Irish History Articles - Land Reform, Parnellites, and Boycott

Articles: 19th Century Ireland
VIII. Land Reform and Boycott

by Dr. Sam Couch, Ph. D.
Owner, Rising Road Tours

While plans were being laid for the Celtic Revival during the 1890s, hard and pragmatic men were pursuing two much less romantic ideals. The traditional rulers of Ireland were going to learn that the granting of political concessions - the removal of the penal laws, and the more positive legislation to transfer ownership of land from the Anglo-Irish landlords to tenants - would not arouse gratitude in the beneficiaries. Such steps never did. Between 1870, when the prime minister, Gladstone, introduced the first land act to divide up the great estates among those who worked them and 1909 when the last such act was passed, the number of Irish householders in possession of some land rose from 3 percent to 60 percent and the redistribution of land had gone as far as it might reasonable be expected to go. Yet within a few years of that last act, revolution broke out.

The Irish had had their fill of colonial condescension. Their own organizations were going to be uncompromisingly hostile to the Anglo-Irish, pushing their own cause without wish for compromise or conciliation. Where the Anglo-Irish did help them - and plenty did - it had to be at the cost of renouncing their background. The harshness of this attitude pervaded most strictly Irish organizations. The hundred of so Irish Members of Parliament, ranked until his undeserved disgrace in 1890 behind Charles Stewart Parnell, sold their block vote only for legislation to help the Irish. When they withheld it, the Westminster government was nearly brought to its knees.

At home, the Parnellites urged all their followers to cut off all contact with any landlord or agent who went ahead with unjust evictions, "as if he were a leper of old." The first target of this campaign was Lord Erne's agent. Suddenly he found himself unable to hire men to work, or by buy or sell farm produce, while his wife was refused service in local shops. Other landlords provided him with labor and 7000 police and troops were brought in to keep the peace. But in the end he had to move out. At least he has an immortal memorial in the language: his surname was Boycott. Meanwhile the Catholic priests, flexing their muscles in the newly won status assured them when the Church of Ireland was disestablished, became tough and unyielding. The teaching order of the Christian Brothers disseminated a history that stressed English villainies. Even a century later in the 1950s, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. McQuaid would be forbidding Catholics to attend Trinity College, though the college had long since rescinded its own ban on Catholics and was anxious to make amends.

In the world at large, it was Yeats and his circle that made the greater impression. Their aspirations have colored vividly the general picture of Irish aspiration. Ireland itself did little more than pay them lip service.

This series of articles is based on lectures given by Dr. Samuel Couch to Irish Studies courses at Georgia Southern University and Young Harris College between 1997 and 2004. Documented sources come from Couch's research and studies in American universities and with scholars in Ireland. The articles are in no way intended to be comprehensive.

Background materials come from, but are not limited to, readings in the following books:

Duffy, Sean, ed., Atlas of Irish History. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1997.
Joyce, P.W., Outlines of the History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 1905. M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin. 1909.
Killeen, Richard, A Short History of Ireland. Gill & Macmillan: Dublin. 1994.
Smyth, Daragh, A Guide to Irish Mythology. 2nd ed. Irish Academic Press: Dublin. 1996.

Any lack of attribution to primary sources is unintentional and the sole responsibility of Dr. Couch.

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Articles: 19th Century Ireland VIII. Land Reform and Boycott

Articles: 19th Century Ireland
VIII. Land Reform and Boycott