Land War

As a country War (English for " Land War ", Irish Cogadh na talun ) the struggle of the Irish National Land League for land reform and for the rights of tenants in Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s is called. Although the name suggests this and it sometimes led to violent clashes, did not constitute a war in the true sense.

Context and history

Ireland was at that time under British rule, the soil in Ireland belonged English landowners ( landlords ). The Irish peasants ordered as a tenant the country, and often had to pay a high rent and lived in abject poverty, which reached in the famine of 1845-1849 peaked and many Irish to emigrate (especially in the USA) operation.

1879 was mainly in the west of Ireland the potato crop again bad (see famine in Ireland 1879). Many of the affected farmers had witnessed the great famine in their childhood and were afraid that they and their children now the same fate would befall. This fear helped to increase the willingness to possibly even militant resistance against poverty and oppression.

After several local country leagues already had arisen, against this background, Michael Davitt founded in collaboration with Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish National Land League, to help the concerns of tenants to break through. These concerns were summarized in the "Three Fs ": fair rent ( no excessive lease payments), fixity of tenure ( long-term lease contracts, no evictions ) and freedom of sale ( sale freedom ).

Course

The demands of the tenants and the Land League came naturally to the resistance of the landlords. So tried the Land League to force the landlord to make concessions, by identifying a "fair" lease and then encouraged their members to this demand by the landlord. If they refuse, the rent should be paid directly to the Land League, which held the money as long as under wraps until the Landlord would relent. The first target was the Catholic canon Ulick Burke, who had to reduce the rent by 25 % his tenants.

Became famous for refusing to work harvesting the farmer in 1880 in the area of Lough Mask in County Mayo, whereby the local estate manager Charles Cunningham Boycott was exposed in public, and finally had to relent. His name impressed itself as the epitome of a collective refusal; the term " boycott " is a legacy of the country was.

Many landlords resisted violently; the Royal Irish Constabulary, although composed mainly of Irish and stood on the side of the landlords, and the British army was deployed. The followers of the Land League fought in turn sometimes militantly against the then widespread evictions, sometimes it came to attacks on landlords and their possessions. There were casualties on both sides.

Follow

Within three decades, the Land League reached its destination. There were laws in favor of the tenants adopted (Land Acts ) and established in the framework of an Irish Land Commission, and with the country Wyndham Purchase Act of 1903, the Irish soil eventually came back into the possession of the Irish peasantry.

• Peasant uprising
• History of Ireland (1801-1922)
• Uprising in Europe