ABSTRACT
Agrarian agitation originated in the western counties under conditions of severe hardship in 1879 but gathered real momentum in Cork only after economic prospects had brightened considerably during the summer and autumn of 1880. Between the autumn of 1885 and the summer of 1886, Cork landowners were presented with demands for larger abatements than ever before. As for their rental incomes, landowners absorbed the land act with only slight loss, for less than 10 per cent of the total rent paid by Cork tenants was judicially fixed under its provisions. Even though the land war produced no final solution to the land question, it greatly hastened the eventual disintegration of Irish landlordism. Closely following the recommendations of the unanimous report, the land act that passed in August 1903 rang the death knell of Irish landlordism and heralded the arrival of peasant ownership.
