1916: It took time for a true impression to emerge

“The true history of a passionate period,” wrote PS O’Hegarty in The Victory of Sinn Féin in 1924, “cannot be written by any contemporary. We are all too near it.”

Although inevitably shaped by the period in which it was written, the historiography that has emerged over the past century has gradually transformed our understanding of the Irish revolution.

The earliest accounts were mostly written by republicans. Popular memoirs by IRA leaders such as Dan Breen and Tom Barry, or the stories recorded by Irish Volunteers throughout the country, presented the conflict as a straightforward struggle for independence between the Irish people and British imperialism.