“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” In this year of centenaries, the words of the Irish philosopher and politician, Edmund Burke, are as poignant as ever. Irish history is messy, complicated, and very much part of the present day. Whether you condone or condemn the Rising on the streets of Dublin one hundred years ago, it is right that the events of 1916 are commemorated. To commemorate can involve celebration in one sense, but much more significant is the opportunity for contemplation. To me, up until the past two decades there’s very little in Irish history that merits much celebration. And that’s why I think the act of contemplation is so important.

For some the Easter Rising was a noble and courageous stand against British rule. For others it was an act of treason, deprived of any legitimacy. Reflecting on the Easter Rising, as with so many defining events of Irish history, a critical double-edged question needs to be asked: did it have to be that way, and did it change things for the better? All things considered, I think that the answers to both are ‘no’. It was undoubtedly a defining moment that led to the foundation of the Irish Republic as we know it today. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic espoused many noble aspirations, from equality to civil liberty. It also, however, made it much harder to deal with Ireland’s difficult constitutional issues, paradoxically undermining efforts to realize some of the very goals it espoused. In the spirit of Burke, however, the point of reflection is not simply to gratuitously take the moral high ground and point fingers of blame; it is to understand why the Rising happened and apply its lessons.

If there is a Unionist narrative on the Easter Rising, it emphasizes the events as part of a treasonous rebellion. The First Minister, Arlene Foster, views the Rising as an “attack on democracy.” That’s a valid interpretation, and one that has strong sympathy from Northern Ireland’s devoutly Catholic Attorney-General who pointedly described the Rising as “profoundly wrong” because it “lacked any democratic or constitutional legitimacy.” By 1916 the efforts of constitutional nationalism had borne some meaningful fruit. Irish Home Rule in some shape or form had become largely inevitable. That it was knocked off course by the onset of the First World War came as a relief to Unionists in Ulster, who themselves knew that war only granted them breathing space. It was no longer a question if Home Rule would be delivered, but when and in what form. Ireland had plenty of legitimate grievances over its governance, but it is difficult to argue that violent insurgency was necessary to redress them.

Ulster Unionists, for their part, were hardly morally upstanding in this respect. As the Home Rule crisis deepened, it became increasingly clear that Carson and his supporters valued the Union much more than they valued democracy. With the establishment of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913, Carson had effectively reintroduced the gun to Irish politics. He may, of course, have seen the UVF as merely a bargaining tool to put pressure on the British government, not as a paramilitary organization that would actually engage in direct conflict with the British Army. However, it represented a serious escalation that would prove difficult to control. Indeed, a direct reaction to the formation of the UVF was the formation of the Irish Volunteers, who would go on to participate in the 1916 Rising. Carson had unwittingly converted many constitutional Nationalists to a much more radical pursuit. They abandoned John Redmond’s realistic pragmatism for Patrick Pearse’s romantic militancy. As Pearse remarked, “I think the Orangeman with a rifle a much less ridiculous figure than the Nationalist without one.”

A key point to remember, however, is that the number of Irish nationalists who switched from constitutionalism to violent republicanism was insufficient to make much of a real impact at this point. The Easter Rising was an abject military failure. The 1,600 rebels who assembled in Dublin on Easter Monday were poorly organized and outnumbered twenty-fold by British troops within 48 hours. Their efforts failed to attract significant public support. Dubliners initially reacted with bewilderment, leaving Pearse to order an unconditional surrender by the Saturday.

If the events of 1916 ended there, it’s doubtful that we would be commemorating them so prominently in 2016. As we know, it wasn’t the Rising itself that galvanized the Irish public behind the rebels; it was the reaction to the Rising by British forces. The execution of fifteen of the Rising’s leaders was supposed to make an example out of them. Instead, it made martyrs out of them. Ireland would never be the same again. A Republic had been declared, but the circumstances about which it eventually emerged saw to entrench Ireland’s divisions. It made partition much more likely, not less, and made the already troubled relations between the peoples of these islands worse, not better.

Make no mistake: the Easter Rising of 1916 did not cause a breakdown in Anglo-Irish relations; nor did it cause the Troubles in Northern Ireland. What it did, however, was to significantly deepen the complexity and animosity that already characterized Irish politics. It made it much harder to reach the compromises that would be necessary to normalize relations, both between Britain and Ireland, and between Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland. The Irish Free State was left isolated for decades; Northern Ireland existed as a discriminatory Unionist state for fifty years; and the Troubles tore communities apart over three decades of bloodshed. And as much as the Rising contributed to subsequent Irish history, it’s very much an event that is part of our shared history. Ulster Unionists, the British, and Irish Nationalists all played a supporting role to the Republicans who directly carried out the Rising.

82 years later the joint actions of unionists and nationalists, the British and Irish governments, loyalists and republicans, would again define the course of history. If the Easter Rising was an act of defiance, the Good Friday Agreement was an act of compromise. If 1916 brought about more bitterness and divisions across these islands, 1998 brought about a way of reducing them. The legitimacy of the Rising was in question because of an initial lack of widespread consent; the legitimacy of the Good Friday Agreement was secured precisely because it earned widespread consent. Indeed, the very ‘principle of consent’ enshrines the principle that for the constitutional status of Northern Ireland to change, it must be with the support of a majority of people in Northern Ireland and a majority in the South. That’s no small matter. It is a radical departure from the rationale of 1916.

The world is a different place in 2016, and Ireland is a different place in 2016, North and South. Many people will take a different view from mine on the legitimacy of the Easter Rising, and many people may struggle to find much enthusiasm for the Good Friday Agreement that was reached 82 years later. Still, both events are pivotal to understanding where we are today and where we are going. It’s right that we commemorate them both this Easter so that we may approach the future with renewed understanding and a desire to carve out a new path very different to the past. As we move from commemorating the past to cherishing the present, the words of the American revolutionary and Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, perhaps say it best: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” Here’s to the unwritten Irish history of the next hundred years.