New Zealand’s Responses to the 1916 Rising

This book examines what distinguished New Zealand’s response to the Rising and its aftermath — particularly from Australian and Canadian responses, the two Dominions whose constitutional relations to the United Kingdom were frequently cited in determining Irish independence. Organized chronologically, it opens with a chapter detailing the ANZACS’ role in retaking Dublin. Chapters two and three chart the response of Australasian women to the Rising and the politics of gender and violence encoded in private and newspaper reports. Chapter four examines the cultural politics of Dunedin, the financial capital of New Zealand at that time, as representative of one type of response, while chapters five and six investigate specific Catholic responses nationally and internationally. Chapter seven draws on extensive archival research to investigate the ways New Zealand’s Fenian families negotiated conscription even while they sought to continue to promote the Republican cause. The next two chapters chart contrasting responses to the aftermath—one detailing shifts in attitude in an Australian Catholic newspaper between 1916 and 1919; the other analysing the rise, triumph, and demise of New Zealand’s virulent Protestant Political Association. The final chapter situates the New Zealand response within the constitutional consequences of the Rising for the British Empire.