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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Fenians
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(known also as the Irish Republican Brotherhood) Irish insurrectionary group, established in both Ireland and the USA in the late 1850s and taking its name from the Fianna, the band of warriors of the legendary Irish hero Finn McCool. The Fenians introduced into Irish politics a strand of violence which survives in the north. Their numbers dwindled in the late 19C, after the failure of an abortive uprising in Ireland in 1867, but they renewed their efforts in World War I when Britain's difficulties seemed to offer opportunities for insurrection. They were prominent among those planning the *Easter Rising of 1916, and among the survivors of that event who formed the *IRA early in 1919.
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