Land Acts (Ireland)

The Land Acts (officially Land Law (Ireland) Acts)^[1] were a series of measures to deal with the question of tenancy contracts and peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909. Further acts were introduced by the governments of the Irish Free State after 1922 and more acts were passed for Northern Ireland.

The success of the Land Acts in reducing the concentration of land ownership is indicated by the fact that in 1870, only 3% of Irish farmers owned their own land while 97% were tenants. By 1929, this ratio had been reversed with 97.4% of farmers holding their farms in freehold.^[2] However, as Michael Davitt and other Georgists had foreseen, peasant proprietorship did not end hardship in the Irish countryside. Emigration and economic disadvantage continued^[3] while the greatest beneficiaries of land reform were the middle class of medium farmers.^[2]