During the Easter of 1916, in the middle of the war in Europe, a rebellion took place in Ireland that sowed the seeds for the establishment of an Irish state independent of Britain. A seminal event in Irish history - the equivalent of America’s 4th of July - the Easter Rising had significant implications for other imperial relationships. By invoking the spirit of her 2.3 million `exiled children in America’, the rebels in Dublin proclaimed a new republic, one of whose role models was the United States of America.This volume places the Rising in a trans-national and trans-Atlantic setting. In the process, this book expands our understanding of ethnic allegiances and the mechanics of revolutionary networks and diaspora nationalism. Irish cultural and political nationalists, especially in New York, had worked assiduously for years to mobilise American opinion against the British presence in Ireland. Indeed, the United States of America provided an important post-colonial republican model and the Irish were cognisant of that revolutionary legacy. As the Allies increasingly sought American support, Anglo-American relations were pressed on the Irish question and on Britain’s role in determining the fate of her small-nation neighbour.Twenty-five scholars, from a variety of disciplines and including a foreword by J. J. Lee, excavate the ways in which the United States was a critical theatre of war in Ireland’s journey towards independence. It is the first work to assess the range and depth of American interest in self-government for Ireland in the two decades preceding the Rising, and the first to contextualise the actions and motives of hitherto overlooked American-based individuals and organisations that made up a dynamic nationalist landscape abroad.
503 pages | 16 pages color plates | 7.09 x 9.69
History: American History, British and Irish History, Military History
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Contributors; List of Illustrations; Foreword; Introduction; CHAPTER ONE John Devoy and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER TWO The Collapse of Home Rule and the United Irish League of America, 1910–18; CHAPTER THREE Tom Clarke’s New York: A Refuge (1880) and a Home (1899–1907); CHAPTER FOUR The Bold Fenian Wife; CHAPTER FIVE Dr Gertrude B. Kelly and the Founding of New York’s Cumann na Mban; CHAPTER SIX Casement, New York, and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER SEVEN The Man in Philadelphia: Joseph McGarrity and 1914; CHAPTER EIGHT ‘St. Enda’s Is Now Only Part of a Bigger Thing …’; CHAPTER NINE ‘Big Jim’ Larkin, the United States and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER TEN Judge Cohalan and American Involvement in the Easter Rising; CHAPTER ELEVEN Victor Herbert, Nationalism, and Musical Expression; CHAPTER TWELVE The Stereopticon: German and Irish Propaganda of Deed and Word and the 1916 Easter Rising; CHAPTER THIRTEEN An American Opinion: John Quinn and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER FOURTEEN ‘Bursts of Impassioned Eloquence’: William Bourke Cockran, American Intervention, and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Hand of Friendship: Protestants, Irish Americans, and 1916-era Nationalism; CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Irish-Language Community in New York on the Eve of the Easter Rising; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Irish County Associations in New York and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Bifocalism of US Press Coverage: The Easter Rising and Irish America; CHAPTER NINETEEN Timely and Substantial Relief: New York’s Cardinal John Farley and the 1916 Easter Rising; CHAPTER TWENTY The American Catholic Press and the Easter Rising; CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE An American in Dublin: John Kilgallon’s Rising; CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO James Connolly’s ‘Good End’: The Irish Relief Fund Bazaar Poster; CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Other Narrative of ‘Sisterhood’ in 1916: Irish and Irish-American Suffragists; CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Easter Rising and New York’s Anticolonial Nationalists; Notes; Index