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This chapter explores the evolution of separatist politics in county Galway, from the formation of Sinn Féin in 1905, to its electoral victory in December 1918, and includes the first detailed narrative account of the 1916 Easter Rising in Galway. The small Sinn Féin party, first established in Galway in 1906, had become the largest and most influential political organization in the county by 1918; the most prominent leader of Sinn Féin in Galway was Tom Kenny, the Craughwell blacksmith. The evidence presented in this chapter suggests that it may not have been possible to apply all aspects of Fitzpatrick's Clare model to neighbouring Galway. Far from being established on the basis of the ‘Home Rule tradition’, Sinn Féin emerged from the radical agrarian and republican political culture of Kenny's secret society. This chapter also suggests that the personnel of Sinn Féin in Galway were not, by and large, the old Home Rule wine decanted into new bottles.

This chapter examines the First World War, considering reactions to the outbreak and British intervention. Civil war in Ireland (and perhaps in the UK as a whole) appeared imminent and bitterly divided church communities. Events in 1916, the Easter Rising, and after confirmed these divisions. In the Great War the churches stood with the state. The chapter notes their justification for doing so, but also mentions the small pacifist minority. The opportunities (and perils) for Roman Catholics receive particular attention. Thoughts for a future peaceful world order are considered as well as the attempted reconciling role of the papacy. The place of churches, both on the Home Front and with the army on the battlefield (chaplains), is given some treatment; there was perhaps some new ‘space’ for women. Finally, patriotism, peace, and progress are evaluated.

This chapter explores the imprisonment of those interned and those convicted in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising of 1916. Given that these prisoners have received detailed attention, this chapter will provide an overview of the general pattern of their experiences, drawing on new material but also utilising the existing literature on Frongoch internment camp and the convicts. The chapter will argue that although the internees’ and convicts’ experiences were quite distinct, a common general pattern is discernible. In the first section the various phases of this pattern are explored, including the periods of conflict that developed between the authorities and both types of prisoner. The second section demonstrates that there was also a good deal of division among the prisoners. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the ways in which the convicts and internees became a cause around which political mobilization and political competition occurred outside.

This chapter examines how the First World War and Easter Rising impacted on the practical, medical and administrative running of Temple Street Hospital. It might be assumed that the events of Easter Week 1916 would have overwhelmed a financially-weakened paediatric hospital like Temple Street. However, contemporary records show that this was not the case. Undoubtedly, the rebellion presented challenges, but the picture that emerges from this chapter study is one of competency in the face of adversity. The Sisters of Charity who governed the institution established a makeshift mortuary and, with help from the nearby Jesuits of Belvedere College, administered last rites to the dying. Their efforts to treat the wounded were compounded by the dirt and grime of the Dublin slums but such problems were not new. Temple Street Hospital had always been part of a network of charities, established to assist those who lived in some of Europe’s worst slums. That, more than any other factor helped it to meet the challenges posed by the Easter Rising. More specifically, this chapter focuses on the experiences of children who were shot and injured during the Rising.

The years of revolution had severe financial repercussions for the theatre. Although the Abbey underwent a brief resurgence of profits at the beginning of 1916, the Easter Rising and the subsequent War for Independence thrust the theatre further into crisis. The Abbey directors adapted the theatre's aesthetic in direct response to the crisis. Although the theatre's founding principle was to be ‘above the petty politics that divide us’, politicization was an economic necessity. Plays written by revolutionaries, such as Terence MacSwiney's The Revolutionist, which the directors acknowledged was poor as a dramatic piece, were staged in an attempt to appeal to the public's sympathies and thus regenerate profits. Yeats also revised his hunger‐strike play The King's Threshold, in the wake of MacSwiney's popularity. Although this shift in aesthetic was not a matter of censorship, it serves to illustrate the way in which the theatre adapted its programme according to the political climate and provides necessary background for the request for a subsidy.

In this chapter, the history of the Irish Volunteers in Britain is traced from its foundation in 1914 to the outbreak of the Irish war of independence in January 1919. Context and historical background is provided through a discussion of Irish republicanism in Britain prior to 1914, including the activities of the United Irishmen, the Irish Confederates and the IRB. The organizational and gunrunning activities of the Volunteers, the IRB, the Cumann na mBan and Na Fianna Éireann are studied. Detailed consideration is given to their participation in the Easter Rising in Ireland and their subsequent imprisonment and internment in Britain. Attention is then given to re-organization efforts and gun-smuggling endeavours following their liberation in 1917. Finally, the plot to assassinate British politicians in London so as to prevent the implementation of conscription in Ireland is studied.

This chapter examines the role of Ireland’s British Army doctors in treating the wounded in the three primary conflicts in Ireland from 1916 to 1923: the Easter Rising (April 1916), Irish War of Independence (January 1919 to July 1921) and Irish Civil War (June 1922 to May 1923). As part of their wartime duties within the British Army, a contingent of Irish doctors tended to those wounded in the Easter Rising, including separatist Irish nationalists. Ex-Royal Army Medical Corps officers from Ireland also became professionally immersed in the War of Independence and the Civil War. As these wars transpired, many of the Irish doctors enlisted in the RAMC on temporary commissions for the duration of the First World War demobilised and returned to Ireland. Subsequently, some of these men provided health care to wounded IRA members and, later, to the Irish National Army.

