A conservative revolution
National sovereignty crystalised Gaelicism and late Victorian mores. Marc Mulholland argues, in his second article, that there was no transformation of popular consciousness
If there was an Irish revolution, it probably began with the Irish Land League of 1879-81. This was founded by Michael Davitt, the one-armed son of farmers evicted during the famine (he had lost a limb working as a boy in an English factory), and presided over by Charles Stewart Parnell, a Protestant landlord. The league campaigned against ‘rackrents’ (anything above what tenant farmers thought reasonable) in the short term, and for the peasant proprietorship of the farms they worked in the longer term. The result was a huge social struggle that coined the term ‘boycotting’ and attracted international attention.