Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising? 1916-2016

Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising? 1916-2016 PDF Author: James Heartfield
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1782798862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
One hundred years ago, Easter 1916, Irish revolutionaries rose against the British Empire proclaiming a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin. The men and women of the Easter Rising were defeated by the overwhelming force of the British Army, in five days of intense fighting. Their leaders were executed. But the Easter Rising lit a fire that ended with the whole country turning against Westminster’s rule, and founding a nation. But today, the heirs to the Irish state are embarrassed about 1916. They are ashamed that their state owes its origins to a revolution. Along with academics and other commentators in the press and on television they dismiss the Rising as the work of violent fanatics, and the defeat of constitutional politics. Who’s Afraid of the Easter Rising? explains why today’s Dublin elite are recoiling from the origins of their state in a popular struggle. Where the critics paint the Rising as an armed conspiracy, we explain that it was in fact a revolt against war; not a militaristic upsurge, but the first challenge to the awful slaughter of the First World War. The Statesmen of Europe sacrificed millions upon the altar of war. Their recruiting sergeants in Ireland, Edward Carson and John Redmond sent 200,000 Irishmen into the slaughter and nearly 50,000 were killed. The Easter Rising drew a halt to British recruitment, and the blow to the Empire was the first crack in a growing revolt against the war, followed by the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the German revolution the following year – which ended the conflict. The Easter Rising was an inspiration to those who were challenging the Empires of Europe, from India to Vietnam, from New Zealand to Moscow; it was an inspiration to British activists like John Maclean and Sylvia Pankhurst; and it was an inspiration to the Irish men and women who rose up against British rule to free their nation.

Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising? 1916-2016

Who's Afraid of the Easter Rising? 1916-2016 PDF Author: James Heartfield
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1782798862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
One hundred years ago, Easter 1916, Irish revolutionaries rose against the British Empire proclaiming a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin. The men and women of the Easter Rising were defeated by the overwhelming force of the British Army, in five days of intense fighting. Their leaders were executed. But the Easter Rising lit a fire that ended with the whole country turning against Westminster’s rule, and founding a nation. But today, the heirs to the Irish state are embarrassed about 1916. They are ashamed that their state owes its origins to a revolution. Along with academics and other commentators in the press and on television they dismiss the Rising as the work of violent fanatics, and the defeat of constitutional politics. Who’s Afraid of the Easter Rising? explains why today’s Dublin elite are recoiling from the origins of their state in a popular struggle. Where the critics paint the Rising as an armed conspiracy, we explain that it was in fact a revolt against war; not a militaristic upsurge, but the first challenge to the awful slaughter of the First World War. The Statesmen of Europe sacrificed millions upon the altar of war. Their recruiting sergeants in Ireland, Edward Carson and John Redmond sent 200,000 Irishmen into the slaughter and nearly 50,000 were killed. The Easter Rising drew a halt to British recruitment, and the blow to the Empire was the first crack in a growing revolt against the war, followed by the Russian Revolution in 1917, and the German revolution the following year – which ended the conflict. The Easter Rising was an inspiration to those who were challenging the Empires of Europe, from India to Vietnam, from New Zealand to Moscow; it was an inspiration to British activists like John Maclean and Sylvia Pankhurst; and it was an inspiration to the Irish men and women who rose up against British rule to free their nation.

The Seven

The Seven PDF Author: Ruth Dudley Edwards
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780748728
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
On Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916, the seven members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council met to proclaim an Irish Republic with themselves as the provisional government. After a week of fighting with the British army on the streets of Dublin, the Seven were arrested, court-martialled and executed. Cutting through the layers of veneration that have seen them regarded unquestioningly as heroes and martyrs by many, Ruth Dudley Edwards provides shrewd yet sensitive portraits of Ireland’s founding fathers. She explores how an incongruous group, which included a communist, visionary Catholic poets and a tobacconist, joined together to initiate an armed rebellion that changed the course of Irish history. Brilliant, thought-provoking and captivatingly told, The Seven challenges us to see past the myths and consider the true character and legacy of the Easter Rising.

