Customer Reviews

1916: The Easter Rising

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As early as September, 1914, the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had decided that an insurrection would take place in Ireland while Britain was preoccupied fighting Germany. Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, was the chosen day for the planned rebellion, which would involve slightly less than 2,000 IRB members and militia, including about 100 women from the Cumann na mBan (women's branch) of the Irish Volunteers. These brave women served as nurses, couriers, and secretaries. Although many other areas of Ireland were supposed to take part in the rebellion, lack of communication between the Irish leaders resulted in the insurrection being largely confined to Dublin.

In the Dublin area, 2,500 British soldiers were stationed, but within 48 hours they were reinforced by 2,000 troops from England who landed at Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) harbour. Also, there were 9,500 armed members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C.) that were available. Against these odds, the Irish rebels never stood a chance, and on Saturday, April 29, the rebel leaders held a council of war and decided to surrender unconditionally.

It is estimated that during the week of fighting, the rebels lost about 1,350 people killed or wounded, while aprox. 1,214 civilians were killed or wounded. The official British army casualty list gave a total of 516 officers and men killed, wounded, or missing. 16 leaders of the rebellion were court-martialled and executed by the British. During and immediately after the Easter Rising, the Irish population was largely against the rebels, because many Irish men were serving in the British army in France and thus the rebels were viewed as traitors. But the public opinion drastically shifted in favor of the rebels following the executions.

Michael Collins, who survived the rebellion, said afterwards,"It appeared at the time of the surrender to have failed, but that valiant effort and the martyrdoms that followed it finally awoke the sleeping spirit of Ireland." Padraic Pearse, one of the top leaders of the Irish rebels, said at his court-martial,"We seem to have lost. We have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose. To fight is to win."

This gripping book tells the story of the tragic Easter Rising like no other, and Tim Pat Coogan has proved himself to be one of the best writers on Ireland's "Troubled Times". This book is an absolute must for anyone interested in Irish history!

Not the same-old, same-old wordy, dry and painful Coogan we've come to know and expect. Concise, succinct and absolutely brilliant. Some of his very finest work details the events surrounding the events of the 1916 rising. This is really a must read and in the current hard cover addition a must-have for any serious student/collector of the troubles. An investment that will no doubt pay dividends.

Tim pat Coogan has written a narrative history of 1916 that takes in the crucial political events that led up to the armed rebellion. He puts the Easter Rising completely within context of the time : the refusal of the Unionists to go along with the - passed by Westminster Parliament - Home Rule Bill. The Larne gun running which armed Ulster against the Parliament of Westminster's Home Rule Bill and the direct interference of the British Conservative Party in Irish affairs. Coogan details the rebellion in personal descriptions of the leaders and what they set out to do - and what they accomplished in terms of shaping modern Ireland. He quotes from many sources but one of the most poignant is from the Glasgow Observer of the week of the Easter Rising:

"No Irish Nationalist should grovel to his British neighbour over what happened in Dublin on Monday. It was simply the consequences of what happened earlier at Larne when the associates and followers of Sir Edward Carson flouted and defied the law of the land, held up it legal guardians and engaged in military operations".

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to get familiar with all the events - political and military - surrounding the Irish rebellion.

This book is a to the point informative guide to the events leading up to and during the Insurection. It is non partison for the most part and also talks about modern develpments on events in Ireland. I think this is a great book for anyone who wants a basic knowledge of the Easter Rebellion.

1916 is far shorter than most of Coogan's work, likely because the Rising itself lasted only a week, whereas the Troubles ( The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal and the Search for Peace) could be argued anywhere from thirty to fifty years to far longer and the IRA (The IRA) has been in existence in some form off and on for more than ninety years now. The length does not make it a good introduction to Irish history for the casual reader. It is dry, spare facts, related in a prose style that is nearly a time line of events constructed into short sentences and paragraphs.

Of course, this is Coogan's style and an excellent one for straight history, which is exactly what 1916: The Easter Rising is. It is well-researched history, presented ably and backed up by reprinting many of his first-hand sources in the form of photos and orders. I was happily shocked to find a reprint of Padraig Pearse's signed surrender, for instance.

As an avid Irish hobbyist historian, I loved it and respect Coogan immensely for not embellishing the facts with opinion (although as a Coogan reader I'm familiar with his political leanings, they don't overpower the narrative here) or flowery language. The casual reader, however would probably be better served by finding a more accessible account of the Rising to hold their interest. I would even offer 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion (Irish Century) by Morgan Llywelyn as a fictionalized account. As Llywelyn says, after all, "History tells how events happened. Fiction tells what it felt like."

Decent and solid telling of the seminal event in modern Irish history. Not as dry and wordy as other Coogan books.

However, I would strongly recommend Michael Foy's book on the Easter Rising. It chronicles the fighting in each area of the city and also tells many stories of life in the city during the rising. I found that to be much better in every aspect. It was a more engrossing read and full of riveting details. As one who has read several works on the Rising, I learned much more from his book than any others, not even close.

This is a good book if you want a short one on the Rising.

IF you value Irish history, this book will take you into the modern turning point in Ireland. It is a fact filled (if not a tad dry) historical telling of one of the island country's defining moments.
Prepare to tune out distraction and let yourself get absorbed. It is a serious read, and if you are of Irish heritage, requisite.

TIM PAT COOGAN'S BOOK IS THE BEST BOOK ABOUT THE UPRISING FROM A FACTUAL AND ANALYTICAL BASIS. THIS IS THE BOOK TO START WITH. THAT SAID, LET US DRAW SOME LESSONS FROM THIS KEY STRUGGLE OF EUROPEON HISTORY AND LOOK AT A KEY LEADER.

A word. They tell a story about James Connolly that just before the start of action in Easter, 1916 he told the members of the Irish Citizen's Army (almost exclusively workers, by the way) that if the uprising was successful to keep their guns handy. More work with them might be necessary against the nationalist allies of the moment organized as the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers were mainly a petty bourgeois formation and had no intention of fighting for a Socialist Republic. True story or not, I think that gives a pretty good example of the strategy and tactics to be used in colonial and third world struggles by the working class. Would that the Chinese Communists in the 1920's and other colonial and third world liberation fighters since then had paid heed to that strategic concept.

A word on the Easter Uprising. The easy part of analyzing the Uprising is the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland and militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it and therefore doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the strategy and tactics of the action and of the various actors, particularly in underestimating the British Empire's frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. Although, I think that would be a point in the uprising's favor under the theory that England's (or fill in the blank) woes were Ireland's (or fill in the blank) opportunities. The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were entirely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, British Labor's position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty's. Labor leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings I have come across a theory that the Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising's leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. Let poets rule the land. As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. Some formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 or the Soviet Commune of 1917 did not figure in the political calculations at that time.

As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic. That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own revolutionary experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord, as a way to open the road to the struggle merited support on that basis. Chocky Ar La.