This chapter offers a brief account of James Joyce's life and literary career. The narrative of Joyce's life is punctuated by subsections dealing with issues such as the historical and political situation of late nineteenth-century Ireland, Irish political nationalism and the rise of the physical force tradition, the Irish cultural revival, and the literary and cultural ‘scandal’ of Ulysses. Joyce's father and Belvedere contributed to his personality and attitudes. The 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War of 1922–3 set the Irish political events of Joyce's lifetime. The double disappointment of failing to secure the publication of Chamber Music and Dubliners affected Joyce. The publication of Ulysses did not put an end to the controversies surrounding the novel. Finnegans Wake attracted bemused or hostile reviews. Maud Ellmann's study should still constitute the first port of call for the reader keen to discover more about Joyce's life and times.

The Dáil passed the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on January 7, 1966 by 66 votes to 19. The Labour Party opposed the measure and Fine Gael abstained. The Wolfe Tone Society congratulated the Labour Party which it said had ‘returned to the position of its founder, James Connolly’, but An Phoblacht regarded the lobby as part of the process of conditioning republicans to accept participation in constitutional politics. Mac Giolla said that the Dáil opposition could not respond to Seán Lemass's taunt that they had no alternative because the only alternative to closer integration with Britain was ‘to break the connection completely’. The Irish Democrat was fulsome in its praise of republican opposition to the FTA, although it gave pride of place to the Irish Workers Party, and depicted Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army as ‘fighting on many fronts’. The commemoration of the Easter Rising of 1916 provided the republican movement with an opportunity to stake its claim to be the true inheritor of the mantle of the revolutionaries.

In the papers of the Irish poet Dora Sigerson (1866–1918) is an unpublished poem called ‘The Second Wife’, a satirical ballad dating from 1916 to 1918. The poem addresses the marital arrangements of Thomas and Florence Hardy, friends of Sigerson and her husband, Clement Shorter. This chapter examines the poem and the relations between the Shorters and the Hardys in relation to Anglo-Irish literary attitudes to the Irish rebellion against the British in 1916. Shorter also published Yeats, being the first to print ‘Easter, 1916’. Sigerson wrote a number of poems in her last volumes, The Sad Years, Sixteen Dead Men, and The Tricolour, about these events. The chapter considers how these poems reflect not just her anger against the lack of sympathy for the Irish cause in the liberal England in which she was based, but also her extreme imaginative projection on to the sacrifice of 1916.

This final section includes Gore-Booth’s writings in relation to Irish nationalism. Although not generally remembered as an Irish nationalist, the writings in this section reveal Gore-Booth as dedicated to the cause of Irish independence. This devotion was often expressed in her poetry, evident in the first two entries in this section. However, her main political writings on this topic do not begin in earnest until after the Easter Rising of 1916. The Rising was to have a deep impact on Gore-Booth’s personal and political life.

This chapter focuses on the Irish War of Independence and its impact on the United States. Following a brief narrative of the Easter Rising, it discusses events in Ireland from the Rising to the truce with Britain in 1921. It then turns to America, where a new republican organization, the Friends of Irish Freedom, grew very large and had a major influence among Irish Americans generally. America’s entry into World War I was a setback for the movement, but the chapter analyzes one small organization, the Irish Progressive League, which developed links with social reformers and women’s rights advocates, and which continued to take an active role. American events from the end of the war to 1921 are then considered, especially the 1920 New York dockworkers’ strike, which was led by a group of women activists and was supported by the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey.

The soldiers returned to a much changed Ireland at war with the country in whose army they had served and with increased demands for an independent republic, rather than limited Irish Home Rule. Some historians have argued the ex-servicemen were intimidated in the ensuing conflict and marginalised in Irish society. Perceptions of the ex-servicemen became influenced by the historiography of a republican Ireland, from which they were excluded in favour of the few who took part in the Easter Rising. They were a litmus test for Ireland’s ambiguous relationship with England. Were they heroes who as part of the United Kingdom aided their country in its time of need, or traitors who, as Ireland fought off the colonial yoke, wore the uniform of its enemy? However, it is misleading to refer to them as a homogeneous group, they were not, either when volunteering or upon their return. They came from all walks of Irish society and were not exceptional in their loyalty to Britain. Their motives in volunteering, to secure home rule and to fight for small nations, reflected popular opinion. They left with the support of their communities. On their return, they often made choices that put them in conflict with each other.

This chapter documents the history of the House of Maunsel, from its beginnings as Maunsel and Company under George Roberts and the financial difficulties that it went through before the Easter Rising in 1916 in Ireland, to its remarkable recovery in the years that followed. It also examines the problems encountered by Maunsel in publishing books by authors who had already established a name for themselves in London, its efforts to promote the literature of the Irish Literary Revival, and its publishing of accounts about the Rising. Finally, the chapter discusses the significance of Maunsel’s output after 1916 to overtly political discourse.