Highland Clearances

The Highland Clearances were part of a process of agricultural change throughout the United Kingdom, but the late timing, the abruptness of the change from the Clan System in the Scottish Highlands and the brutality of many of the evictions gave the Highland Clearances particular notoriety. The Inclosures that depopulated rural England in the British Agricultural Revolution started much earlier, and similar developments in Scotland have lately been called the Lowland Clearances, but in the Highlands the impact on a Goidelic (Scottish Gaelic) speaking semi-feudal culture that still expected obligations from a Chieftain to his Clan led to vocal campaigning and a lingering bitterness among the descendants of the large numbers forced to emigrate, or to remain and subsist in crofting townships on very small areas of often marginal land. Crofters became a source of virtually free labour to their landlords, forced to work long hours, for example, in the harvesting and processing of kelp.

Ethnic cleansing

It is debatable whether the Clearances could be considered as genocide, but from McLeod's accounts they would certainly appear to be an early instance of ethnic cleansing, for although both the dispossessers and the dispossessed were Britons, Highlanders were regarded as foreign, as Erse (Irish), with a culture, language and traditions distinct from the rest of Britain.

Related Topics:
Genocide - Ethnic cleansing - Britons - Erse - Irish

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While the collapse of the clan system can be attributed more to economic factors and the repression that followed the Battle of Culloden, the widespread evictions resulting from the Clearances severely affected the viability of the Highland population and culture. To this day, the population in the Scottish Highlands is sparse and the culture is diluted, and there are many more sheep than people. However, the Clearances did result in significant emigration of Highlanders to North America and Australasia — where today are found considerably more descendants of Highlanders than in Scotland itself. In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Highlanders arrived in such numbers that it is now one of the few areas outside Scotland where Scottish Gaelic is spoken.

Related Topics:
Battle of Culloden - Scottish Highlands - Emigration - North America - Australasia - Cape Breton - Nova Scotia - Scottish Gaelic

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