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To what extent do you agree that the Easter rising of 1916 was the most important turning point in the history of Irish nationalism between 1848 and 1923?$7.14
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To what extent do you agree that the Easter rising of 1916 was the most important turning point in the history of Irish nationalism between 1848 and 1923?
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Course
Unit 36.2 - Ireland and the Union, c1774-1923
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
An A-level standard History essay arguing that The Easter Rising can be considered the most important turning point in the history of Irish nationalism between 1848 and 1923.
To what extent do you agree that the Easter rising of 1916 was the most important
turning point in the history of Irish nationalism between 1848 and 1923?
It seems to me that throughout the period of 1848 to 1923 the Irish nationalist
movement underwent several significant turning points, which I would define as
junctures at which a notable change in dominating beliefs, attitudes, aims or
methods of the movement is evident and this change had lasting impact. Although
most of these turning points were important in their own right, I would agree that the
Easter Rising of 1916 was likely the most important due to the tragic magnitude of
its effects on Irish nationalism.
It seems to me that the first crucial turning point in the history of Irish nationalism
between 1848 and 1923 was the Great Famine, which, lasting from 1845 until 1852,
caused the death of one million Irish people and the emigration of at least 1 million
more. Irish nationalists attributed this loss of ⅕ of Ireland’s population to the
negligence of the British government, some going as far as to say it was a genocide
perpetrated on the Irish people, as, at the height of the famine, the British
government continued to freely trade food from Ireland and took no action to prevent
peasants from being evicted by their landlords which left them forced into diseased
workhouses. Moreover, the system of land tenure in Ireland at the time, which
benefited the landlords whilst impoverishing the peasants due to the unsustainability
of subdividing land into tiny plots, was the product of English conquest stretching
back to the middle ages. This inevitably gave rise to a considerable surge of
anglophobia which bolstered the nationalists’ call to denounce the Union and fight
for independence not only in Ireland, but also in America and British cities such as
London and Manchester as a result of mass emigration. Here we can see how the
famine was a crucial turning point as it not only generated the widespread
anglophobic sentiment which would fuel the more immediate uprisings of 1848 by
the Irish Confederation and 1867 by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians),
but it also had a lasting impact in how it cemented British oppression in the folk
memory of the Irish people, contributing to the anti-British/Union feeling which
ultimately led to the Easter Rising in 1916.
Considering that the Irish nationalist movement was markedly divided between
radicals such as Fenians who maintained that nothing could be achieved for Ireland
by constitutional methods, advocating for violent overthrow of British rule and
constitutional nationalists such as those in the Home Rule movement, willing to
cooperate with Britain and use parliamentary methods to work towards more
independence for Ireland, it would seem that the point at which these groups joined
forces would definitely qualify as an important turning point in the history of Irish
nationalism. The 1879 ‘New Departure’ agreement between the Fenian and Home
Rule movements signified a shift in beliefs, attitudes, aims and methods of the Irish
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