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.

Further reading (with bibliography)

• The Highland Clearances, John Prebble, Penguin Books, 1963, ISBN 0-14002837-4
• An overview of the Clearances, Alexander McKenzie, 1881.
• Gloomy Memories, Donald Macleod, 1857 (first-hand account of Sutherland clearances).
• The Highland Clearances, Eric Richards, Birlinn Books, 2000.
• The Strathnaver Trilogy, Ian Grimble. 3vols: Chief of MacKay, The Trial of Patrick Sellar, and The World of Rob Donn.