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The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords, and Rural Turmoil
The Highland Clearances were one of the most devastating events in Scotland's brutal evictions, burning, starvation, and barren wastes. This new study shows how much deeper and more complex the subject is than had been previously thought. Eric Roberts tracks the origins of the Clearances from the 18th century to their culmination in the crofting legislation of the 1880s. He shows how the process of clearance was part of a European movement of rural depopulation, describes the gross overcrowding and appalling conditions of the Highland population and shows how invidious and difficult were the choices that faced even the most benevolent of landlords in the face of the harsh tide of economic change.In no way is the brutality and horror of the Clearances diminished by time. The Clearances created a terrible scar in the Highland and Gaelic imagination, but it must be remembered, that they were simply one amongst many attempted "solutions" to a problem -- a problem that remains today -- of how to maintain a population on marginal and infertile land. As we enter the 21st century, the question of the Clearances is still with us and still unanswered.
379 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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February 23, 2018
A Highland Clearance was 'an enforced simultaneous eviction of all families living in a given area such as an entire glen'. It's 150 years since the last big evictions in Scotland but the subject has lost none of its power to inflame emotions. Like many, if not most Scots, I understood the clearances in simple terms, i.e. nasty wealthy Southerners throwing people off their land to make way for sheep. That's not entirely untrue but I now appreciate that the events have to be understood in their historical context.
Before the Clearances began in the mid 18th century, the quality of life in the Highlands was risk-laden. Famine was endemic and crop failure occurred every three years on average. Security of tenure was uncommon. Landlords were the custodians of the land, responsible for the welfare of the people and the efficient conduct of the local economy. They held the levers of power and made decisions on behalf of the region. It was a unique social structure that had developed from the clans and saw men fighting in their landlord's regiments and landlords providing welfare in times of hardship.
So why did the clearances happen? The hard truth is that the landowners couldn't afford to continue as they were, struggling to collect small rents from poor crofters and cottars. Their own living expenses were increasing so they had to find a more secure way of obtaining rents. The rest of mainland Britain was embracing the industrial revolution and Highland landlords saw a way to exploit the opportunities it offered. Essentially the Highlands were appropriated to serve the needs of the national (British) economy - to provide cheaper clothing, food and raw materials for the industrialising south - and so the land was offered to sheep farmers to rent. The peasant economy operated on a collective basis, sharing common grazing for their cattle and sheep. To accommodate the needs of the sheep farmers and their stock, land was cleared of whole townships and common grazing rights removed. The landlords were simply following national trends in their adoption of more productive agricultural methods. It was their approach to achieving this that was the problem.
Perhaps the most infamous clearances, those which can still arouse bitter emotions today, were in Sutherland. Lord and Lady Stafford (to become the eternally reviled Duke and Duchess of Sutherland) were advised by their estate managers that hasty clearances would lead to disaster, poverty and forced emigration. The Sutherlands paid no heed, having no connection or particular interest in or understanding of the indigenous population. They did invest in coastal villages to house and employ some of those displaced but the accommodation was congested and inadequate for the growing population. Nevertheless, the evictions were euphemistically termed resettlement because an alternative was provided and in fairness this put them in stark contrast to other landlords who simply evicted their tenants and left them with nothing and nowhere to go. The Highlands did not experience the expansion of economic activity being seen elsewhere in Britain and Europe and so those displaced from their land were very often unable to find alternative employment or even shelter. Some of the worst poverty in Britain coexisted alongside extraordinary wealth.
Many landlords subsidised emigration to North America, sometimes Australia, buying their stock, providing a sum of money to be shared between the tenants as needed, clothing and shoes, arranging for help on arrival. Others enforced emigration. On Barra in 1851, people were bound hand and foot and searched down by militia with dogs to force them onto the ships. Reports from Quebec told of the horror of seeing these people arriving with 'hardly a rag to cover them', no means of subsistence and still suffering from the starvation that had caused their enforced emigration. By the 1850s few disagreed that emigration, whether to other counties or abroad, was the only way forward to relieve the pressure on the land caused by over population. As with the clearances, it was the often inhumane manner of its execution that was the problem. Perhaps the irony of these events is that many of the Scots who were cleared from their own land subsequently emigrated to lands where they themselves participated in the displacement of indigenous peoples, e.g. the Mi'kmaq Indians in Canada.
