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    The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic
    Unavailable
    The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic
    Unavailable
    The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic
    Ebook579 pages8 hours

    The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic

    By John L. Casti

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    On the morning of Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916, the seven men who made up the Military Council of the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood gathered in Dublin’s Liberty Hall. By noon, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, in which they declared themselves to be the provisional government of an entity that claimed the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman, had been taken to the printers. Each man knew full well that in putting his name to this document he had signed his own death warrant. Carnage, destruction, humiliation and posthumous glory followed. As did an Ireland that would have satisfied none of them partitioned, sectarian, mean-spirited, hostile to challenge or creativity and governed by narrow self-interest.

    Increasingly, there is recognition that it’s time for an honest discussion of the Rising and its legacy. While not everyone agrees that what they did took Ireland in the right direction, there is no doubting that their proclamation and subsequent initiation of an armed rebellion profoundly changed the course of Irish history. A major contribution to the discourse, this is the first work to properly scrutinize Ireland’s founding fathers, examining how they came to espouse violence, how their lives converged and whether they had a coherent vision for Ireland or were, as some now allege, a collection of ill-assorted fanatical misfits and failures. Brilliant and thought-provoking, The Seven sets out to answer the fundamental questions of who the founding fathers really were and whether they were right or wrong.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOneworld Publications
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781780748726
    Unavailable
    The Seven: The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic
    Author

    John L. Casti

    Ruth Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer, her most recent non-fiction includes the authorized history of The Economist, a portrait of the British Foreign Office, written with its co-operation, and ‘The Faithful Tribe’, a portrait of the Orange Order. Three of her satirical crime novels featuring Baroness Troutbeck have been short-listed for awards from the Crime Writers’ Association.

