Although the 1916 Easter Rising became a mythic event in Ireland’s struggle for independence, its meaning has always been contested. As Queen’s University history professor Fearghal McGarry writes in his detailed and thoroughly readable account, the past has always been subject to the needs of the present.
McGarry views the uprising without sentiment, calling out the initial wave of rebels and their British foes as fools. And yet, as he concedes, the revolt that resulted in the destruction of Dublin’s city center set off a chain of developments that proved both irreversible and inconclusive. The rebel dream of a united Ireland is no closer to reality now than it was a century ago.
McGarry sets his reckoning apart from previous research by drawing from the recorded statements of everyday participants in the rising.