This is a broad topic which has many competing theorists. Eric Richards has written a fairly detailed account, academic yet accessible, which has whetted my appetite for finding out more of my own history. I can't do it justice in one short review and so I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.
Before the Clearances began in the mid 18th century, the quality of life in the Highlands was risk-laden. Famine was endemic and crop failure occurred every three years on average. Security of tenure was uncommon. Landlords were the custodians of the land, responsible for the welfare of the people and the efficient conduct of the local economy. They held the levers of power and made decisions on behalf of the region. It was a unique social structure that had developed from the clans and saw men fighting in their landlord's regiments and landlords providing welfare in times of hardship.
So why did the clearances happen? The hard truth is that the landowners couldn't afford to continue as they were, struggling to collect small rents from poor crofters and cottars. Their own living expenses were increasing so they had to find a more secure way of obtaining rents. The rest of mainland Britain was embracing the industrial revolution and Highland landlords saw a way to exploit the opportunities it offered. Essentially the Highlands were appropriated to serve the needs of the national (British) economy - to provide cheaper clothing, food and raw materials for the industrialising south - and so the land was offered to sheep farmers to rent. The peasant economy operated on a collective basis, sharing common grazing for their cattle and sheep. To accommodate the needs of the sheep farmers and their stock, land was cleared of whole townships and common grazing rights removed. The landlords were simply following national trends in their adoption of more productive agricultural methods. It was their approach to achieving this that was the problem.
Perhaps the most infamous clearances, those which can still arouse bitter emotions today, were in Sutherland. Lord and Lady Stafford (to become the eternally reviled Duke and Duchess of Sutherland) were advised by their estate managers that hasty clearances would lead to disaster, poverty and forced emigration. The Sutherlands paid no heed, having no connection or particular interest in or understanding of the indigenous population. They did invest in coastal villages to house and employ some of those displaced but the accommodation was congested and inadequate for the growing population. Nevertheless, the evictions were euphemistically termed resettlement because an alternative was provided and in fairness this put them in stark contrast to other landlords who simply evicted their tenants and left them with nothing and nowhere to go. The Highlands did not experience the expansion of economic activity being seen elsewhere in Britain and Europe and so those displaced from their land were very often unable to find alternative employment or even shelter. Some of the worst poverty in Britain coexisted alongside extraordinary wealth.
Many landlords subsidised emigration to North America, sometimes Australia, buying their stock, providing a sum of money to be shared between the tenants as needed, clothing and shoes, arranging for help on arrival. Others enforced emigration. On Barra in 1851, people were bound hand and foot and searched down by militia with dogs to force them onto the ships. Reports from Quebec told of the horror of seeing these people arriving with 'hardly a rag to cover them', no means of subsistence and still suffering from the starvation that had caused their enforced emigration. By the 1850s few disagreed that emigration, whether to other counties or abroad, was the only way forward to relieve the pressure on the land caused by over population. As with the clearances, it was the often inhumane manner of its execution that was the problem. Perhaps the irony of these events is that many of the Scots who were cleared from their own land subsequently emigrated to lands where they themselves participated in the displacement of indigenous peoples, e.g. the Mi'kmaq Indians in Canada.
This is a broad topic which has many competing theorists. Eric Richards has written a fairly detailed account, academic yet accessible, which has whetted my appetite for finding out more of my own history. I can't do it justice in one short review and so I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.
November 11, 2017
This is an exemplary history - evidence-based, measured and fair in its analyses, providing a solid narrative and clear about what is not yet known and where further research is needed. It is also an easy read even if occasionally it assumes a little too much knowledge of Scottish conditions.
The book is useful for understanding modern Scottish and British history but it is equally useful in adding a bit of local meat to the global problem of what happens to the losers (essentially peasants) when markets drive a modernisation that is ultimately to the benefit of later generations.
Where Professor Richards scores is in explaining the complexity of landlord reactions to market-driven change and how they really had little choice in the policies they undertook. 'Good' landlords trying to keep people on the land often were forced to sell as a result.
The clearances themselves were also highly variable in their impacts on people and seemed to run in waves as market conditions dictated, first, large enclosed sheep farming and, then, (less justifiably) enclosed sporting grounds to enable the rich to go shooting.
