This tripartite volume of essays – surveys, reflections, new research – was prompted by a conference at N.U.I. Maynooth and the editors’ subsequent invitation to selected historians and sociologists to revisit the work on the Irish land question that they had largely researched and published between the 1960s and 1980s. They were requested to contextualise the times and circumstances in which their projects were undertaken, to reflect on the issues that coloured and shaped their initial engagement, and to consider possible lacunae and alternative approaches. Following these exegeses, representatives of the next generation of scholars address some of the land-related issues and themes that emerged from the 1990s onwards. In the Introduction, Fergus Campbell explains at some length the volume’s gestation and rationale, and pays due homage to its 1983 progenitor, James Donnelly and Samuel Clark’s edited collection Irish peasants: violence and political unrest, 1780–1914.

The volume’s first section consists of two survey chapters, by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh and Tony Varley on the period of the Act of Union and the twentieth century respectively. In an engaging and challenging essay, Ó Tuathaigh addresses what he terms the dense matrix of interlocking issues and questions relating to the ownership, occupancy and use of land historically in Ireland. The complexity of these questions is prefaced in the author’s reflection on Seamus Deane’s ideological distinction between the terms ‘land’ and ‘soil’ in Irish memory, imagination and history. Varley’s analysis of agrarian agitations and the politics of land reform in the twentieth century neatly complements Ó Tuathaigh’s contribution and, together, they provide a solid contextual and historical foundation for exploring land questions in modern Ireland.

In the book’s reflective section, Barbara L. Solow, Philip Bull, Samuel Clark, David Jones and Fergus Campbell re-engage with their earlier work on the Irish land question, some of which was innovatory and set the agenda for subsequent scholars. The contributions vary in approach, length and pitch, from the confessional to the explanatory and exculpatory. Thankfully, there is little evidence of either point-scoring or score-settling but the counterfactual nature of the exercise, its subjectivity and the representativeness of those involved raise questions about its value. Research and writing take place in a specific time and context and are influenced by factors such as individuality, current knowledge, the availability of source material, and prevailing orthodoxies. Historians and sociologists, like other scholars, are neither omniscient nor infallible and only the most self-deluded and arrogant would not have done things differently if privileged with subsequent research findings and analyses. Historiography is a constantly evolving process and publications derive integrity from their time, place and context.

Gender, religion and local leadership were some of the more significant themes that were overlooked or only partially explored in the earlier analyses, deficiencies that some of the contributors readily acknowledge, and the third segment of the book addresses some of these issues. Heather Laird traces the contribution of the Ladies Land League and argues for the centrality of women generally in the Land War of 1879–82. Anne Kane addresses the role of the Catholic Church but, unfortunately, her jargon-laden approach mars the analysis. Gerard Moran raises the important question of local leadership in agrarian movements and offers as a case study the part played by Matthew Harris in land agitation in Connacht. The final essay is by Tony Varley, whose focus, as in his survey chapter in the book’s first section, is the twentieth century, specifically the role of various farmers’ parties and the politics of land redistribution.

The contributions to this compound of survey, reflection, new research and indicators to the future vary in quality, accessibility and significance, and, inevitably, there is some replication of themes and ideas. The introduction and the various chapters are properly referenced and, with the exception of those in section two, have select bibliographies appended. Production values are high, reflecting possibly the book’s high purchase price, with an attractive, suggestive cover image, Gerard Dillon’s The little green fields, c.1945.