Lecture 9
Rising and Revolution: 1916 and After
Easter Rising – debate &
controversy
• The planning of the insurrection
• The rising as blood sacrifice
• Public opinion and the rising
I. Easter 1916
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Origins
Planning the insurrection
The course of the rising
1916: Coup or sacrifice?
The British response to the rising
Public opinion and the rising
II. Ireland Post-1916
• Sinn Féin gains ground
• The Irish Convention
• The Conscription Crisis
• General Election 1918 and the
establishment of Dáil Éireann
• Emergence of the IRA
Easter Rising - Origins
• Cultural nationalism
• A series of social, political and military
crises
• The failure of Home Rule
• British governance
• First World War
• War weariness
• Blocked mobility thesis
Easter 1916
• The Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April
• Approximately 1,000 Volunteers and 200
members of the Irish Citizen Army seized the
General Post Office and other sites in Dublin
• The rebels surrendered on April 29.
• Supporting action also took place in Wexford,
Galway and Co. Dublin.
• In Dublin 64 insurgents, 132 crown forces and
230 civilians were killed.
• Extensive use of artillery devastated much of
Dublin’s city centre.
British army officers pose beneath the statue of Parnell with
the ‘Irish Republic’ flag that had flown over the GPO in
O’Connell Street during Easter week, 1916
Constance Markievicz
‘Mug shot’ of Constance Markievicz after her
arrest following the Easter Rising
British troops firing at the GPO
during Easter week
British response to 1916
• Fifteen rebel leaders executed in early May
• Executions carried out in a protracted, semisecret manner
• Martial law was imposed indefinitely under a
Military Governor, General Maxwell
• Civilians were dealt with under the statutory
powers of the Defence of the Realm Act
(DORA)
• Heavily armed mobile columns arrested
3340 men and 79 women throughout Ireland
Public Opinion and Easter 1916
• ‘The consensus among
historians is that an
initially hostile public
opinion was transformed
by the executions into
retrospective support for,
and romanticisation of,
the rebels.’
Lee, Ireland 1912-1985
pp28-29.
Public Opinion and Easter 1916
• Not easy to gauge
• Initially the middle classes sided with the
government
• The attitude of the lower classes has been
described as more complex and uncertain
• Public opinion had begun to shift by mid May
• Unfriendliness or hostility towards the police
• Sympathy for the rebels increased
Public Opinion and Easter 1916
Difficult to decipher whether, as Townshend
puts it, ‘opinion was ‘transformed’ from
hostility to sympathy…or…‘crystallised’
(meaning that a latent sympathy was
solidified).’
Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion
p307.
Public Opinion and Easter 1916
‘The city is quiet now, but there is a very menacing
tone among the lower classes who openly praise
the Sinn Féiners for their courage and bravery, and
there is a lot of abuse of the soldiers. At the same
time the latter seem to be popular, at least with the
female population. The sympathies of the ordinary
Irish are with Sinn Féin. They want independence
and their only criticism of the rebellion is that it was
foolish (not criminal or otherwise wrong), but just
foolish because it had no chance of success.’
AM Bonaparte-Wyse quoted in Lee, Ireland 19121985, p32.
Sinn Féin
• Rising referred to inaccurately as the Sinn
Féin rebellion
• SF benefited from this – sparked curiosity
about the organization
• SF became a militant nationalist movement
post 1916
• A coalition of radical republicans and
moderate nationalists
Emergence of the IRA
• Easter Rising left the Irish Volunteers in disarray
• October 1917: it was decided that the Volunteers
were to be used to exert political pressure on the
British government to recognize the Irish republic
• The Volunteers began to arm, train and organise.
With the establishment of Dáil Éireann in Janaury
1919 they became known as the Irish Republican
Army (IRA)
• The IRA became the official army of the new
republic