But underlying all this was an economic situation which landlords were not so much creating as responding to - a Malthusian situation in which parts of the Highlands were sometimes on the edge of Irish-type famine and where much of the population lived in dire poverty.
While it is probably true that Gaelic culture was rich and something was lost in the clearances amidst considerable suffering, it is also true that this rich culture was embedded in insecurity and misery.
This is a problem facing peasant communities throughout the world today. Peasants continue to fight the landlords who are trying to turn uneconomic or poorly economic landholding (and are often themselves in debt and racing against time) into viable estates.
Scotland was lucky that the British were plundering the rest of the world to bring back surplus capital, Nabobs and capitalists seemed happy, sometimes for sentimental reasons, to throw away this surplus on trying out all sorts of futile scheme in the far north.
In many respects, the highlands were a sump for capital and the English need not feel too guilty this time around since the clearances were mostly effected by Scotsman themselves, notably lowlanders taking advantage of opportunities to produce wool and take over bankrupt estates.
Gaelic society, like most over-populated peasant societies, was probably resilient and viable in a manner of speaking but only at the expense of permanent poverty. A lot of the problem lay in rapid increases in population that kept pushing Highlanders backwards into insecurity.
Communitarian distinctiveness also meant that wholly rational responses to change were vitiated because rational responses, which might have risked new opportunities or negotiated better terms, were counter-balanced by cultural responses that were not wholly minded to reason.
Richards gives a quite detailed picture of the processes of resistance to the Clearances. The reality is that there was very little substantive resistance for quite some time. Resistance only arrived when media coverage and external politicisation created local activism.
Violent revolts were rare. It is interesting that those that were violent (mostly highly localised) seemed to see a leading role for women as if a natural instinct of women against cultural change in communitarian societies forced them into direct occasional confrontation.
Over time, but far too late to stop the bulk of the modernisation, the coalescence of local activism, media emotional commitment to the expelled and the effect of democracy, which brought Highland representation into the machinations of London, brought a sort of reform.
This reform process was a weakly thing that protected the true peasants, the crofters, in communalist ways but did little for those with no land. It ossified peasant-landlord relations in a market economy so that the landlords felt free to remove the obligations they felt to their tenants.
After a hundred years of clearances, the Highlands were modernised and the area was no longer entrepreneurial (not that much entrepreneurial activity other than sheep farming and deer-stalking did well). The remaining crofters maintained an uneasy balance of power with landlords.
There is probably a general lesson here about what happens in vibrant market economies in their relationship with poverty-stricken marginal areas. In the end, the mass do emigrate and are thrown out to the cities while a rump of protected peasants (kulaks perhaps) survive.
Basically if you can hang on for a hundred years and get your vote to work for you in the national legislature, you can get a quasi-subsidised existence as a survivor at the expense of landlord rights and then claim to be the authentic voice of a now half-dead culture.
Stalin in a non-market economy took the opposite line and removed not only landlords but 'kulaks' and then collectivised everyone else in an intensification of communalism without the traditional culture (except in an anodised form). It was modernisation but not as we in the West know it.
This is all very politically contentious because, even today, excitable Celtic activists talk of genocide and ethnic cleansing. It was certainly not the former - very few died directly - and it might be classed as the latter except that the Gaels were not targeted because they were Gaels.
These was just a Malthusian situation under feudal remnant conditions that could not survive under new market conditions that created prosperity elsewhere. It was not only the peasants who did not hang on - an awful lot of landlords simply could not cope with their obligations.
In the space of a hundred years a mix of new men and rational Highlanders developed a new if tense relationship with the surviving crofters and the rest of Gaelic humanity found itself building new lives in the cities and in Canada and Australia.
What is it a tragedy? Certainly it was for many individual families who faced horrible conditions as they transitioned from one state to another. It is probable that we have to see their fate as like that of Stalin's peasants ... victims so that their children or grandchildren should have better lives?
How should we see it today? Not in Scottish political terms perhaps, with partisan vitriol directed at lairds by nationalists, but as something more complex, as the tragedy of pre-socialist market modernisation where socialism was, in the event, not to make any the less of a hash of it.
