The author of this stimulating book sets himself a formidable task – 'to write the history of Irish agrarian and nationalist movements from below, to reconstruct events on the ground, and to provide an account of the lives of the thousands of ordinary people who, collectively, made the Irish revolution'. Previous scholars in the field, he argues, have focused on the strategies and objectives of elites and have not adequately explained the motivation of foot soldiers in political struggle. It is regrettable, he submits, that the methodolologies of social historians like E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm have had only a limited influence on the writing of Irish history.
East and south Galway provide the principal setting for the study, and it includes detailed accounts of the 1904-10 'ranch war' in the district, as well as of the 1916 rising and of the war of independence. The influence on much of this of Tom Kenny – Craughwell blacksmith, fenian, agrarian activist, GAA organiser, poll-topping district councillor – is well-described. (It was with Kenny and Major John McBride in mind that, allegedly, a senior Dublin Castle official once objected: 'Is Ireland to be governed by a water bailiff in Dublin and a blacksmith in Galway?).
In constructing his story, the author was able to draw on new sources for the history of the period, notably the testimonies of participants in the Irish revolution held by the Bureau of Military History which became available to researchers during 2003. The bibliography indicates, moreover, that the research process was a long and exhaustive one – interviews with surviving relatives of activists were carried out by the author as long ago as 1992 and as recently as 2003.
Campbell's starting point is an analysis of the so-called 'western problem', the source of the social conflict that drove successive popular movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Simply put, the 'western problem' was one of poverty, resulting from the inadequate size of the majority of agricultural holdings in the region. In the poorest – the officially 'congested' – districts, many families shared their one or two-roomed thatched houses with farm animals in the 1890s, subsisting on bread and potatoes, with bacon as an occasional luxury, and perpetually in debt to the local shopkeeper. For such families, the only way out of their predicament was to acquire more land. But if congested tenants were to acquire the additional acres they needed, it could only be at the expense of other landholders. Popular tenant movements, accordingly, targeted the tracts of untenanted lands held, under the eleven-month system, by the category of large-scale cattle- and sheep-farmers known as graziers. In the popular mind, the graziers' form of land use lacked legitimacy, both because many of the tracts involved were the result of earlier evictions, and because graziers – often shopkeepers, landlords, or professional men – were not dependent upon land in the way that family farmers were. And the fact that graziers, in many instances, monopolised the best land offended against the deep rooted egalitarianism of the smallholder society of western Ireland. A fascinating chapter, entitled 'The Law of the League', shows how communal values with regard to land were given expression through the United Irish League.
It was the view of the United Irish League, established by William O'Brien in Mayo during 1898, that 'the most effective means of preventing the frequent cries of distress and famine... would be the breaking up of the large grazing ranches... and the partition of them amongst the smallholders who were driven into the bogs and mountains to make room for the sheep and the bullocks'. With this policy, the League swept the west, revitalised a semi-moribund nationalist movement, and forced the government into a farther-reaching land reform than it would otherwise have considered. The result was the Wyndham Act of 1903, itself a signal for a renewed land agitation. For congested tenants, ownership (as opposed to tenant occupancy) of their few miserable acres was an inadequate remedy. It was important that, in the settlement of the land question, the graziers' tracts be divided among those who needed them for survival.
The Wyndham Act opened up divisions in the tenants' movement between those demanding the breaking up of the grasslands and those who were happy with the status quo in this regard. In the interests of the former, the age-old tactics of jacquerie were employed to intimidate landlords into including untenanted lands in the sale of their estates (and to persuade graziers to give up their own claims). In east Galway, it was an agrarian secret society that took up the struggle for a radical redistribution of land in the interests of the poorer tenants and of rural labourers. Dominated by Tom Kenny, the society was a semi-independent component of the IRB, and, over the following decade its cadres formed the vanguard, successively, of United Irish League, early Sinn Fein, and Irish Volunteer movements in the district.
Under its various flags of convenience, Kenny's largely plebeian society came in conflict with the authorities, but also with the more comfortably-off who came to dominate the United Irish League in east Galway. In this regard, the author's analysis of the social background of the members of the rival factions is impressive. He shows that that the struggle for local ascendancy between the social classes was a bitter and long-drawn-out affair and, in two key chapters, he traces the role of the subaltern element in the 1916 rising in the county and in the war of independence that followed.
The book is an account of the Irish revolution in county Galway, but it is also a contribution to the debate about the character of that revolution. In establishing that the political division that emerged between Galway republicans and Galway home rulers had a strong social dimension, the writer challenges certain conclusions of other historians, in particular those of David Fitzpatrick, whose Politics and Irish Life, 1913-1921 (1977), based on a study of county Clare, has been extremely influential. While he emphasises that his argument in this regard applies to county Galway, it is clear that Campbell expects that research will uncover similar dynamics elsewhere.
