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The process by which revolts become revolutions can be frustratingly vague. Small-scale rebellions against the political order can be read either as the actions of a heroic vanguard or as an anti-democratic enterprise, the choice of a particular interpretative slant often reflecting the course of subsequent events. A crucial variable in determining whether a revolt can develop into a revolution is the degree of success in mobilizing popular support. The sequence of events which have become known as the Irish Revolution is a rich example of this process: the 'minority of a minority' 2 of advanced nationalists who staged a somewhat chaotic and poorly equipped rebellion in the centre of Dublin at Easter 1916 were followed, eventually, by the newly organized Irish Republican Army, who commanded the active or tacit support of a large proportion of the nationalist population of Ireland.
It is something of a commonplace to observe that public opinion in Ireland towards the Easter Rising underwent a dramatic transformation between the rebellion of 1916 and the general election of 1918. Although there remain questions over how far the Sinn Féin electoral victory represented a mandate for a republic, let alone for the violence which ensued, the transfer of a significant degree of popular allegiance from the constitutional nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party to the more extreme Sinn Féin party by the end of 1918 appears certain. 3 Reaction to the Rising was not, of course, the only contributing factor to this shift: a general war-weariness and the failure of John Redmond's imperially tinged, toleration-minded political ethos to penetrate nationalist Ireland were both sharpened by the conscription crisis of 1918, an episode which Sinn Féin exploited to the full ahead of the December poll. 4 Yet, the Rising and its aftermath remain a pivotal episode, central to the historical understanding of subsequent developments. Historians are generally in agreement with Alvin Jackson's analysis of the disastrous 'staccato rhythms of the executions', conducted protractedly and in secret. 5 Two recent important studies of the Easter Rising have engaged with the question of public opinion in the subsequent months. Charles Townshend's Easter 1916 unpicks the aftermath of the Rising along a number of threads, political, popular, diplomatic, and military; while...