Might it have been better for it not to have taken place? Could the Highlands have survived with non-feudal land reform. That was not going to happen because capitalist modernisation was built on private property rights and the English were not going to subsidise buying out the lairds.
Even if such land reform had taken place early, the reality was that there were far too many people for the land to bear safely without Malthusian risk. Perhaps modern agricultural techniques could have improved the lives of a peasant society based on co-operatives. We will never know.
What is clear is that, while there is room for a class analysis of the situation, the classes involved did not automatically fall to type. For every thuggish calculating landlord there was another who retained their quasi-feudal obligations (and probably ended having to sell out as a result).
The peasants also did what they have done since time immemorial, from Haiti to the Ukraine, and simply let rent arrears pile up in the absence of any immediate threat of eviction. Like the gentry of Turgenev, un-improving non-brutal landlords slid inexorably into debt.
Basically a bit of cold-hearted calculation, if not outright brutalism, paid off for landlords but was often undertaken because there was no alternative. The tenants were not covering the expenses of existence for an aspirational gentry class.
Many of the lairds were pulled into the market system out of desperation. The situation is complicated. Professor Richards' does not hide this complexity which extends to moral judgements. But the suffering of individual and families was real if inexorable.
If I have one complaint, it is a mild one. He tends to come down on the side of acceptance of the inevitability of liberal economics and he is probably right but his heart also often seems to be with the frustrated landlords more often than with the largely ignorant victims of change.
I understand this on the facts but it might have been good to realise that there could have been a middle way between pandering to the market and pandering to feudal obligations through engagement with reform that did not require such radical and aggressive measures.
But the will was not there - the peasantry was ignorant and the landlords selfish though rarely downright evil. In the end, it is hard not to see what happened as inevitable if messy in the execution. Make sure you read the latest 2016 edition rather than the 2008 version.
December 27, 2014
The Clearances as a topic elicit more hysteria and absolute refusal to look at the evidence than just about anything else in Scotland's history. This is one of the most balanced books I've found on the topic. Richards does not diminish the tragedy or suffering experienced by those evicted, but he points out that mass evictions were occurring not only in the Highlands, but also in the Scottish Lowlands, in rural England, and throughout Ireland, and that the steps taken by many Highland landlords to help the people (free passage to the colonies, forgiveness of years'-worth of rental arrears, even the construction of homes for them on other parts of the estate), though often not successful, were a lot more than anyone expected from landlords elsewhere and were often spurned by the tenants. Richards does not delve too deeply into the cultural difference between Gaelic Highlanders and their mostly anglicised landlords, and I think that was a big part of the betrayal felt by those cleared. He does, however, ask a question that so many popular historians prefer not to ask, which is, what else could some of these landlords have done?
January 5, 2023
As with a lot of my recent reading, I read this book for family history purposes - to understand more about the Clearances as a cause for Scottish emigration to North America. This is a relatively recent scholarly work, and a brief scan seemed to indicate that it was not polemical. This turned out to be true - to his credit, the author portrays a judicious and cautious history of the Clearances, carefully weighing evidence and avoiding kneejerk conclusions based on thin evidence.
That approach, combined with thoroughness and readability, are the greatest strengths of this work. It is comprehensive and thorough, and the reader comes away with a good understanding of the Clearances themselves, the general trends and exceptions, and the causes and results. Especially appreciated were Mr. Richards' clear-eyed assessments of the intractable problems faced by the Highlands - landlord and peasant alike - in the face of the modernizing world and the resulting economic imperatives. The author calls out and condemns mistreatment and inhumane approaches, while recognizing the virtually impossible circumstances that Highland proprietors were in ... there was no way that Highland society was going to survive industrialization intact, and a full understanding must acknowledge this.
Likewise, the author is careful not to fall into generalizations - for example, the links between Clearances and the ultimate depopulation of the Highlands (and the links specifically to emigration to North America and Australia) are less clear than one might think, at least in a causal sense. Some of the areas most affected by Clearances continued to have higher population growth than some areas that we less directly affected. No clear cut, simple answers here.
