Remembering the Rising and the End of Empire

Abstract

Ireland is at a key moment of rethink. Between 2012 and 2022 Ireland is officially marking a “Decade of Centenaries” in which the country reflects on seminal events that led to the birth of the state. The Third Home Rule Bill passed in the British Parliament in 1912, effectively paving the way for Irish independence (albeit within the empire). After a tumultuous decade, 1922 saw the final establishment of the Irish Free State, with the island having been partitioned in 1921. The most significant single event in this decade was arguably the Easter Rising of 1916. At that point Ireland was still governed under the Union with Great Britain, and the constitutional path to Home Rule had been postponed because of the outbreak of World War I. In this context the Easter Rising was staged by a relatively small group of radicals who took over key buildings in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish republic. A short week of fighting with the British Army ensued, during which Dublin was completely devastated and the leaders of the Rising were imprisoned. The subsequent execution of the leaders outraged the public and rallied more widespread sympathy for a radical agenda. The historiographical agreement—to the extent it exists—has largely been that as a military maneuver, the Rising was a spectacular failure, but as a symbolic performance of blood sacrifice it was a roaring success.1 While the Rising itself failed to achieve its goals of a united, Gaelic, and socialist republic, historian Diarmaid Ferriter has argued that it came to be seen as the point from which all subsequent Irish history begins.2