As 'history from below', as local history, and as a history of the Irish revolution, this book deserves a wide readership in county Galway. Unfortunately, because of Oxford University Press's pricing policy, few will consider buying it. A paperback edition would be welcome.
East and south Galway provide the principal setting for the study, and it includes detailed accounts of the 1904-10 'ranch war' in the district, as well as of the 1916 rising and of the war of independence. The influence on much of this of Tom Kenny – Craughwell blacksmith, fenian, agrarian activist, GAA organiser, poll-topping district councillor – is well-described. (It was with Kenny and Major John McBride in mind that, allegedly, a senior Dublin Castle official once objected: 'Is Ireland to be governed by a water bailiff in Dublin and a blacksmith in Galway?).
In constructing his story, the author was able to draw on new sources for the history of the period, notably the testimonies of participants in the Irish revolution held by the Bureau of Military History which became available to researchers during 2003. The bibliography indicates, moreover, that the research process was a long and exhaustive one – interviews with surviving relatives of activists were carried out by the author as long ago as 1992 and as recently as 2003.
Campbell's starting point is an analysis of the so-called 'western problem', the source of the social conflict that drove successive popular movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Simply put, the 'western problem' was one of poverty, resulting from the inadequate size of the majority of agricultural holdings in the region. In the poorest – the officially 'congested' – districts, many families shared their one or two-roomed thatched houses with farm animals in the 1890s, subsisting on bread and potatoes, with bacon as an occasional luxury, and perpetually in debt to the local shopkeeper. For such families, the only way out of their predicament was to acquire more land. But if congested tenants were to acquire the additional acres they needed, it could only be at the expense of other landholders. Popular tenant movements, accordingly, targeted the tracts of untenanted lands held, under the eleven-month system, by the category of large-scale cattle- and sheep-farmers known as graziers. In the popular mind, the graziers' form of land use lacked legitimacy, both because many of the tracts involved were the result of earlier evictions, and because graziers – often shopkeepers, landlords, or professional men – were not dependent upon land in the way that family farmers were. And the fact that graziers, in many instances, monopolised the best land offended against the deep rooted egalitarianism of the smallholder society of western Ireland. A fascinating chapter, entitled 'The Law of the League', shows how communal values with regard to land were given expression through the United Irish League.
It was the view of the United Irish League, established by William O'Brien in Mayo during 1898, that 'the most effective means of preventing the frequent cries of distress and famine... would be the breaking up of the large grazing ranches... and the partition of them amongst the smallholders who were driven into the bogs and mountains to make room for the sheep and the bullocks'. With this policy, the League swept the west, revitalised a semi-moribund nationalist movement, and forced the government into a farther-reaching land reform than it would otherwise have considered. The result was the Wyndham Act of 1903, itself a signal for a renewed land agitation. For congested tenants, ownership (as opposed to tenant occupancy) of their few miserable acres was an inadequate remedy. It was important that, in the settlement of the land question, the graziers' tracts be divided among those who needed them for survival.
The Wyndham Act opened up divisions in the tenants' movement between those demanding the breaking up of the grasslands and those who were happy with the status quo in this regard. In the interests of the former, the age-old tactics of jacquerie were employed to intimidate landlords into including untenanted lands in the sale of their estates (and to persuade graziers to give up their own claims). In east Galway, it was an agrarian secret society that took up the struggle for a radical redistribution of land in the interests of the poorer tenants and of rural labourers. Dominated by Tom Kenny, the society was a semi-independent component of the IRB, and, over the following decade its cadres formed the vanguard, successively, of United Irish League, early Sinn Fein, and Irish Volunteer movements in the district.
Under its various flags of convenience, Kenny's largely plebeian society came in conflict with the authorities, but also with the more comfortably-off who came to dominate the United Irish League in east Galway. In this regard, the author's analysis of the social background of the members of the rival factions is impressive. He shows that that the struggle for local ascendancy between the social classes was a bitter and long-drawn-out affair and, in two key chapters, he traces the role of the subaltern element in the 1916 rising in the county and in the war of independence that followed.
The book is an account of the Irish revolution in county Galway, but it is also a contribution to the debate about the character of that revolution. In establishing that the political division that emerged between Galway republicans and Galway home rulers had a strong social dimension, the writer challenges certain conclusions of other historians, in particular those of David Fitzpatrick, whose Politics and Irish Life, 1913-1921 (1977), based on a study of county Clare, has been extremely influential. While he emphasises that his argument in this regard applies to county Galway, it is clear that Campbell expects that research will uncover similar dynamics elsewhere.
As 'history from below', as local history, and as a history of the Irish revolution, this book deserves a wide readership in county Galway. Unfortunately, because of Oxford University Press's pricing policy, few will consider buying it. A paperback edition would be welcome.