So why only three stars? Well, the main reason is length and repetitiveness. Any history of a century-long event is going to be wordy, but I felt the author hammered home the same broad conclusions over and over and over and over ... needlessly. Tighter editing would have left as strong a book in a shorter space. Oh, and maps...this book at least has them (so may histories do not), but they would have made a much stronger contribution to the flow if they had been spread throughout, as applicable to the detailed being described. Have a damned good grasp of Scottish geography when you pick up this book, or expect a lot of thumbing to maps or references to on-line sources.
Overall, a worthy book that covered a lot of what I was looking for, and an appreciated contribution to my knowledge base. I learned a lot. But not extraordinary, and frustratingly the gaps could have been easily rectified! I recommend it, but if I had not been reading with a specific purpose in mind, I'm not sure I would have seen it through.
That approach, combined with thoroughness and readability, are the greatest strengths of this work. It is comprehensive and thorough, and the reader comes away with a good understanding of the Clearances themselves, the general trends and exceptions, and the causes and results. Especially appreciated were Mr. Richards' clear-eyed assessments of the intractable problems faced by the Highlands - landlord and peasant alike - in the face of the modernizing world and the resulting economic imperatives. The author calls out and condemns mistreatment and inhumane approaches, while recognizing the virtually impossible circumstances that Highland proprietors were in ... there was no way that Highland society was going to survive industrialization intact, and a full understanding must acknowledge this.
Likewise, the author is careful not to fall into generalizations - for example, the links between Clearances and the ultimate depopulation of the Highlands (and the links specifically to emigration to North America and Australia) are less clear than one might think, at least in a causal sense. Some of the areas most affected by Clearances continued to have higher population growth than some areas that we less directly affected. No clear cut, simple answers here.
So why only three stars? Well, the main reason is length and repetitiveness. Any history of a century-long event is going to be wordy, but I felt the author hammered home the same broad conclusions over and over and over and over ... needlessly. Tighter editing would have left as strong a book in a shorter space. Oh, and maps...this book at least has them (so may histories do not), but they would have made a much stronger contribution to the flow if they had been spread throughout, as applicable to the detailed being described. Have a damned good grasp of Scottish geography when you pick up this book, or expect a lot of thumbing to maps or references to on-line sources.
Overall, a worthy book that covered a lot of what I was looking for, and an appreciated contribution to my knowledge base. I learned a lot. But not extraordinary, and frustratingly the gaps could have been easily rectified! I recommend it, but if I had not been reading with a specific purpose in mind, I'm not sure I would have seen it through.
February 14, 2018
Eric Richards is an expert on the history of migration audits causes. As you'd expect, the book is meticulously researched, provides a balanced survey of the evidence and places the Highland Clearances in contemporary, geographical and historical contexts. As you'd expect, this may seem to mitigate some of the opprobrium often heaped on the landlords of the time. However, Richards avoids a whitewash, and the miserable state of many poor folk and the destruction - albeit legal in almost all cases - of their way of life and their removal from their homes to enable landlords too pay off their debts, is laid clear. Context there is, but, particular conditions applied. Balancing and explaining the complex way context and local conditions relate together, is part of the fascination of history.
Interestingly, Richards gives much more prominence to the difficulties faced by Highland landlords. Difficulties in undertaking improvements to agriculture to maintain ability to compete in markets further afield; social expectations and the fashion for owning property in the Highlands and Islands, despite the manner in which it drained so many pockets. Even so, whilst one may recognise their problems and, in many cases, their attempts to ameliorate the condition of their tenants - even by ignoring rent arrears, attempting to establish new industries, and financially support ting migration - it is hard to feel too sorry for them.
Above all, I was interested in the way Richards avoids lumping the entirety of the Highlands and Islands and their occupants together. The fate of land and its occupants varied considerably, and not just depending on the who the owner happened to be. Geography, economics, methods of production and alternatives for employment were key factors in how things turned out for people, too. Equally, he sees differences in the nature of the clearances, their undertaking and purpose. Even so, the results for ordinary folk were much the same.
A call is made for further research into some areas, especially the outcomes for those people who migrated to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I enjoy books like this; they make one think and admit when things are not clear or simple. Given the continuing issues over land ownership and use in the Highlands and Islands, community ownership bids and discussion about how culture and land are linked and the extent to which maintenance of the former is linked to latter, Richards provides a very helpful historical context to our understanding too the present.