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    Reviews for The Seven

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      The timing of my receipt and reading of this book was appropriate as it is Easter weekend. The author provided a detailed profile of the Seven and, not knowing a great deal on them, I appreciated the knowledge I now come away with. I will refer others to this book that may be interested.
    • 3/5
      This was a very detailed account of the seven patriots who were responsible for starting the Easter Rising in Ireland. The author begins with seven chapters of personal history - one for each major player in the book. She then deftly weaves their stories together to culminate in the fateful rebellion of 1916. I enjoyed this book as I was a novice at Irish history. However the shear weight of the amount of details about people I'd never heard of before was a little daunting. Also, the author threw me at the end. I was thinking this was a pro-Rising, patriotic review of the event. However, at the end, the author quickly flips the argument to assert that the seven had not done something great; rather embarked on a foolhardy and deadly event just for the sake of shedding Irish blood. She goes on to blame all Ireland's bloody history since on the deeds of these seven men. I don't know enough about Irish history to know if her assertions are true, but I was not expecting that turn. Overall, a good book for the reader looking for a lot of detail about this event. Maybe a little much for the novice. I read this during the time leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Rising.
    • 3/5
      I won this book through a free giveaway from Librarything.This is a placeholder review as I am only about 40% through the book. I love the author's voice and she truly makes the characters come to life. Unfortunately this is basically a biography of seven people and all of the close influences so it is dense. While remodeling my house and taking a class for work it has not been easy to find time to sit and do a deep dive into something so dense, but I will co to he to read in small chunks and finish the novel as I do want to get to the end and see what happens, similar to the feeling I would receive watching a movie!
    • 4/5
      My undergraduate degree is in Celtic Studies, with a focus on Irish Studies. I am, I think, one of the target demographics for this book. That said, I really had a tough time digging into this text, and it took me a while to finish. The research is spot-on, and the historical work is absolutely invaluable. However, easy reading this is not. Even for those who have some understanding of Irish history, (like myself), there is a lot to keep track of. Still, at the end of the day, it is wonderful to see a work that challenges the nationalist narrative.All in all, this is a great book for history buffs and for Irish studies students. Well done, Ruth Dudley Edwards--this is an exceptional book, even if it may struggle to find the proper audience and acclaim.
    • 3/5
      "The Seven" was published, appropriately enough, around the time of the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. A century is long enough that we should understand what took place during the conflict, and the people involved, yet that's not always the case. Myth still outweighs facts in many cases. Edward has attempted here to provide short biographies of the seven key individuals - Thomas Clarke, Sean Mac Diarmada, Eamonn Ceannt, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, and James Connolly - and they role they played in creating the Irish Republic. For those steeped in Irish history, it's a welcomed addition. For those who know the movie "Michael Collins" and little else of the era, it will be a difficult, but helpful, addition to their understanding of the events.
    • 4/5
      When the statement was made that politics makes for strange bedfellows then the Seven was surely what was meant. The author does a outstanding job of presenting the history and background to the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. The Seven whose names appeared on the proclamation is each given a chapter devoted to explaining their backgrounds and their reasons for coming to belong to the cause. The remaining parts of the work is dedicated to explaining how the rising came to be almost by accident even with the best planning. The best part of the work is how the author shows the interactions between the players and even gives some details of the family members and their roles in Irish politics after the rising and into the careers of the spouses and children of the main players of the rising. This work is great for research into the politics and the lives of the Seven during the late Victorian era and early 20th Century. The reader can see how religion, politics, sex, national origin and even associations can play a role in a persons development. The reader can also get a feel for life growing up in the era of Empire and the role that world Empire made on the various citizens of the Empire as related to the various groups listed above. With all that said, the work is not a easy read, the flow of the work at times if going along explaining a point and then takes off in another direction and then return to that point later in the same chapter or later on in another chapter. This copy that was reviewed was an "Advance uncorrected proof" and it did contain errors and in one case an entire paragraph repeated itself and in one place 1870 was typed 1970. No photographs were included nor maps or even an index. All of which are indicated to be included in the final work, however. The author also includes statements where a understanding that their grandmother was associated with some of the Seven and so this adds to idea that in addition to a long standing of getting first hand information as to the events that unfold in the work. It appears that the author and her brother both have dedicated parts of their lives to discovering the facts related to several of the Seven and to present a academic view even if sometimes facts that do not sit well with the general concept of the person in question. The author could have expanded the list of abbreviations also and a glossary of terms used might have proved helpful to the reader. The copy reviewed also did not contain an index and the connections with the chapters might have stood out better with that inclusion. The American reader might have to bone up on their Irish history to get a better understanding of the former risings and conflicts that the author keeps mentioning however, that only partly took away from the work. If you were raised in a strong Irish influenced background you may be more aware of those points. This work does deserve inclusion in a high school or college library if only as a research tool it does include a great select biography and chapter notes section. Overall, it does give new light to the coming 100th Anniversary of the Easter Rising if 1916, well worth considering its inclusion in a top pick for 2016.
