The War over Rent

How Irish Tenants Fought Their Landlords and Won

De: Jo Guldi

Historian, professor and data scientist Jo Guldi turns the David and Goliath story of the 19th century Irish Land Wars to show how a small band of revolutionary Irish peasants—pioneering nonviolent activism and minting ideas like rent control and land transfer—took on the British Empire and won their land back from absentee landlords.

The War Over Rent is one part gripping, under-told history, one part recipe for agitation. The victory of what historians term the “Irish Land War” is breathtaking in its implications.

In the 19th century, Irish peasants took on the British Empire and won, wresting stolen land back from absentee landlords, and reshaping the world around them. In terms of access to police, the state, capital, land, or courts—the traditional implements of power—Irish activists garnered inconceivable wins from rent control to the wholesale transfer of land from rich to poor.

How did they do it? And is the success of the Land War repeatable today? With clear echoes in our own times of wealth disparity and housing crises around the word, this surprising and magnificent Irish history can teach us how to fairly redistribute land without killing our landlords today.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"I met Guldi in 2010, when we were both junior scholars in the Harvard Society of Fellows. A burst of ideas and energy, her natural talent was evident in every conversation we had. In the years since, I have followed her work closely, as our research areas overlap. A prolific, pioneering historian, I endorse her work with all of my enthusiasm—and, frankly, in awe."
—Matthew Desmond, New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and winner of the Pulitzer Prize

“Under British colonialism, Ireland was a laboratory for some of the most violent experiments in modern economics. It's also where uprisings against them yielded lessons that continue to matter today. There's no better way to learn them than through Jo Guldi's captivating storytelling. She shows how Irish peasants became data activists, making counter-surveys, counting evictions, mapping rent. They used every technology of media and persuasion available to them to force the powerful to concede. Their invention - the rent strike, born as the literal alternative to killing landlords - traveled from Ireland to Gandhi's India to the American civil rights movement. In a world where housing is again unaffordable, this magnificent book recovers a history that landlords would prefer we forget.”
—Raj Patel, New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing