Irish Land and British Politics
Tenant-Right and Nationality 1865–1870

The story of the British political system's reaction to the Irish unrest is told, and an important episode in Mr Gladstone's career fully revealed.

E. D. Steele (Author)

9780521086592, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 December 2008

380 pages
21 x 15 x 2.1 cm, 0.48 kg

The story of the British political system's reaction to the Irish unrest is told, and an important episode in Mr Gladstone's career fully revealed. The agrarian reform of 1870 was not only `the beginning of the undoing of the conquest', it was also a point of departure for British legislation generally. A great deal of evidence is marshalled in the book to support its argument that the Act undermined the conception of property-rights which was central to the self-confidence of the rulers of mid-Victorian Britain. Dr Steele draws on the relatively neglected mass of evidence about the Irish peasantry, their customs and aspirations, collected and printed by British Parliamentary and official investigations during the nineteenth century. He has been able to exploit a wealth of material in the private pipers of Mr Gladstone, his cabinet colleagues and other leading political figures. Selective use has been made of the British and Irish press, to illustrate and emphasize all that was at stake.

1. Tenant-right and nationality in nineteenth-century Ireland
2. Irish land and British politics in the 1860s
3. The approach to legislating, January to August 1869
4. First thoughts and reactions in the cabinet, September and October
5. The adoption of a plan
6. The cabinet debate, October to December
7. Outside the cabinet, October to December
8. The last stages in the cabinet and the mood of two countries
9 The passing of the Bill.

Subject Areas: History [HB]