The 1916 rising in Dublin was what really separated Ireland from Britain. Prior to it Ireland was happy, and even taking pride in being part of the British Empire. In 1870 27% of the British Army was Irish, in 1830 it was 42%. The majority of people wanted Home Rule, whereby they would remain within the Commonwealth.

At first the population of Ireland was annoyed and bitterly opposed to the few 100 people who rose up in the easter of '16. The British troops were supported.

However once the rising was quelled. The British government ordered the execution of the ringleaders of the insurgents. This turned the Irish against the British overnight.

Now, this wasn't a very radical move by the British Government. It was foolish not radical. After all Britain was at war, and Britain's own soldiers who deserted were seen as traitors and shot. The insurgents were seen as traitors and so shot.

The sad thing is that both Britain and Ireland were becoming closer together, and more of a unit. Irish men flocked to the British army recruiting centres at the out break of war. One young Irish soldier in Dublin was asked at the port, why he was Irish and leaving for the western front, he replied 'Why, I'm fighting for my country.'

It was the Home Rule Party that brought the two nations closer together.

Here is a brilliant speech made by Home Rule MP John Dillon in the House of Commons, summing up what was happening and Britain's greatest folly with regards to Ireland:

"...I asked the Prime Minister, first of all, whether he would give a pledge that the executions should stop. That he declined to give. Secondly, I asked him whether he could tell whether any executions had taken place in Ireland since Monday morning; the last we had official notification of before I left there. The reply of the Prime Minister was 'No, Sir, so far as I know, not'. On Monday twelve executions had been made public. Since then in spite of the statement of the Prime Minister, I have received word that a man named Kent had been executed in Fermoy, which is the first execution that has taken place outside Dublin. The fact is one which will create a very grave shock in Ireland, because it looks like a roving commission to carry these horrible executions all over the country...

[On 26 April a well know Dublin intellectual, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, and two journalists were arrested in the street and, though not implicated in the rising in any way, shot without trial on orders of a demented captain of the Royal Irish Rifles]....All Dublin was ringing with this affair for days. It came to our knowledge within two or three days after the shooting. And are we to be told that this is the excuse for what has occurred? A more lurid light for military law in Ireland could not be possibly imagined than that a man is to be shot in Portobello Barracks - it must have been known to at least 300 or 400 military men, the whole city of Dublin knew it, his poor wife was denied all knowledge of it until her husband was lying buried in the barrack yard for three or four days - and the military authorities in Dublin turn around and say they knew nothing whatever about it until the 6th of May. How on the face of these facts, which I shall explain more fully in a few moments, can we blame the population of Dublin if they believe, as they do believe, that dozens of other men have been shot in the barracks?

....It is the first rebellion that ever took place in Dublin where you had majority on your side. It is the fruit of our life work. We have risked our lives a hundred times to bring about this result. We are held up to odium as traitors by those men who made this rebellion, and our lives have been in danger a hundred times during the last thirty years because we have endeavoured to reconcile the two things, and now you are washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood....

Here are some facts that I know to be true, and I want to put it to the House of Commons, do you approve of this action? One of the practices going on in the barracks is that these unhappy persons, and they have taken numbers of them, are threatened with instant death in order to force them to become informers. They are given half an hour of life, and then put up against a wall, and several of them have given evidence against their comrades. Is that approved by the House of Commons without any trial? Do they approve of that form of torture, because it really is torture?

....The great bulk of the population were not favourable to the insurrection, and the insurgents themselves, who had confidently calculated on a rising of the people in their support, were absolutely disappointed. They got no popular support whatsoever. What is happening is that thousands of people in Dublin, who ten days ago were bitterly opposed to the whole of the Sinn Fein movement and to the rebellion, are now becoming infuriated against the government on account of the executions, and, as I am informed by letters received this morning, that feeling is spreading throughout the country in a most dangerous degree...."

Post edited at 10:02 am on Nov. 16, 2008 by ElephantStone

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I don't see why you haven't mentioned what Cromwell did previously to suppress any Irish insurrections in the 18th century, which I would find very relevant as a motive.

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Because it beared no relevance.

The famine or the 1798 rebellion, are more relevant, but in such a small way that thayre not worth mentioning.

I think there was enough information above to justify and show the change of heart of the irish.

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England knew it was losing Ireland long before the Easter Rising. But as its oldest colony, they knew they had to retain it or their entire empire would begin crumbling.