Reconciliation after War

Reconciliation after War PDF Author: Rachel Kerr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000331245
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This edited volume examines a range of historical and contemporary episodes of reconciliation and anti-reconciliation in the aftermath of war. Reconciliation is a concept that resists easy definition. At the same time, it is almost invariably invoked as a goal of post-conflict reconstruction, peacebuilding and transitional justice. This book examines the considerable ambiguity and controversy surrounding the term and, crucially, asks what has reconciliation entailed historically? What can we learn from past episodes of reconciliation and anti-reconciliation? Taken together, the chapters in this volume adopt an interdisciplinary approach, focused on the question of how reconciliation has been enacted, performed and understood in particular historical episodes, and how that might contribute to our understanding of the concept and its practice. Rather than seek a universal definition, the book focuses on what makes each case of reconciliation unique, and highlights the specificity of reconciliation in individual contexts. This book will be of much interest to students of transitional justice, conflict resolution, human rights, history and International Relations.

Historians on Leadership and Strategy

Historians on Leadership and Strategy PDF Author: Martin Gutmann
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030260909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
This book examines the well-covered subject of leadership from a unique perspective: history's vast catalogue of leadership successes and failures. Through a collection of highly compelling case studies spanning two millennia, it looks beyond the classic leadership parable of men in military or political crises and shows that successful leadership cannot be reduced to simplistic formulae. Written by experts in the field and based on rigorous research, each case provides a rich and compelling account that is accessible to a wide audience, from students to managers. Rather than serving as a vehicle for advancing a particular theory of leadership, each case invites readers to reflect, debate and extract their own insights.

A James Connolly Reader

A James Connolly Reader PDF Author: James Connolly
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608466663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
James Connolly served in the British Army for seven years but would go on to lead the 1916 Irish Rising against British rule in Dublin. Following service he joined the socialist movement in Scotland. He founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party and pioneered the application of Marxist ideas to Irish questions. His goal was a socialist Workers' Republic. In the United States Connolly joined the IWW in 1905 and campaigned across the country with the Socialist Party for Eugene Debs for President. In 1916 he believed Europe was ripe for revolution and hoped an Irish insurrection could act as a spark. He was correct and for this he was executed by the British government but his spirit has never been buried. Connolly led working class struggles and theorised them. He is one of the most fascinating leaders the socialist movement has ever produced. Despite great tragedies he remained a committed revolutionary. His life and ideas are essential for understanding Irish history and the global struggle for human liberation. The James Connolly Reader contains his most important articles, pamphlets and books. An extensive introduction contextualises Connolly for anyone interested in Irish history, struggles for self-determination and the global socialist movement. Connolly was a leading participant at the epicenter of events shaping the course of modern Ireland. Those events and Connolly's practical and theoretical contribution are critically relevant. He insisted and action on the belief the world could and must be turned upside down in pursuit of human liberation. Another Ireland, another world was possible and Connolly was determined to see it born.

Ghosts of the Somme

Ghosts of the Somme PDF Author: Jonathan Evershed
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN: 0268103887
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
Once assumed to be a driver or even cause of conflict, commemoration during Ireland's Decade of Centenaries came to occupy a central place in peacebuilding efforts. The inclusive and cross-communal reorientation of commemoration, particularly of the First World War, has been widely heralded as signifying new forms of reconciliation and a greater "maturity" in relationships between Ireland and the UK and between Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland. In this study, Jonathan Evershed interrogates the particular and implicitly political claims about the nature of history, memory, and commemoration that define and sustain these assertions, and explores some of the hidden and countervailing transcripts that underwrite and disrupt them. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Evershed explores Ulster Loyalist commemoration of the Battle of the Somme, its conflicted politics, and its confrontation with official commemorative discourse and practice during the Decade of Centenaries. He investigates how and why the myriad social, political, cultural, and economic changes that have defined postconflict Northern Ireland have been experienced by Loyalists as a culture war, and how commemoration is the means by which they confront and challenge the perceived erosion of their identity. He reveals the ways in which this brings Loyalists into conflict not only with the politics of Irish Nationalism, but with the "peacebuilding" state and, crucially, with each other. He demonstrates how commemoration works to reproduce the intracommunal conflicts that it claims to have overcome and interrogates its nuanced (and perhaps counterintuitive) function in conflict transformation.

