Easter 1916

Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (2005), a non-fiction book by British author and historian Charles Townshend, offers a comprehensive look at the 1916 Easter Rebellion, an armed insurrection launched by Irish republicans in an effort to establish Ireland as its own country independent of Great Britain. The book shares its title with the famous William Butler Yeats poem, "Easter 1916." According to The Guardian newspaper, Easter 1916 is "the definitive account" of the Easter Rebellion.

The underlying conflict behind the Easter Rebellion was long in the making. Since 1800, Ireland had ceased to be an independent state. Its parliament was abolished, and the Irish had limited representation within the British Parliament. This created a schism within Ireland between predominantly Catholic Irish nationalists, who supported an independent Ireland, and predominantly Protestant Unionists, who preferred to remain under British rule. Despite numerous examples of oppression and disenfranchisement committed by Britain against the Irish, the Unionists preferred to live under British rule rather than submit to an Irish government dominated by Catholics. In this way, the conflict was as much a religious dispute as it was a dispute over national identity and British Imperial rule.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Irish nationalists fought numerous rebellions against British rule. There were also a number of formal legislative attempts to establish "Home Rule" granting Ireland more autonomy over its own people. After two failed attempts, a third Home Rule Bill was finally enacted by British parliament in 1914, but its implementation was delayed by the onset of World War I. At this time, the major nationalist groups in Ireland were the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Meanwhile, the major Unionist group was known as the Ulster Volunteers or UVF. Over the next year and a half, a Joint Military Council operating independently of UVF and IRB leadership began drawing up plans for an armed rebellion, enlisting the support of Germany, Britain's primary adversary in World War I.



By mid-April of 1916, numerous Irish nationalist leaders were ready to stage their rebellion against British rule. A German vessel was on its way to Ireland with arms shipments for the insurrectionists. To further foment anti-British sentiments, nationalist leaders forged a fake British document stating that the country planned to arrest key leaders of the UVF. However, after British authorities intercepted the German arms shipment, UVF leader Eoin MacNeill issued an order to halt the rebellion. On April 23, Easter Sunday, the Joint Military Council chose to disobey MacNeill's order, making plans to launch the insurrection the following day. Despite this, MacNeill's countermand resulted in a significant decrease in the eventual number of insurrectionists, according to Townshend.

The following day, some 1,200 members of the IRB, the Irish Volunteers, and a third group of trade unionists known as the Irish Citizen Army gathered in Dublin, arming themselves with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and grenades. Headquartered at Liberty Hall, the rebels seized and occupied several key sites in the center of the city, including City Hall, the General Post Office, and a major telegraph office, from which they broadcasted a radio proclamation of a new Irish Republic. In an attempt to take Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule in Ireland, the rebels shot and killed a guard named James O'Brien in what many believe to be the first death of the uprising. Later, at the South Dublin Union, a complex of workhouses and hospitals, combat broke out between rebels and British forces. An Irish nurse Margaret Keogh was caught in the crossfire and killed, in what is believed to be the first civilian death of the rebellion. To protect its officers, three of whom had already been shot dead, the Dublin Metropolitan Police recalled its force, resulting in widespread looting across the city. By the end of the first day, the rebels retained control of most of the areas they had seized. Meanwhile, the British believed the rebel headquarters to be located at Liberty Hall, but the insurrectionists secretly moved their operations to the General Post Office.

Over the following two days, British troops made significant headway against the rebels. Having failed to occupy the city's major rail stations, the rebels were unable to prevent an influx of British troops, 16,000 that would eventually descend on Dublin during the week. Though various outnumbered rebel battalions managed to stave off significant advances from huge groups of soldiers over the course of the rebellion, the British military eventually overpowered the insurrectionists, forcing them to flee the General Post Office via underground tunnels.



On Saturday, April 29, the rebels issued a statement of surrender. By the next day, fighting had predominantly ceased. In the end, 82 Irish rebels were killed, along with 143 British soldiers. However, civilians, 260 of whom were killed during the rebellion suffered the largest body count.

Though the uprising failed in an immediate sense, Townshend characterizes the Easter Rebellion as the first crack that would eventually shatter the British Empire's oppression of Ireland.