Éamon De Valera
14/October/1882 – 29/August/1975

Involment in Easter Rising
De Valera’s forces used Boland’s Mills as their base to cover south-eastern Dublin. He fought for a week at this base until Pádraig Pearse told him to surrender. Although it was rumoured that he became quite anxious during this week and would often wake from nightmares in panic. He was arrested and his execution date was set, yet he was jailed in a different prison to the other leaders. He did escape execution not because he was in a different location, but because he was a New York citizen and the British Army didn’t want to get in America’s bad books!

Why He Got Involved…
He was thoroughly involved in the Gaelic revival; Irish pride was something he definitely had!
He was a Gaeilgeoir and campaigned to make the language come back.
He took part in the Howth gun running on the 26/July/1914.
All of this meant that he was ranked highly in the Irish Volunteers Army.

After the Rising
After the rising, De Valera became apart of Sinn Féin. This meant that in 1919 he travelled to America to gain Ireland recognition as a country.
He stayed in America until 1920 which meant that he missed the start of the War of Independence.

Obviously a lot happened between the Rising and his terms as Taoiseach with the Irish civil war and the treaty and Ireland’s independence.
De Valera was involved with all these things. He was very popular in politics and thus became Taoiseach 3 times and President.

Taoiseach & President Dates

Taoiseach:
29 December 1937 – 18 February 1948
13 June 1951 – 2 June 1954
20 March 1957 – 23 June 1959
President:
25 June 1959 – 24 June 1973

References in Recent Times


In 1996 Alan Rickman played De Valera in the film ‘Michael Collins’

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