‘Preparing for Power’

‘Preparing for Power’ PDF Author: Jack Hepworth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350242381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book employs a history of ideas approach to trace the complex journey of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and its afterlives. Although the RCP existed for barely two decades, it left a curiously lasting impact on British politics, and its legacies have provoked bewilderment, suspicion, and animosity. Formed as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency in 1978, the RCP represented a distinct and often controversial offshoot of the Trotskyist left. Campaigning principally around 'unconditional support for Irish freedom' and anti-racism, RCP cadres expounded an independent revolutionary politics to supersede capitalism. In the 1990s, however, the RCP leadership ruefully declared that the working class had suffered an historic defeat, and the party dissolved in 1996. Combining wide-ranging archival research and twenty-four life-history interviews with former activists, Preparing for Power examines ideological continuity and change among the ex-RCP milieu. Explaining the party's key ideas, their evolution, and their retrospective contestation, Jack Hepworth analyses the RCP's trajectory in a broader political context. In doing so, Hepworth illuminates a network which has been the subject of considerable media sensation and polemical attention.

Banning them, securing us?

Banning them, securing us? PDF Author: Lee Jarvis
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526144948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Jarvis and Legrand explore the banning of terrorist organisations in liberal democratic states such as the United Kingdom. This process, they argue, is far more a ritualized performance of national identity, than it is a meaningful contribution to national security.

Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies

Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies PDF Author: Renée Fox
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000333159
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 654

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Book Description
Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies begins with the reversal in Irish fortunes after the 2008 global economic crash. The chapters included address not only changes in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland but also changes in disciplinary approaches to Irish Studies that the last decade of political, economic, and cultural unrest have stimulated. Since 2008, Irish Studies has been directly and indirectly influenced by the crash and its reverberations through the economy, political landscape, and social framework of Ireland and beyond. Approaching Irish pasts, presents, and futures through interdisciplinary and theoretically capacious lenses, the chapters in this volume reflect the myriad ways Irish Studies has responded to the economic precarity in the Republic, renewed instability in the North, the complex European politics of Brexit, global climate and pandemic crises, and the intense social change in Ireland catalyzed by all of these. Just as Irish society has had to dramatically reconceive its economic and global identity after the crash, Irish Studies has had to shift its theoretical modes and its objects of analysis in order to keep pace with these changes and upheavals. This book captures the dynamic ways the discipline has evolved since 2008, exploring how the age of austerity and renewal has transformed both Ireland and scholarly approaches to understanding Ireland. It will appeal to students and scholars of Irish studies, sociology, cultural studies, history, literature, economics, and political science. Chapter 3, 5 and 15 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Rising (New Edition)

The Rising (New Edition) PDF Author: Fearghal McGarry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191046256
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The Easter Rising of 1916 not only destroyed much of the centre of Dublin — it changed the course of Irish history. But why did it happen? What was the role of ordinary people in this extraordinary event? What motivated them and what were their aims? These basic questions continue to divide historians of modern Ireland. The Rising is the story of Easter 1916 from the perspective of those who made it, focusing on the experiences of rank and file revolutionaries. Fearghal McGarry makes use of a unique source that has only recently seen the light of day — a collection of over 1,700 eye-witness statements detailing the political activities of members of Sinn Féin and militant groups such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This collection represents one of the richest and most comprehensive oral history archives devoted to any modern revolution, providing new insights on almost every aspect of this seminal period. The Rising shows how people from ordinary backgrounds became politicized and involved in the struggle for Irish independence. McGarry illuminates their motives, concerns, and aspirations, highlighting the importance of the Great War as a catalyst for the uprising. He concludes by exploring the Rising's revolutionary aftermath, which in time saw the creation of the independent state we see today. This edition includes a new preface which reflects on the continuing importance of the Easter Rising as a symbol of Irish nationhood, and which looks at the 2016 centenary commemorations in both Ireland and the UK within the wider context of the 'Decade of Centenaries.'