    • 5/5
      It is a very special time to receive this book. One hundred years ago this April these events were happening in a place that I once lived, so I hold this book in special revere. There are good and bad points to this book; it is about the men and not about the events, and the author may have been aiming to offer a thesis on Ireland's hero worship, but it came off more flat and less direct. I am thrilled to have another book in my collection of these brave men and will take any lack of central theme beyond biographical in stride.
    • 4/5
      I have a sad feeling that this book is going to sink without a trace in the middle of the Atlantic.To explain: There are presumably two primary audiences for this book, one in Ireland and one in America. And the Americans are going to find it hard to understand, and the Irish aren't going to like it because it conflicts with the Official Patriotic History of Ireland.Which probably needs more explanation. In fact, it needs the background that author Edwards doesn't provide in her book; rather than put it at the beginning, she tries to weave it into the narrative, and often it comes too late for readers to understand what is going on.Ireland, of course, suffered many years of English colonialism, neglect, and religious persecution. But by the early twentieth century, the Protestant church had been disestablished in Ireland, tenants had much greater rights, and the British were even moving toward giving the Irish their own parliament and direction over internal affairs ("Home Rule"). Had things gone as planned, Ireland would have become a largely internally autonomous state with strong trade ties with Britain and a common foreign policy -- a win-win situation, since it would have produced freedom for the Irish and a better economy for both nations. Most Irish were reasonably content with this situation, looking forward to a more secure future.But there were always hotheads. Ireland hardly has a patent on them, but because it had a bad history, it was easier to turn people who would otherwise have occupied wildlife refuges, or or just driven their cars too fast, into nationalist rebels. Ireland had quite a collection of these.And then World War I came. The British parliament, with a war to fight, suspended the liberalization of Irish laws -- and recruited the more patriotic Irishmen to go fight in the trenches, leaving the country with an excess of hotheads. A handful of these people -- led by "The Seven" who are the subject of this book -- wrote a manifesto and planned a rebellion -- the "Easter Rising" of 1916 (which took place just a hundred years before this book was released). The rebels didn't expect it to work, and it didn't, but they thought it would lay the groundwork for future independence, and it did. They occupied the Dublin Post Office and a few other places, and fought. If someone did something like this today, they would probably be called terrorists. The Rising was quickly put down. Most of the Irish disliked it; their city had been damaged, and the rebels were disdained, condemned, even spat upon by the majority of the Irish.Until British justice took a hand. The World War was still raging; they thought they didn't have time to let the wheels of justice spin properly. (Where have we heard that before? Or, rather, where have we heard it since?) They had most of the rebels in custody -- and started trying them with military tribunals and shooting them. And, suddenly, because true justice had not been done, the pariahs who had upset civil society in Ireland became martyrs -- and the Irish independence movement, which had been failing under the burden of the fact that nationalism was a really stupid idea, came back to life in full force.And so, the rebellion became even hotter. Ireland fell into the Black and Tan War, and when Britain made peace, it was peace via partition, with Northern Ireland remaining British. Ireland went into Civil War, and it took its economy the better part of a century to recover. And when World War II came, their visceral hatred of the British kept them out of the war -- in effect, allies of Nazi Germany; had Ireland been one of the Allies, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been easier to win, and the war might have been shorter, and perhaps slightly fewer Jews and Gypsies and "undesirables" would have been killed in the Holocaust.That's the bad side of Irish nationalism, and it's the background of this book. And Edwards, as a "revisionist" Irish historian, tries to tell it warts and all.There are times when she lays it on a little thick. Pearse et all weren't evil, or even stupid, as much as set on a course which they thought right; as nationalist movements all over the world show, they have lots of allies. But the real problem, it seems to me, is that the book assumes that its readers will know the history that I outlined above. In Ireland, of course, everyone will -- but they will have been taught the version in which The Seven were the leading lights of a movement that was All For The Good and which all Irish supported implicitly. Neither of which is true, but it will be hard for them to read this book. And Americans, or others who don't know Irish history, will be confused.This is, I think, an important and useful book, although it might have been better were it a little shorter. But it really needs to explain more at the beginning. Ultimately, I fear this book will suffer the fate of most volumes of Irish history: Since most people (including me!) come to it with a very strong bias, it is hard to tell the whole story. Maybe, in another century or two, someone will manage it. In the interim, here is a good and useful contribution to the not-so-patriotic side of the debate -- but one where you will probably need to read another book first before you can really understand this one.
    • 5/5
      The Seven, the Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic (Ruth Dudley Edwards) is an excellent biography of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion. Both casual readers and students of Irish history will discover new things in this book. It’s a well-researched, detailed history of the factors that led to the Easter Rebellion, the Rebellion itself and the aftermath. Some of the Seven (Patrick Pearse, James Connolly) are known by casual readers of Irish history, while others (Thomas J. Clarke, Eamonn Ceannt) are not as well known. For anyone interested in Irish history, this is a must-read book.