https://msc.realfiedbook.com/?book=0947897011
In the second half of the nineteenth century the relationship between Ireland's landlords and the country's 500,000 tenants became one of the most contentious public issues. This led to a mass of intricate legislation and culminated in the great outbreak of rural agitation known as the Land War. This pamphlet surveys the striking changes that have taken place in historians' views of the issue, and in the historical evidence that they have used. The old picture of the predatory landlord and exploited tenant has gradually been replaced by a more balanced but more puzzling one: rents were not exorbitant, evictions were infrequent, and the period between the Famine and the Land War now appears to as a prosperous one for the farmers. The Land War itself, once presented as financial disaster for the gentry and economic emancipation for the tenantry, is presented here as a social rather than an economic turning-point.