ABSTRACT
Over the past two centuries inequality, conflict and social and economic transformation have been enduring themes in the rural history of modern Ireland. In the 19th century and beyond much sporadic or continuing conflict surrounded access to and the distribution of Irish land (Lee 1980; Nairn 1998, pp. 107–8; O’Dowd 2005, p. 93); and from these land struggles some clear ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ would emerge. We know that the challenge to landlord power of the more substantial tenant farmers partly depended on the decline of their old class adversaries, the agricultural labourers (Hoppen 1984, p. 103). If the farm-workers and landlords were the big losers historically, then the larger tenant or ‘strong’ farmers were the big winners (Larkin 1984, pp. xiv–xv).
