This book fills a long-standing gap in Irish historiography, drawing together a large body of existing literature with extensive new research. It is ambitious in its scale, looking at an eventful three decades of Irish history but with a deep anchorage in the local politics of a particular region, generally the western province of Connacht but more particularly the county of Galway. It is a study of how the land tenure issue, central to the politics of Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century, evolved through early twentieth-century land legislation, and of the changing relationship of this issue to nationalist politics. The major argument of the book is that while the political interests of farmers generally had coalesced up until the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, after that time land agitation became more strongly focused on the smallholders and “congests” of the west, and that in the subsequent struggles for national independence important gains were achieved by these groups, constituting a significant social revolution within the larger framework of the national revolution.

The research on which the book is based is impressive and undertaken with a commendable rigor and comprehension. As the author admits, his most useful sources are “those compiled by the representatives of the British government in Ireland” (6), and the book echoes with the voices of county inspectors and inspectors general of the Royal Irish Constabulary. All historians who have worked with these sources understand their richness and scope, but none have used them so well, so extensively, and to such effect as has Fergus Campbell. While these sources have to be used with caution—county inspectors sometimes pay more attention to what they think their superiors want to hear than to accurate reporting—and very occasionally there is a sense that Campbell takes these informants too much at their word, generally they are used with discretion and judgment. To these excellent and comprehensive sources of information Campbell has added thorough research into more conventional collections of politicians’ private papers, newspapers, and government publications. Very striking use has been made, for example, of the census data for Galway in order to provide more information on political activists. On top of this array of sources there are Campbell's interviews with people whose memories have added to his knowledge of the people with whom and times with which he deals.

In turning this research into a fine piece of narrative and analytical history, Campbell has engaged extensively with the work of other historians, using his own insights to qualify their interpretations. Few historians who have written on this period, including myself, escape Campbell's corrective hand, but generally with generous recognition of their respective contributions. The book significantly qualifies the established historiography in a number of areas, although Campbell is always cautious to allow for regional differences in making judgments in relation to national politics. Indeed one of the virtues of the book is a fresh reassertion of the importance of regional differences to an understanding of Irish national politics.

In what is otherwise a very carefully constructed commentary on the development of national politics in the period, Campbell follows the broad body of historical literature in neglecting key developments between 1900 and 1904, which have significant implications for some of his major themes. Some other historians would share his view that there are a number of problems with my analysis of events immediately following the Wyndham Land Act (294–95). Campbell does not, however, address the arguments in support of that analysis, neither has he apparently read one of the major articles enunciating that interpretation, nor does he allow for the extent of the contemporary perception of the alternatives then facing Irish nationalists. After all, one of the great regional diversities in the period with which Campbell deals was the existence after 1910 of what was effectively a separate parliamentary representation principally from Munster constituencies. This “O’Brienite” party constituted one of the major statements of regional diversity in Irish nationalist politics prior to 1916, and yet it receives no acknowledgment in Campbell's account.

This neglect arises in part at least from an unwillingness, shared until recently by most historians, to recognize the importance of three interconnected developments. The reunion of the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1900 occurred on the basis that thwarted the popular renewal that is so important a part of Campbell's analysis of the United Irish League, leaving at the national level a party ill-equipped to respond to changing circumstances. Second, a radical strategy of agitation—resembling in some respects the subsequent policy of Sinn Féin—with nationalist (not just agrarian) objectives was cut short, in August 1902, by the party's leadership, an episode not mentioned by Campbell. Third, the conciliation policy that evolved in 1903 after the passage of the Wyndham Land Act was terminated, not because of excessive price demands by landlords, as Campbell argues, but because of ideological objections on the part of some nationalist leaders to the process by which the land act was achieved. Indeed, there is an argument, used by some contemporaries, that the campaign against the land act and the conciliation policy compromised the tenants’ capacity to negotiate the best terms for the purchase of their farms. It is also arguable that the failure of that policy reduced the chances of addressing the issue of congestion in the west, thereby necessitating the “Ranch War” of which Campbell takes so positive a view.

Interpretations of these events and of their significance will inevitably vary between historians, but it is regrettable that Campbell has not addressed them more explicitly. Alternative views of what were appropriate strategies for Irish nationalists during this era were hotly debated at the time, and Campbell's account testifies to some of these; but despite new perspectives among historians, he has not directly dealt with others. This does not, however, diminish the value of this important new study and of the associated outstanding research. Fergus Campbell has produced a book that meets the highest professional standards, he has written it with elegance and style, and he has opened up a number of new avenues for future research and interpretation.