History Last year's commemoration of events in 1916 has inspired a thought-provoking essay collection
'Was that the conference where President McAleese made that speech?" I was asked when reading this book. Indeed it was. That speech was made to introduce the conference on 1916 organised by the history department in UCC in January 2006 under the title, The Long Revolution: The Rising in Context. The President's opening address, '1916: A View From 2006', was lambasted from certain quarters, resulting in some journalistic missiles being lobbed in her direction. Kevin Myers, late of this parish, described it as "triumphalist, imbecilic and fatuous".
The President's address referred in glowing terms to the architects of the Rising as progressive internationalists with broad minds, tolerance and vision. It was a defiant defence of the Rising. Combined with Bertie Ahern's announcement of the reintroduction of the military parade in April last year to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Rising, it led to suspicion that any commemoration of 1916 was not going to be about what happened and why, but how a selective use of the events of 1916 could be employed by those wishing to wrap the green flag around themselves in order to "out-republicanise" their opponents. Others detected in the gestures and words of the President and Taoiseach a long overdue willingness to confront self-doubts about the origins of the Irish state.
Whatever about the motives behind the decision to make a fuss of the commemoration last April, as this fine book proves, the real winners were the writers and readers of Irish history. In the words of Gabriel Doherty, one of the book's editors, McAleese's speech led to a national debate that was "prolonged, extensive and searching". That debate also served to rebut the presumption that the historical analysis of 1916 is by any means complete.
This volume of essays showcases high-quality archival research into the many layers associated with the background and aftermath of the Rising and places these events in a broad context. Ironically, the book succeeds in being highly illuminating precisely because the content and tone is strikingly at odds with President McAleese's simplistic and exaggerated generalisations at the outset.
It lives up to the editors' claim that it spans "the worlds of academia, politics and the law; drawing on the expertise of both established scholars and their younger counterparts, building on previous research on the subject and utilising newly available archival material", including that of the Bureau of Military History, the files of which were released in 2003.
This is no academic love-in; the contributors frequently disagree with each other's analysis and in his preface assessing the collected papers, Garret FitzGerald takes issue with many of the conclusions. Notable contributions include Jérôme aan de Wiel's essay situating the Rising in a European context, and the influence of the Irish crisis on German war policy, and Michael Wheatley's original research into the reaction of members of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) to the Rising, traced through the provincial press. Their response was not homogenous in its hostility, because as one IPP sympathiser observed, "blood will ever flow thicker than water".
Keith Jeffery places the sanctification of bloodshed in Ireland in the context of the first World War, noting that Patrick Pearse did not exist in a vacuum and that many of his contemporaries "were similarly touched by the insane intoxification of violence and many welcomed the war". Owen McGee details the role of the IRB, "a tiny committee struggling to stay alive", while Rosemary Cullen Owens presents a broad overview of the fate of the female political activists of the era, and the links between their various movements. One such link was James Connolly, described by the Irish Citizen newspaper as "the soundest and most thorough going feminist among all the Irish labour men", though any hopes of a feminist breakthrough were, like the Rising itself, quickly quashed.
Dermot Keogh traces the intricacies of Irish diplomacy at the Vatican, using the archives of the Irish college in Rome, which acted as a conduit between Rome and the Irish bishops. Pope Benedict XV did not bless the Rising, despite an audience with Count George Plunkett. Plunkett and others wanted to ensure there would be no directive from the Vatican concerning how the Irish bishops should respond. In the event, there was no joint condemnation of the Rising from the Irish bishops who had grown increasingly disillusioned with the IPP.
Adrian Hardiman cogently explains the illegality of the executions of the leaders of the Rising, due to the co-existence of two inconsistent legal regimes and the tension between the martial law approach and the operation of the Defence of the Realm Act. As he points out, "this basic contradiction bedevilled the soldiers and politicians for months". The court martials were established under the Defence of the Realm Act, rather than operating under martial law, and thus were subject to law, but in practice, they were secret, informal court martials with no defence counsel for the prisoners.
In his reflections on the 1966 commemoration of the Rising, Rory O'Dwyer convincingly demolishes the accepted wisdom that what occurred in 1966 was merely an unthinking and overtly green "expensive splurge of triumphalism". In truth, by 1966, there was a high degree of analysis and criticism of the Rising, and a willingness, notably by taoiseach Seán Lemass, to acknowledge the sacrifices of Irish members of the British army in 1916.
Gabriel Doherty observes, in his lively and authoritative concluding essay on last year's commemoration, that what was witnessed was "the most engaged public discussion of modern Irish history" for a long time, a challenging of stale arguments and the highlighting of new research and original perspectives. It was a constructive, healthy debate, and this thought-provoking book is a fitting testament to its significance.
Diarmaid Ferriter lectures in Irish history at St Patrick's College, DCU and is currently an IRCHSS research fellow
1916: The Long Revolution Edited by Gabriel Doherty and Dermot Keogh Mercier Press, 479pp. €20
