Philip Bull's book is best described as a thoughtful essay on Irish nationalism and the land question. The basic argument can be summarized as follows. The Irish and the British had two incompatible models of land tenure, the Irish customary model, which recognized the proprietary rights of tenants, versus the British capitalist model, which recognized only the absolute property rights of owners. In the period immediately after the Great Famine, British legislators sought to strengthen the position of Irish landlords, hoping that they would make the investments necessary to modernize Irish agriculture. When it became clear that this was not working, the British shifted to legislation that recognized the fights of Irish tenants but repeatedly did too little too late, with the result that land agitation in Ireland became increasingly more radical and fused with the movement for Irish self-government. Since most landlords were Protestant and most tenants were Catholic, the fusion of the national question with the land question made the nationalist movement sectarian. The resolution of the land question by the Wyndham Act of 1903 offered the opportunity to separate the two and therefore also the opportunity to broaden support for Irish nationalism to include Protestants as well as Catholics. But the failure of Irish nationalist leaders to take up this opportunity preserved the sectarianism of the nationalist movement. In this way the fusion of the land question and the national question determined “the breakdown of pluralism in modem Ireland” (p. 4) and helped to bring about the partition of the country, which “is the most tangible legacy of the land question” (p. 191).