Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The proclamation is titled “Poblacht na hÉireann,” or “Republic of Ireland.” In 1916 most people in Ireland would not have known Gaelic and thus what the title meant. The proclamation opens by calling on the Irish public—Ireland's “children”—to take up arms in the name of the “dead generations” that had established Ireland as a nation. Pearse then names all the revolt's supporters and actors: the IRB, the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Citizen Army, American supporters, and “gallant allies in Europe,” meaning the Germans, who had already failed the Irish cause. Noticeably, one organization is not named: Sinn Féin, led by Arthur Griffith. Griffith had offered his support and been turned away, the rebels having known of his opposition to the use of violence. Yet throughout the country after the Easter Rising, it was immediately assumed, based on Griffith's support of independence and his rhetoric, that Sinn Féin must have been involved. For this reason, the Easter Rising was quickly and incorrectly termed the “Sinn Féin Rebellion.”

Pearse then asserts the right of Irishmen to “ownership” of their island and their destinies, declaring that the Irish people would sooner disappear than submit that right to the British occupiers. He hearkens back to previous rebellions as proof and declares Ireland's independence, to which he pledges the lives of all the rebels. Considering his expectation of failure, this was a brave statement indeed. He then encourages “every Irishman and Irishwoman”—in a gesture of striking equality and lack of chauvinism for the time—to join the rebellion and promises that all citizens will be treated equally, including Protestants. Pearse chalks up hatred between Protestants and Catholics to the deliberate policies of the British government. This was an exceptionally biased reading of the history of the same six rebellions the proclamation invokes from Ireland's past. In all of them, Protestants had been slaughtered indiscriminately.

Pearse then reaffirms the provisional nature of the republic as constituted in the officers of the Easter Rising and calls upon God to protect the cause and keep it from devolving into the usual horrors of war and “cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine.” He concludes by declaring that the Irish nation must be “worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.” After he finished declaiming the proclamation that day, Pearse read off the names of the signatories. Then he turned and walked back into the GPO, and the Easter Rising continued.