New Zealand’s Responses to the 1916 Rising

When the Irish-born Archbishop of Melbourne heard that Michael Collins had been executed, he broke down weeping: “Michael they have shot him”. According to one of his biographers, Brenda Niall, “[s]omething in Daniel Mannix was released in the aftermath of the Easter Rising” and he was soon to play a decisive role in defeating two conscription referenda. The Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, later complained to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George, that the Irish had “killed conscription”.

Troubling national commemoration in Dublin, London and Liverpool: ANU Production and CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s These Rooms

The cultural production These Rooms challenged traditional nationalistic commemorations of war and rebellion during the ‘Decade of the Centenaries’. Created by the Dublin-based ANU Productions and CoisCéim Dance Theatre, and funded by the Irish and UK governments, this series of theatre/dance performances, installations and public outreach projects in unconventional urban venues ran from 2016 to 2019 in Dublin, London and Liverpool, cities with mixed British and Irish populations. Fragmentary, embodied stories about the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin communicated the perspectives of working-class Irish civilian women and confused young British soldiers through intimate domestic encounters that productively disrupted heroic narratives. Audiences were instead invited to create temporary communities of encounter and ‘unlearn’ dominant concepts supporting colonial, imperial and national spaces–times. As a critical agonistic artistic intervention, These Rooms offered more inclusive ‘potential histories’ and forms of belonging across political, social and temporal borders during the geopolitically uncertain times associated with Brexit.

Counterterrorism in British India

On the night of April 18, 1930, some 100 armed revolutionaries calling themselves the “Indian Republican Army” mobilized in Chittagong, a seaport city in East Bengal near the Burmese border, just prior to launching multiple raids on British colonial sites. The Chittagong Armory Raid of 1930, modelled after the 1916 Irish Easter Rising, sparked a renewed period of terrorist activity in India, along with the increasing involvement of female revolutionaries as assassins. The British Government of India responded with a multipronged approach to counterterrorism that included the pursuit of another international treaty to control gun-running, stricter anti-terrorism legislation, and the ability to arrest and detain militants indefinitely. Whitehall disagreed with the anti-terrorism policies promoted by Delhi policymakers, especially the creation of a vast detention camp system to imprison alleged terrorists, as it embarrassed them internationally and legitimized Gandhi in the eyes of Indians and Britons.

Powstanie Wielkanocne w prasie polskiej (Komentarze polityczne)

Easter Rising in the Polish Press (Political Commentaries)The author of the paper describes the ways in which the Polish press were informed about the Easter Rising, sources of gaining this knowledge (Reuters Agency and European daily newspapers); particularly, he makes analysis of political commentaries which were published in Warsaw, Cracow and Lvov newspapers. He shows a specific character of Polish reaction to the events in Ireland, which was rooted in the analogy of historical destiny of both nations, and gained a particularly strong resonance on the turn of April and May 1916. The author points out to the causes of this resonance of which a gradual change in the attitude of the Polish society towards Germany was the most important. The permission of German authorities-in-occupation for a great national manifestation in Warsaw on 3 May 1916 strengthened the orientation towards the central states which was evidenced by the participation of the political figuring on Germany in this event. Reports of the fall of the uprising in Ireland and the accompanying commen aries coincided with comprehensive accounts of manifestation celebrating 125th ann versary of 3rd May Constitution, which was of significant importance for the reception of the Easter Rising. Emotional stress in Warsaw, strongly stimulating patriotic feelings, created an extremely emotional attitude towards the uprising in Dublin experienced by Poles as a charter almost from their history.

The 1916 Rising in the Story of Ireland

This chapter examines a range of fiction that takes as its subject the 1916 Easter Rising, an event that occupies a privileged place within Ireland’s storied past. It contextualizes such fiction in relation to ‘the Story of Ireland,’ a term adopted by historian Roy Foster to describe a familiar master-plot of Irish historiography, which is woven around the narrative trajectory of an oppressed yet unvanquished nation throwing off the colonial yoke. The chapter traces the way in which both the cultural memory of the Rising and ‘the Story of Ireland’ master-plot have been shaped and reshaped in a continuous dialogue with fictional and factual approaches. Chapter coverage extends from fiction written in the immediate aftermath of the Rising to works published prior to its centenary in 2016, including recent novels that treat the marginalization of First World War combatants, children, and gay people.