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Irish peasant women in revolt: the Land League years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Janet K. TeBrake
Janet K. TeBrake*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Maine
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Extract

Between 1879 and 1882 a mass agrarian movement, led by the Irish National Land League, became a strong, all-encompassing force in Irish life for a brief but crucial period. This movement, one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in nineteenth-century Europe, has been treated as a nationalist movement, with emphasis of study placed on the role, contributions and aims of the league’s national leaders. These men, seeking their own varieties of self-government, saw the land movement as means to a political end. To them the land agitation provided a stepping-stone to national independence. It was the Irish peasantry, however, motivated primarily by economic considerations, that provided the driving force behind the movement, and at this level Irish peasant women made major contributions to the agrarian revolt. In this study the Land League movement is viewed as an agrarian protest movement; its purpose is to examine in particular the roles played by the Irish peasant women during the Land League period.

These contributions have not been adequately recognised in historical literature. Recently the role of the Irish peasant has been duly acknowledged, but in these discussions a male image usually appears. When the Irish women’s role in the land movement is examined, it is done so in the context of the organisation known as the Ladies’ Land League. These studies concentrate on the activities of the upper- and middle-class urban leaders, particularly the Parnell sisters. But to dwell only on the Ladies’ Land League as the focus of women’s participation in the Land League movement is far too narrow, for it obscures the fact that hundreds of peasant women were fighting the Land War on a daily basis long before the formation of the women’s organisation. The papers of some of the local branches of the Land League provide evidence which shows that Irish rural women participated in the Land War from its beginning. Although the archival sources of the Land League period are biased towards men, enough material regarding the peasant women’s activities, admittedly limited and somewhat sparse, does exist to allow a strong argument to be put forward that peasant women performed effectively in the Land War.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 109 , May 1992 , pp. 63 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1992

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References

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3 N.L.I., Irish National Land League papers (hereafter I.N.L.L. papers), MS 8291; N.L.I., Anderson papers, MS 11289; Documents of the Roundwood branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Co. Wicklow (N.L.I., MS 17794); Minute book of the Maryborough branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Queen’s Co. (N.L.I., MS 2070); S.P.O., Chief Crown Solicitor papers, no. 52,1882; S.P.O., Irish National League papers, 1/414,1882; S.P.O., Irish Crime Records.

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26 Joseph Conway, secretary, Quinnan branch, Co. Cork, to Thomas Brennan, Dublin, 25 Nov. 1880 (ibid.).

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28 James Duggan, secretary, Cashmore branch, Co. Tipperary, n.d., attached to eviction form (ibid.); John Donohue, secretary, Aughavass branch, Co. Leitrim, n.d., attached to eviction form (ibid.).

29 Protection of Person and Property Act, 1881 (44 & 45 Vict., c. 4).

30 Moody, Davitt, pp 456–7.

31 Ward, Unmanageable revolutionaries, p. 18.

32 Connaught Telegraph, 19 Feb. 1881.

33 Documents of the Roundwood branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Co. Wicklow (N.L.I., MS 17794).

34 Minute book of the Maryborough branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Queen’s Co. (N.L.I., MS 2070).

35 Documents of the Roundwood branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Co. Wicklow (N.L.I., MS 17794).

36 Ibid.; Minute book of the Maryborough branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Queen’s Co. (N.L.I., MS 2070).

37 Connaught Telegraph, 28 May 1881.

38 Ibid., 19 Feb. 1881.

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41 Connaught Telegraph, 19 Feb. 1881.

42 Letter dated 16 Feb. 1881 from the minute book of the Maryborough branch of the Ladies’ Land League, Queen’s Co. (N.L.I., MS 2070).

43 Quoted in Moody, Davitt, p. 481.

44 Connaught Telegraph, 12 Feb. 1881.

45 Quoted in Ward, Unmanageable revolutionaries, p. 23.

46 Connaught Telegraph, 19 Feb. 1881.

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48 S.P.O., Irish National League papers, 1/414, 1882.

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82 Research for this study was funded in part by the Women in the Curriculum Program, University of Maine, Orono, Maine. An early version was presented at the Third International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women, Dublin, 10 July 1987. The final version benefited greatly from the comments and criticisms of William J. Baker, Richard Judd, Wayne Ph. TeBrake and Jason Thompson.