It is sometimes claimed that the “real” revolution in early 20th century Ireland was already well on the way to completion before ever the political revolution of 1912-23 got underway.
The “real” revolution in question was the social revolution in the countryside brought about by the land war and by successive land acts from the 1880s to the eve of the Great War.
According to some influential commentators, these acts, facilitating land purchase by the tenant-farmers, effectively solved the Irish land question. This question had been at the root of popular Irish discontent since the time of the confiscations and plantations of the 16th and 17th centuries.
However, to speak of the major change in land ownership facilitated (and funded) by the land acts – notably the Wyndham act of 1903 – as “solving” the Irish land question, is to oversimplify what was a much more complex set of issues.
Ownership increases from 3% to 63%
in less than 50 years
There were, in truth, many Irish land questions. Ownership was, of course, a crucial issue (emotive as well as urgently economic) for centuries. The land acts did indeed transform the pattern of land ownership, allowing farmers to become owners of the farms they were working, through the purchase of their holdings from the landlords, with state credit.
Between 1870 and 1916, the percentage of land-occupiers actually owning the holdings that they farmed rose from 3% to 63% and was still rising at the time of the outbreak of the Great War. But the question of land distribution was also crucial. All farmers were anxious to increase their farms to what they considered adequate (or viable) for providing a satisfactory income and standard of living for their family.
This was a vexed question: family size, the quality of the land, the expectations and ambitions of individual farmers and households, were all factors driving demand for land redistribution.
On the very poorest or most over-populated land in the western parts of the country, the Congested Districts Board (CDB) had, since 1891, acquired and distributed a modest quantity of land.
For landless labourers (whose numbers continued to decline) the government had made commendable efforts to provide funding to assist in the building of modest dwellings from the late 1880s. Living conditions in rural Ireland were undoubtedly improving in the generation before 1914.
Land hunger
But land hunger – and specifically the resentment of struggling small farmers in many parts of Connacht at the ranchers who held large tracts of grazing land coveted by the smaller farmers – remained intense and sporadically led to agitation, intimidation and violence.
These tensions were very evident in parts of Connacht, in particular, in the years leading up to the 1916 Rising. Indeed, land issues – relating to land hunger and the demand that ranches be broken up for redistribution – would surface from time to time during the turbulent years of the War of Independence and the Civil War.
In addition to land ownership and land distribution, the issue of land use (what was actually done with the land) was a topic of lively debate in the decades before 1914 (as it would be at all times in the past 100 years).
The competing claims of tillage and pasture required consideration of the social aspect of land use as well as such strictly economic considerations as price movements, soil quality, cost-benefit, capital and labour requirements.
The co-operative movement and the establishment of a government department of agriculture and technical instruction, together with the schemes of the CDB, were all dedicated to improving the standard of living of rural dwellers through encouraging better use of the land and more efficient farming.
War brings improved prices
The war years (1914-1918) would see a sharp rise in prices for all agricultural produce (but also for inputs, such as fertiliser). All Irish farmers stood to benefit from these war prices for their produce. Those best able to increase their output did best of all.
But the underlying issues – such as popular demand among small-holders for more aggressive schemes of land-redistribution – would resurface to challenge the governments of the early Irish Free State.
In later decades, from the economic war of the 1930s, through the “emergency” years and later still in the debates regarding Ireland’s case for joining the European Common Market, it became clear again and again that Ireland’s land questions constituted a constantly changing set of challenges for each successive generation.
It is so to this very day, and will continue to be so.
It is sometimes claimed that the “real” revolution in early 20th century Ireland was already well on the way to completion before ever the political revolution of 1912-23 got underway.
The “real” revolution in question was the social revolution in the countryside brought about by the land war and by successive land acts from the 1880s to the eve of the Great War.
According to some influential commentators, these acts, facilitating land purchase by the tenant-farmers, effectively solved the Irish land question. This question had been at the root of popular Irish discontent since the time of the confiscations and plantations of the 16th and 17th centuries.
However, to speak of the major change in land ownership facilitated (and funded) by the land acts – notably the Wyndham act of 1903 – as “solving” the Irish land question, is to oversimplify what was a much more complex set of issues.
Ownership increases from 3% to 63%
in less than 50 years
There were, in truth, many Irish land questions. Ownership was, of course, a crucial issue (emotive as well as urgently economic) for centuries. The land acts did indeed transform the pattern of land ownership, allowing farmers to become owners of the farms they were working, through the purchase of their holdings from the landlords, with state credit.
Between 1870 and 1916, the percentage of land-occupiers actually owning the holdings that they farmed rose from 3% to 63% and was still rising at the time of the outbreak of the Great War. But the question of land distribution was also crucial. All farmers were anxious to increase their farms to what they considered adequate (or viable) for providing a satisfactory income and standard of living for their family.
This was a vexed question: family size, the quality of the land, the expectations and ambitions of individual farmers and households, were all factors driving demand for land redistribution.
On the very poorest or most over-populated land in the western parts of the country, the Congested Districts Board (CDB) had, since 1891, acquired and distributed a modest quantity of land.
For landless labourers (whose numbers continued to decline) the government had made commendable efforts to provide funding to assist in the building of modest dwellings from the late 1880s. Living conditions in rural Ireland were undoubtedly improving in the generation before 1914.
Land hunger
But land hunger – and specifically the resentment of struggling small farmers in many parts of Connacht at the ranchers who held large tracts of grazing land coveted by the smaller farmers – remained intense and sporadically led to agitation, intimidation and violence.
These tensions were very evident in parts of Connacht, in particular, in the years leading up to the 1916 Rising. Indeed, land issues – relating to land hunger and the demand that ranches be broken up for redistribution – would surface from time to time during the turbulent years of the War of Independence and the Civil War.
In addition to land ownership and land distribution, the issue of land use (what was actually done with the land) was a topic of lively debate in the decades before 1914 (as it would be at all times in the past 100 years).
The competing claims of tillage and pasture required consideration of the social aspect of land use as well as such strictly economic considerations as price movements, soil quality, cost-benefit, capital and labour requirements.
The co-operative movement and the establishment of a government department of agriculture and technical instruction, together with the schemes of the CDB, were all dedicated to improving the standard of living of rural dwellers through encouraging better use of the land and more efficient farming.
War brings improved prices
The war years (1914-1918) would see a sharp rise in prices for all agricultural produce (but also for inputs, such as fertiliser). All Irish farmers stood to benefit from these war prices for their produce. Those best able to increase their output did best of all.
But the underlying issues – such as popular demand among small-holders for more aggressive schemes of land-redistribution – would resurface to challenge the governments of the early Irish Free State.
In later decades, from the economic war of the 1930s, through the “emergency” years and later still in the debates regarding Ireland’s case for joining the European Common Market, it became clear again and again that Ireland’s land questions constituted a constantly changing set of challenges for each successive generation.
It is so to this very day, and will continue to be so.
SHARING OPTIONS