"Home Rule" was Parnell's, it was the whole populations (Those who were nationalists, anyway)concession to their right to Ireland but the obstacle that was British occupation. They had been, as De Valera put it, 'Clubbed into insensitivity'. Since the Cromwellian Conquests, the Irish people were subdued significantly. The Catholic population, the vast majority, would have been plagued by inferiority complexes and pessimism.

The best way to describe the Catholic population at this time would not be proudly or indifferently British, but shamed Catholics. The Catholic Church, at least in its upper echelons did not want a republic, and why would they have? The church was rich and it was arguebly the most powerful institution in the country, or a close 2nd to the British Empire.

It took a few events for the Irish population to begin seeing an Ireland free of British rule or a "re-baptism in the Fenian Faith" as Patrick Pearse coined it.

The Easter Rising itself was a climax. A climax of the unspoken words between the population of Ireland, the heated rage, the suppression and the shadow of the Ascendancy.

You would be poorly mistaken to say that the assasinations of IRB members who were involved in the rising as the tipping point for the native population. The sentiment had been building up for years and death in cold blood was icing on the cake.

Britain didn't lose Ireland because it never truely had it. Even with countless massacres, mass starvation and mass migration the spirit of the Irish people truelty never died, even though it may have faltered at times. We lost alot of our customs and we lost our language but we never lost our sense of identity.

The Irish people may have been many times clubbed into insensibility, but as the rest of the quote goes, "but that each time on returning consciousness, took up the fight anew"

Post edited at 7:15 pm on Nov. 21, 2008 by Hoop Jargon

I think the population was extremely Anti-British, but as I mentioned in my previous post, were beaten to a point where they were to weak to do more than whimper.

Dublin, even at that time, was still very British, and it was fairly wealth in comparison to the rest of the island, spare Belfast. It was packed to the brim with Upper-middle class Catholics and remnants of the Ascendancy, at which time still number in their hundreds of thousands. Republican media and organisations were all very much based in Dublin, but the true support came from the country areas. The Gaeltacts, the agricultural areas, the tenant farmers. That is where most enlistments into the British Army were coming from as well. Most didn't see it as a support of Britain, but a means to an end, and for some, obviously, an adventure or a ticket out of the hellhole that Ireland had become, even in the famine's wake.

Home-Rule was not Pro British at all. Yes, if it passed, Ireland remained under the sovereigny of Great Britain but it would be that much further away from its realm of influence. It was also a political concession, noone truely thought a republic was achievable until the Easter Rising and the populace truely thought that Home rule would have been the best they could have gotten, at that time.

If Republicanism was pursued outright, from the go set, by these politicians, Ireland's story in the last 120 years would be significantly different. Back then, opposition to the crown and/or empire resulted in treason, it wasn't good for livelyhoods of politicians or supporters to be putting British Empires' name in vain. Also, if a Republic was pursued from the go set, there would have been at least 2 or 3 more risings on the same scale as the Easter Rising, not too mention a convenant in ulster turning into an army, resulting in a much more bloody and costly war than either could afford.  

Home Rule was not a product of a Pro-British Irish population, if that was the case why was there so much opposition by Sir Edward Carson and his Ulster Contingent? Half a million of the buggers signed the convenant, Home Rule was a compromise and a fairly significant step that would have avoided bloodshed and given the Irisih people a democractic option to a republic.

In 1915 Sinn Fein couldn't even pay the rent on the their Dublin HQ, let alone win an election. They had about 600 members in the whole of the country. Why? Because they were an extremist fringe party who everyone ignored because they had a different political ideology: home rule.

As the OP so correctly pointed out it was not until the Easter rising that anyone actually cared about Sinn Fein and then they voted that way. Before the rising Sinn Fein were on the way to becoming bankrupt and disintegrated. After the horrific government reaction to the rising people became disillusioned with the mainland and switched their alligences to Sinn Fein, despite their being no connection between this party and the rising.

The point is without the horrific government reaction there would be no Sinn Fein and no Irish question, despite every Catholic/nationalist leader who had gone before.

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But to think the whole republicanism movement erupted by the singular actions of the Easter Rising executions is pure madness. It would have evoke alot of passion and support, no doubt. But the support came from the disenfranchised of Ireland's catholics, not the dandys who looked on in annoycance when Patrick Pearse declared the Republic of Ireland.

The Easter Rising woke up the selectively indifferent middle classes of Dublin, who for a long time chose not to be a component to the republican community because they were pro-British but because they didn't want to lose what they had, they became greedy in spite of the hardships of the tenant farmers who lived in poverty and were far too outside the sphere of wealth and influence to give the movement any sort of power.