The Green Ribbon Books

The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism

Robert Kee
Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1972
Penguin 2000

A widely read history of Irish nationalism, that has been published both as an omnibus, and as three separate volumes: The Most Distressful Country, the Bold Fenian Men and Ourselves Alone.

In the opening chapters, Kee surveys the Medieval and early modern background to Irish history. The bulk of the book, however, consists of a sustained narrative of the years from the rise of the United Irishmen in the late Eighteenth Century to the Civil War of 1922-23, an eventful period which included the Act of Union, the struggle first for Catholic emancipation, and then for Home Rule, the Great Famine and the Land War, the emergence of the Fenians, the War of Independence and the Anglo-Irish Treaty that created the modern Irish state.

Kee concludes with an epilogue which considers events up to the time of writing, during the earliest and most intense years of the Northern Troubles. It's clear thoughout that his sympathy is with constitutional nationalism and the Home Rule movement, rather than with the republican tradition. Nevertheless, The Green Flag is an obvious choice for anyone looking for a well-written narrative history of the period.

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Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion

Charles Townshend
Penguin
2006

Charles Townshend’s Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion traces the events of 1916 from their roots in the home rule crisis before the First World War, to their aftermath in the War of Independence.

There is a careful examination of the confused days leading up to the rebellion, when Eoin MacNeill, chief of staff of the Irish Volunteers, countermanded the order for mobilization on Easter Sunday. The Rising nevertheless went ahead a day later. MacNeill’s authority was over-ridden by Pearse, Connolly and the other members of the military committee of the IRB, the secret revolutionary organisation which had been the hidden hand behind the creation of the volunteers in the first place.

Townshend argues that the secretiveness of the IRB was one reason why for the relative failure of the rising in rural Ireland, which he deals with in a single chapter.

The core of the book is a blow by blow account of the fighting in Dublin. Townshend details the positions occupied by each of the volunteer detachments in what was essentially a defensive stance, and relates the progress of the British counter-attack.