Michael Davitt: Freelance Radical and Frondeur

Michael Davitt (1846-1906) is popularly known as the founder of the Irish National Land League and as the architect of the agrarian campaign of 1879-82. However, while the Land War was pivotal in Irish history, Davitt’s lesser-known freelance political career after 1882, during which he engaged with a diverse range of issues and causes, from the Boer War to Zionism, reveals a much more complex and, at times, contradictory political figure than that previously represented in Irish historiography. This book, the first sustained study of Davitt’s political career in its totality, views him~in a broad political context of labour activism and international radicalism.