive contextualising chapter, "The militarization of politics," which examines the development of considerable anti– and pro–Home Rule volunteer militias during the two years before the outbreak of war in Europe, together with the grievous split in the pro–Home Rule Irish Volunteers which occurred at the beginning of that war.
For Ireland's constitutional nationalists, the concession of Home Rule marked a new phase in relationships within the two islands, and their parliamentary leader, John Redmond, saw the war as an opportunity for reconciliation—not least within Ireland itself. For the revolutionary underground of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), however, Redmond's September 1914 call to nationalists to enlist alongside their unionist countrymen in the British army was tantamount to treason, and evidence that under Home Rule Ireland would remain a subordinate province. Most nationalist volunteers agreed with Redmond, and it was only a small fraction of the original enlistment that remained in the IRB-led Irish Volunteers. Nevertheless, with a small army at its disposal, the IRB's military council set about organising a wartime revolution—in line with a revolutionary separatist adage stating that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity," and under pressure from the Marxist trade union leader, James Connolly, who seemed prepared to precipitately put his own small workers' militia into the field. Last minute [End Page 937] hitches saw Commander-in-Chief Padraig Pearse and his "rebels" enter the fray without their expected consignment of arms from Germany, and prevented from mobilising most of the Volunteers that their plans depended upon. What was envisaged as a widespread "rising," consequently, was confined to Dublin, with minor mobilisations in a few other places.
Outcomes have been taken for intentions, and there has been a tendency to treat the rebellion as a Dublin event rather than a national one—evident most recently in O'Toole and Hegarty, The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising (Dublin, 2006). Townshend avoids this pitfall, and he gives careful consideration to the rebel strategy, taking full account of the evidence provided by preparations and mobilisations in the regions. He is not overly impressed by the military expertise of the revolutionaries but he accepts that that they were serious about victory—their rebellion may have been "an astonishingly effective piece of street theater" (p. 355), but it was not a deliberate "blood sacrifice."
This is a crisply written, balanced, and well-organised study, which locates the rebellion in its context, and attends also to the impact of the rebellion on subsequent Irish politics (and on historiography, indeed). It is the first major work on the rebellion to appear since the depositions held by the Bureau of Military History became available in 2003, and this important new resource is effectively used—as one would expect from Charles Townshend, who has been publishing well-regarded work on the Irish revolutionary period since his British Campaign in Ireland, 1919–21 (1975). His latest book will be regarded as the standard work on the subject of the Easter rebellion of...