ABSTRACT
The paper juxtaposes the Easter Rising and the 1922 South African miners’ strike, known as the Rand Revolt. The uprising in the Johannesburg area had a surprising Irish nationalist element and was in some respects an event with comparable social and military characteristics to that of Dublin. This chapter suggests that, methodologically, global history tends to be confined to the examination of comparisons and direct connections, but that a third approach is also needed – the exploration of contemporaneity, that is, of the global structural factors that link spatially separate events. The two crises shared a background in the ‘long’ First World War of 1911–1923, influences from the syndicalist movement, and new characteristics that nationalism took on at the turn of the century. The chapter traces the important connections between South Africa and Ireland created by the role of the Irish who fought for the cause of Afrikaner independence in the Boer War and the crucial effect that this had in stimulating Irish nationalism at home. It also charts a loose network of Irish and South African syndicalist radicals of the early twentieth century and thus links the developments around Johannesburg to the 1913 Dublin Lockout and thence to the role of the Irish Citizen Army in 1916.