Occasionally, I found the apparently clear structure of the book a little less obvious than it appeared to be. At the start of several chapters, I found the need to go back to the previous chapter to check my understanding of the chronology. Pay attention, Dyster!
Interestingly, Richards gives much more prominence to the difficulties faced by Highland landlords. Difficulties in undertaking improvements to agriculture to maintain ability to compete in markets further afield; social expectations and the fashion for owning property in the Highlands and Islands, despite the manner in which it drained so many pockets. Even so, whilst one may recognise their problems and, in many cases, their attempts to ameliorate the condition of their tenants - even by ignoring rent arrears, attempting to establish new industries, and financially support ting migration - it is hard to feel too sorry for them.
Above all, I was interested in the way Richards avoids lumping the entirety of the Highlands and Islands and their occupants together. The fate of land and its occupants varied considerably, and not just depending on the who the owner happened to be. Geography, economics, methods of production and alternatives for employment were key factors in how things turned out for people, too. Equally, he sees differences in the nature of the clearances, their undertaking and purpose. Even so, the results for ordinary folk were much the same.
A call is made for further research into some areas, especially the outcomes for those people who migrated to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
I enjoy books like this; they make one think and admit when things are not clear or simple. Given the continuing issues over land ownership and use in the Highlands and Islands, community ownership bids and discussion about how culture and land are linked and the extent to which maintenance of the former is linked to latter, Richards provides a very helpful historical context to our understanding too the present.
Occasionally, I found the apparently clear structure of the book a little less obvious than it appeared to be. At the start of several chapters, I found the need to go back to the previous chapter to check my understanding of the chronology. Pay attention, Dyster!
April 12, 2019
Not a book for the casual reader, "The Highland Clearances" is a well-researched, historical description of the the economic, social, and cultural upheaval that was movement of people out of the Scottish Highlands. Spanning a century and a half (from at least 1740 - 1890), the clearances is a complex tale of how an ancient set of social and pastoral forms and relations (cattle grazing, corn and oats farming, laird and tenant), endemic poverty in this hardscrabble environment (hard winters, short summers), population growth despite the poverty, industrialization south of the Highlands in lowland Scotland and the English midlands, and the system of great landed estates, with their lairds, factors, land rents, and defense of private property all interacted to force tens of thousands of Scots off their ancestral lands and into the cities or onto the emigration ships to Canada, Australia, or the United States. "Did it have to happen?" and "Could it have been different?" are questions that arise in the reader's as well as the historian's mind, and though they are often impossible to answer, what every good historian does is explain how a particular state of affairs came to be. This the author does admirably, and if the "reason" for the clearances still seems so elusive at the book's close, it's not the fault of the writer but of the great complexity of the process and the events. Most of the world now lives in cities, or at least not rurally. This book helps us to understand not only why, but why the immense Scottish Highlands now have more sheep than people. Recommended for those with a fondness for the region or simply a love of history.
March 15, 2025
In dürren Worten und mit vielen Zahlen, die in die Hunderttausende gehen, wurde hier ein Bericht der Vertreibungen abgegeben. Der Hauptgrund dieser Aktionen war hauptsächlich die Umstellung des Farmbetriebes durch die meist englischen Großgrundbesitzer. Die vielen kleinen Farmen (Crofts) wurden durch die viel ertragreichere Schafzucht ersetzt und die jetzt nutzlosen Menschen von ihrem Land vertrieben. Sie wurden entweder in neuen Dörfern, die meistens an der Küste lagen, angesiedelt oder wanderten mehr oder weniger freiwillig nach Amerika aus. Was mich bei diesem Buch am meisten betroffen gemacht hat war die Kälte, mit der vorgegangen wurde. Ganze Landstriche wurden des Profits wegen entvölkert, ohne auf die Menschen Rücksicht zu nehmen.
Meine Meinung dazu: ein sehr trockenes Buch, das mich mit seinen vielen Zahlen fast erschlagen hat. Es gilt als das vollständigste Werk zu diesem Thema, ist gerade deswegen auch am schwersten zu lesen. Ich hatte mit den nüchternen Beschreibungen und der etwas langen Ausführung oft Probleme.
Meine Meinung dazu: ein sehr trockenes Buch, das mich mit seinen vielen Zahlen fast erschlagen hat. Es gilt als das vollständigste Werk zu diesem Thema, ist gerade deswegen auch am schwersten zu lesen. Ich hatte mit den nüchternen Beschreibungen und der etwas langen Ausführung oft Probleme.
