The Land War
Tenant farmers organised in the Land League fight evictions and high rents, and a series of acts eventually turns them into owners.
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A run of bad harvests in the late 1870s raised the threat of another famine and mass evictions. In October 1879 Michael Davitt, a Mayo-born former Fenian prisoner whose family had been evicted when he was a child, founded the Irish National Land League, with Charles Stewart Parnell as its president. Its aims were the “three Fs” (fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale) and, in the long run, ownership of the land by those who farmed it.
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- Parnell, Charles Stewart — Dictionary of Irish Biography, Royal Irish Academy
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
Its most famous weapon was social ostracism. In 1880 tenants in Mayo refused to have anything to do with Captain Charles Boycott, a land agent, and his name became a verb.
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
- Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 — Paul Bew, Gill and Macmillan (1978)
- Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
- Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
The Land War gave the English language the word "boycott" and turned Ireland into a nation of small farm-owners. The intense attachment many rural Irish families still have to land, and the sense that it was hard won, go back to it.