“Realists appealed to Collins. There would be no more glorious protests in arms, he decided. He built a cadre of realists around him, first in the IRB, then at Volunteer headquarters, where he took over Pearse’s old post as Director of Organization before becoming Director of Intelligence, finally in Dáil Eireann, as the underground government’s very effective Minister for Finance. Collins was a doer. Essentially a well-informed opportunist with very few scruples, his entire ideology could be stated in five words: ‘The Irish should govern themselves.’”
-- Sean Cronin, “Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology”
“The characteristics which mark Collins out as a
remarkably successful Director of Intelligence during the War of
Independence include his evident appreciation of the importance of the
collection and assessment of information as primary elements of
intelligence operations which should precede action; his partial
penetration of his adversary’s own intelligence system; the efficiency
and ruthlessness with which action based on good intelligence was taken;
and his success in preserving the security and efficiency of his own
organization both in Dublin and in Britain despite the pressures it
operated under because of the constant threat of raids, arrests and the
capture of documents.”
--Eunan O’Halpin, “Collins and Intelligence: 1919-1923 From Brotherhood to Bureaucracy” (in the anthology Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State)
Introduction
Michael Collins was a tough young Irish operative during the seminal years of Eire’s final divorce from the United Kingdom at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper will attempt to discover if Collins was the culminating point that brought Number Ten Downing Street to the negotiation table, stared down Winston Churchill and came home with the solution for Irish independence from the British Crown.
Ireland was invaded and occupied the British crown in 1169 and suffered a brutal occupation punctuated by indigenous risings, rebellions and pockets of resistance. Sinn Féin emerged in 1905 to formalize a political vehicle to liberate the Irish from the British occupation. These sophisticated rebel organizations started to emerge in the in the 19th and 20th century, culminating in the 1916 Easter Rising which led to the mismatch and overreach that would be the undoing of English rule over the Irish.
Michael Collins would emerge as the premier guerrilla leader during the crucial struggle between 1916 and 1922. He embodied the early germination of the non-state soldier as a twentieth century variation on the age-old warrior in history and fought in Ireland under a variety of covers and positions within the political hierarchy of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Collins would fight for the next four years culminating on Bloody Sunday on 21 November 1920.
The Rising in 1916
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