The Irish Land Commission and Land Reform, 1881-1992: Future Research Potential
Synopsis:
Land reform was central to Irish life, society, and politics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Foremost in the process was the Irish Land Commission, first established under the 1881 Land Act. Beginning as a regulator of fair rents, the Commission soon evolved into the great facilitator of land transfer. But over emphasis on these principal aspects of its work can sometimes camouflage its equal significance as the main instigator and architect of reform, bestowing upon it pre-eminence as the most important state body operating out of rural Ireland for the best part of 100 years. During its existence, the Land Commission’s long tentacles spread into every nook and cranny of rural society.
But even though the Land Commission has been dissolved for over thirty years, its archives have not yet been opened to the research public (except on an extremely limited basis). The anomaly of this is difficult to explain, and the loss to Irish historical research to be greatly lamented. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to illuminate the importance of the Land Commission and its records to any future understanding of the development of modern Ireland, and secondly, by extension, to make a case why the Irish government should fully open the archives to the research public.
Speaker bio:
Terence Dooley is Professor of History at Maynooth University and Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates. His latest book Burning the Big House: the Story of the Irish Country House in War and Revolution 1914-23 was published by Yale University Press in 2022. Copies can be had at Offaly History Centre.
Credit to : Offaly History