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.

Potato Famine

:Main article: Highland Potato Famine (1846 - 1857)

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As in Ireland, the potato crop failed in the mid 19th century, and a widespread outbreak of cholera further weakened the Highland population. The ongoing clearance policy resulted in starvation, deaths, and a secondary clearance, when families either migrated voluntarily or were forcibly evicted. There were many deaths of children and old people. As there were few alternatives, many emigrated, joined the British army, or moved to the growing urban cities, like Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee in Lowland Scotland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Liverpool in the north of England. In many areas people were given economic incentives to move, but few historians dispute that there were also many instances where violent methods were used by the landlords to clear the indigenous population. Elizabeth, First Countess of Sutherland and her factor, Patrick Sellar, were especially cruel and their names are reviled in Sutherland to this day.

Related Topics:
Ireland - 19th century - Cholera - Glasgow - Edinburgh - Dundee - Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Liverpool - Countess of Sutherland - Patrick Sellar

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