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Was De Valera a Republican?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

If eamon de Valera were an ordinary politician, the question of to what extent his behavior conformed to any given principle would be insignificant, for we expect all ordinary politicians to clothe their actions with high principled rhetoric. But Eamon de Valera is more than a politician. He has become a nearly mythic figure in Irish political history. Quite consciously, he has contrived to present himself as the premier statesman of post-British Ireland. De Valera is different from any politician presently on the North American or British political stage, for he has projected his actions not on the silver screen of the possible, but against the hard wall of principle.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1971

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References

1 The Sinn Fein constitution of 1917 is found in Macardle's, DorothyThe Irish Republic: A documented chronicle of the Anglo-Irish conflict and the partitioning of Ireland, with a detailed account of the period 1916–1923 (New York, 1965, originally published 1937), pp. 233, 915–916Google Scholar.

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11 de Valera, Eamon to George, David Lloyd, 08 10, 1921, reproduced in Correspondence (Cmd. 1470), pp. 45Google Scholar; also reproduced in Correspondence (Cmd. 1502), pp. 3–5.

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16 Eamon de Valera to David Lloyd George, September 12, 1921, ibid., p. 7.

17 David Lloyd George to Eamon de Valera, September 15, 1921, ibid., p. 8.

18 David Lloyd George to Eamon de Valera, September 17, 1921, ibid., p. 9.

19 Eamon de Valera to David Lloyd George, September 17, 1921, ibid., p. 9.

20 David Lloyd George to Eamon de Valera, September 18, 1921, ibid., p. 10.

21 David Lloyd George to Eamon de Valera, September 29, 1921, ibid., p. 11.

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46 The draft constitution submitted to the British government is found in the Public Record Office, London, CAB 43/3, SFG 34.

47 The Times, June 3, 1922; to ascertain the extent of the Irish surrender, compare the document taken to London (cited above) with the version published in Dublin in mid-June 1922. This latter version is most conveniently available in the British parliamentary papers (Cmd. 1688), H.C., 1922, xvii.