March 1, 2018
Heavily researched, but manages to make a fascinating tale deadly dull. As the scenarios of Clearances are reenacted throughout the Highlands chapter by chapter you begin to wish there was a Patrick Sellar type character for clearing the writing of repetition and deathly prose. If you are looking for a book to help you perfect the art of skim-reading this may be the very one for you.
I had been looking for a book to challenge the conventional wisdom on the Clearances and this made promises to be the one which would show the terrible lives led by the tenants prior to the coming of the sheep and the inevitability of the "improvements"., however if any cases were being argued here they were confused and badly laid out.
I had been looking for a book to challenge the conventional wisdom on the Clearances and this made promises to be the one which would show the terrible lives led by the tenants prior to the coming of the sheep and the inevitability of the "improvements"., however if any cases were being argued here they were confused and badly laid out.
March 31, 2020
Full disclosure, I am a descendant of the Clearances (Descendant of the Fuadach nan Gàidheal) and have views similar to the common view held by the Scots today. The misplaced greed and shortsightedness of the landlords caused unnecessary death and destruction and a diaspora proud of their heritage.
Eric Richards recounts the clearances warts and all, in detail and with evidence. It's a sad chapter in Scottish history, and not unlike what we seeing today in Syria, or have seen repeatedly throughout history. A terrific, necessary read, gruesome in parts, but a tale or resilience.
Drive people from their generational land and replace them with sheep, then deer, then farms ... what could go wrong?
Eric Richards recounts the clearances warts and all, in detail and with evidence. It's a sad chapter in Scottish history, and not unlike what we seeing today in Syria, or have seen repeatedly throughout history. A terrific, necessary read, gruesome in parts, but a tale or resilience.
Drive people from their generational land and replace them with sheep, then deer, then farms ... what could go wrong?
January 22, 2019
Very well researched, this is one of the few books I've run across that balances the very frequently horrific stories of the clearances with the financial situations of the landowners and the changing economy of Britain at that time. This balance doesn't serve to rationalize the Clearances, but it does make it clear it was a complex issue, often without a ready solution. It's dense and not a particularly easy read as you get further into it (by Chapter 15, I admit that I started to skim until I reached the final chapter), but it's also well indexed, which makes it easy to return to a topic or to find a geographic place.
I do recommend if this subject is of interest.
I do recommend if this subject is of interest.
January 11, 2022
Terrible book. So very badly written. Extremely repetitive, yet so much that should have been written about (for example, how many Highlanders emigrated and what percentage of the total were they?) was absent.
July 21, 2017
Really interesting but alas I did not complete it .... unusual for me but I will when I feel I have more reading time!
December 29, 2024
This book on the Highland Clearances was very comprehensive but an easy read and easily understood I enjoyed it very much.
June 19, 2016
The Highland Clearances is not an easy read; it is a closely researched history written by a meticulous and balanced academic historian. I have not read many books about the clearances but of those I have read, this is by far the best. Richards takes a highly emotional subject, about which many people still have a race memory prejudicing them toward the cleared tenants, and provides a comprehensive analysis. That is not to say that it is cold and entirely dispassionate; the effect of the clearances on the lives of those who were affected is painfully clear. However, the rationale behind the actions of the landlords is presented in such a way that while you might not agree with them, you understand the dilemma which was faced by all concerned.
The effect of the clearances is apparent on the landscape even today, up to two hundred years later, and the eerie emptiness of some of the glens and the ruined buildings is testament to the events. Eric Richards helps you to understand those events.
The effect of the clearances is apparent on the landscape even today, up to two hundred years later, and the eerie emptiness of some of the glens and the ruined buildings is testament to the events. Eric Richards helps you to understand those events.
June 25, 2013
It's true that this book offers a balanced, and thoroughly documented, history of the clearances. However, what is accomplished here could have been done in about one third of the pages. What's lacking is a better treatment of the actual effects of the removals on the people involved.
September 1, 2016
A good overview of the Highland Clearances, with strong focus on the evictions from the Sutherland estate, and other areas.
November 30, 2015
Stuff always happens on Whitsunday.
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