Joyce’s attitude to the Rising was built on sand

As an Irish exile in Trieste and Paris, James Joyce considered the matter of an Irish insurrection in detail. He kept in touch with Ireland mainly through Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman and Sinn Féin newspapers.

He believed that if a victorious country terrorises another, it cannot reasonably take it amiss if the later responded.

He declared that men are made that way and no one, unless he is deluded by self-interest or cunning, can still believe that a colonising country is driven by purely Christian motives when it takes over foreign shores. Colonisers all over the world despoil the country economically, divide the people and persecute their religion.