ABSTRACT
The relations between landlords and tenants in County Cork at the beginning of 1877 appeared so calm that the violent land war which erupted within less than three years could only have been foreseen by a great leap of the imagination. Inclement seasons, bad crops, and low butter and cattle prices were plunging the county and indeed the country into a major agrarian crisis. After the release of the Irish leaders from Kilmainham in May, economic conditions, which had been favourable from about the middle of 1880 and continued so down to the summer of 1884, contributed significantly to the reduction of agrarian conflict. With the general election of April 1880 and the National Land Conference held in Dublin at the end of the same month, the agrarian agitation entered upon a new and more formidable phase. In defusing the agrarian agitation, the land act was undoubtedly a potent factor.
