Re “How Americans pushed the Irish to war’’ (Ideas, March 13): Ruth Dudley Edwards takes revisionist history beyond logical limits in claiming that the Easter Rising would not have occurred without the intervention of Irish-American “agitators.’’

It is certainly true that Clan na Gael, founded in the United States by Irish exiles advocating for establishment of an Irish Republic, provided substantial financial support to that cause. Without that support, the rising might possibly have been delayed. But it was always going to happen.

The struggle for Irish independence had been ongoing for centuries before Irish-Americans came into play. Britain had long ago robbed the native Irish of their property, livelihoods, and culture, and had suppressed their religion and even their language. And in the terrible years following the 1845 failure of the potato crop, Britain watched as a million Irish starved to death while another million were forced to flee their homeland.

Edwards does mention the Great Famine, but not the role of the British government in allowing a crop failure to become a national catastrophe. Astonishingly, she appears to see no cause and effect between that catastrophe and the rise of militant Irish nationalism.

Rather than admonishing Irish-Americans to “embark on some . . . soul-searching,’’ Edwards might take a closer look at the history of British government in Ireland. As for advice to “commemorate’’ but not “celebrate’’ the events of Easter Week 1916, I’ll be in Dublin on Easter Monday, and plan to do both in equal measure and without apology.

Kathleen Leahy

Hingham