In order to get an understanding of the 1916 Rising - which is something like a revolution, but it might all together be a different thing depending on how you look at it - we will first have to look at the past of Ireland's history.
Before 1916 - A Short Irish History
The English rule over Ireland began in the 12th century when King Henry II secured lordship over the south-eastern area of Ireland, which would mostly be Dublin and its surroundings. Only the Tudors in the 16th century managed to get a hold of the entire country. From then on the Irish were more or less ruled by the English. At first the English set up in Dublin and ruled the country from there, but as the centuries progressed a system called Home Rule was put into place, which basically gave the Irish a bit more freedom in decision making (at least this is how I understood it). Also how I understood it a lot of the Irish culture and especially the language was being suppressed during those times. ***Just an aside, I think this Home Rule system was actually never really put into place as events seemed to happen in a really quick manner around that time...***
Involved Parties
What we also have to look at first is who was actually involved in the party and what were their political goals and motivations? I will sum this up very shortly:
- IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) - formed in 1858, secret organisation with the goal of Irish independency
- Gaelic Athletic Association - founded to promote Irish sports primarily, but also dancing, music and the Irish language in 1884.
- Gaelic League - founded in 1893 to promote the Irish language.
- Sinn Féin - founded in 1905. As I understand this party was formed to bring together the various nationalists across the country.
- Ulster Volunteers - founded in November 1913. They were happy with being ruled by London and didn't want anything to change.
- Irish Volunteers - founded in 1914. Many members joined them (possibly even 200'000), but only a couple of thousands got military training.
Come August 1914 the First World War broke out and the reactions in Ireland were very different. Many men in the Ulster Volunteers were going to postpone the issue of Home Rule and actually went to fight for the British Army agaist the Germans. But the IRB thought that the British involvement in the war would be an amazing opportunity to seize power themselves, seeing that the military forces of England would be focused towards Germany and not Ireland. Also a small percentage of men in the Ulster Volunteers didn't want to help England and so the party split (those ones with England: National Volunteers, the others Irish Volunteers).
The Planning
I think the planning mostly started in 1915 with primarily men both in the IRB and the Irish Volunteers (they were in both organisations) being involved in the process. Names include: Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Eamont Ceannt, Thomas MacDonagh, Tom Clarke and Seán MacDermott, later on also James Connolly got involved. These 7 men were going to plan the rising and had the idea that they were going to accept any help they could get from Germany... I think the main problem was that they didn't have enough weapons and so they tried to get weapons shipped into Ireland.
The 1916 Easter Rising
On Easter Monday the Rising started. Strategically important points were seized throughout the city, but they didn't succeed in taking over Trinity College (only armed with a handfull of unionist students) and Dublin Castle (also not very heavily armed).
On the first day the English forces where generally rather surprised and uncoordinated in their response.
As the rebels had failed to seize the train stations or the harbour the English just brought over reinforcements. Also they brought in a vessel called Helga on the Liffey. So together with the guns positioned inside Trinity and the support of the Helga on the river the English were able to get the situation under control. Eventually the rebells had to surrender to avoid further loss of life.
I think that over 400 people died and more than 200 of these were civilians.
Aftermath
What happened after the Easter Rising is in my view not a nice chapter of history... An enormous amount of people were arrested and the leaders were sentence to death and executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Jail in Dublin.
By 1922 the Irish Free State had been created which later became the Republic of Ireland.
Traitors or Heroes?
I guess there is two main views of the people involved in the 1916 Rising... the ones that were executed can be seen as martyrs, seeing they died for a cause they believed in. But also they - in a way - were traitors to their country, which at the time was ruled by the British.
Also opinions as to wheather the Rising was necessary to make Ireland become an independent republic are different. Some think that yes it has helped and some would argue that with the Home Rule acts and how things were going it would have happened anyway.
Seeing the exhibition at the National Museum about the 1916 Rising I personally tend to rather admire the courage and dedication the leaders showed and I am appalled by the fact that they were executed. My knowledge of the events is too basic at the current time to make any different judgement than the one based on how I felt after reading all the material at the exhibiton.
If you are interested in this event I would absolutely recommend you to have a look at some of these links. The whole situation was a lot more complex and there were many other things going on as well than I was able to write about in this post. Also please feel free to comment!
Library Online Exhibition
Home Rule and Ireland
The 1916 Easter Rising
Personal View of 1916
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