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Cuba Five

group of Irish rebels exiled to the United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ5191947
Source-derived summary

The Cuba Five (Irish: An Cúigear Chúba) were a group of Irish rebels released from British prisons in 1871 on condition of not entering Britain (Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom) until the expiration of their original sentences. They chose to accept exile in the United States, travelling on board the ship SS Cuba from Liverpool docks. The five men were John Devoy, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Charles Underwood O'Connell, Henry Mullady and John McClure. On arrival in New York they received a rapturous welcome and attempted to reunite the badly split Fenian Brotherhood. In this they failed, but Devoy and O'Donovan Rossa were to go on to become probably the most outstanding members of the Fenian movement in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

References

Sources

Terry Golway, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Ireland's Freedom, St.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cuba Five” is group of Irish rebels exiled to the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cuba, Five and group, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1871—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cuba, Five and group is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “group of Irish rebels exiled to the United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5191947. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1871.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cuba Five”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cuba Five primary sources, Cuba Five archive and Cuba research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cuba Five”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cuba Five” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.