Many highlanders chose to emigrate but some were actually sold as indentured slaves. It is most difficult to capture easily the psychological impact of the Clearances on the culture of the Highlands. They may have moved north in the early seventeenth century when the Covenanters rebelled against Charles the First in the Battles of Dunbar and Hamilton or even earlier when the Scots were defeated at Flodden, 1615. However the kelp industry also began to decline. Ironically during the entire period covered by the Clearances from 1785-1854, Highland military Regiments were serving with … In 1747, another Act was passed, the ‘Heritable Jurisdictions Act’, which stated that anyone who did not submit to English rule automatically forfeited their land: bend the knee or surrender your birth right. The most infamous Clearances were on the huge estate of the Countess of Sutherland. The Highland Clearances was a time when people in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland were forced from their homes and had to find new places to live. The Highland Clearances by A Mackenzie (Glasgow, 1883) The Highland Clearances by J Prebble (London, 1963) A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and … Although clearances had begun in Sutherland before his appointment, Loch organised them on a more extensive footing, and additionally published (in 1820) An Account of the improvement ethos and its results in practice on the estates of his employer, a book which has remained a key text for those interested in the clearances. He was born on a croft, in Gairloch. Hunter continued the long tradition of condemnation of Highland landlordism, blaming them for stymieing the Highland economy for two hundred years, and interpreted the process as ‘class war’; for Hunter, the only resolution was state intervention. Things began to deteriorate even further in the 1840s. They were no match for the might of the British army and the losses suffered by the highlanders were catastrophic. The world was changing in the south by the beginning of the 1600s, the old feudal order giving way to a new economic model where the needs of the market gradually overtook feudal bonds of loyalty. Brief History Of Highland Clearances The Clearances began in 1760 and ended over a century later. In 1826, the Isle of Rum was cleared of its tenants who were paid to go to Canada, travelling on the ship ‘James’ to dock at Halifax. What did you do to try and stop the eviction? Initially, the intention of most estate owners had been to retain and re-deploy the population to other parts of their estates, principally the coastal fringes so they could effectively prosecute the fishing and kelping industries; but later many evicted people entirely, disregarding relocation. Only the efforts of charities, landlords and the state prevented widespread mortality among the destitute population, and crofting rents collapsed. See more ideas about highland, scotland, history. The Clearances fall into three distinct stages. One of the most valuable types of source material for the Highland clearances are the documentary archives of Highland estates; many collections of estate papers remain in private hands, although surveys of most have been completed by the National Register of Archives for Scotland. and did not completely trust the clan leaders in Scotland to rule without his supervision. over the Highland Clearances is, however, questionable. Southern Scots saw themselves as more modern and progressive, with more in common in language and culture with their southern, English neighbours. Some prisoners were taken to London where around 80 were executed, including the last man to be beheaded in Britain, Lord Lovat, Clan Chief of Fraser. Some of those turned out had literally nowhere else to go; many were old and infirm and so starved or froze to death, left to the mercy of the elements. 4 The Highland Clearances. Uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England had been proposed for a hundred years before it actually happened in 1707. Some highlander clans and families had lived in the same cottages for 500 years and then, just like that, they were gone. Many of those who died were clansmen; some tried to escape but were hunted through the countryside and slaughtered. By the mid 1800s there was a tangible North-South divide within Scotland. There are several reasons to explain why it took a long time for the Highlanders to defend themselves. For sources giving the small tenants’ perspective, the work of Donald Meek in collection and translation is vital (see for example D. Meek, Tuath is tighearna: tenants and landlords (Edinburgh, 1995). 1802: Glengarry people emigrate to Upper Canada (modern- day Ontario). . Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster was a Caithness landowner born in Thurso, who would rise to become one of the most energetic and influential figures in Highland and Scottish ‘improving’ agriculture and social inquiry. Modern historiography of the clearances has opened up new fields of research and tapped previously ignored sources of evidence. Perhaps in part inspired by events in Ireland, crofters on the Macdonald estate on Skye resisted attempts by the landlord to remove sections of their grazings at Braes in April 1882, and the Crofters War began. In 1818 the largest part of the clearance program was put into effect, lasting until 1820. Nov 27, 2020 - History of the 'evictions' of countless highlanders who were placed on ships for unknown ports. 6 The Highland Clearances. Latterly, historians have opened up the areas of protest and government intervention in the Highlands (E. A. Cameron), the role of church ministers in Highland society (A. W. MacColl), the perspective of the landed estates (A. Tindley) and the influence of the Irish Land War on Highland events (A. G. Newby). Historical biography has also been utilised to great effect, particularly in E. Richards’ magisterial, Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances. The Brahan Seer ( 17th century Highland Prophet) In the 1780s Scotland was uneasy. . The Jacobites wanted to oust what they saw as an illegitimate ruler and reinstate the Stuart king. Poverty for the small tenants deepened, in spite of the Improvers’ predictions of economic stability; a serious warning shot came in 1836-7 when a potato blight hit the region, to be followed in 1846-8 with an even more serious subsistence crisis, recognised by contemporaries as the Great Highland Famine. Tom Johnston, the Scottish socialist and later, government minister, published a broadside against the Scottish aristocracy generally, and Highland landowners in particular in his 1909 book, Our Scots Noble Families. Foreword by John Prebble The author: Alexander Mackenzie, FSA Scot (1838 - 22 January 1898) was a Scottish historian, author, magazine editor and politician. From 1976, the work of James Hunter brought the focus back to the crofting community, based on a full academic apparatus of both archival and oral sources. The reasons for the highland clearances essentially came down to two things: money and loyalty. The Highland Clearances. The clans such as Macintosh, Campbell and Grant had ruled their lands in the highlands for hundreds of years. . The process did not start well. He was, however, a difficult character, and came into conflict with both the Sutherland people and his employers, not least the Countess and her commissioner, James Loch. It was not only highland culture that disappeared over this period but also the highlanders themselves, for the most prosaic of reasons: money. Between 1811 and 1821, around 15,000 people were removed from land owned by the Duchess of Sutherland and her husband the Marquis of Stafford to make room for 200,000 sheep. 3 The Highland Clearances. . His role in the Highland clearances was as architect and apologist for the Countess of Sutherland from 1812. The seemingly-intractable social and economic problems the region faced, particularly in the interwar period, lent Mackenzie and later authors’ analysis weight. The last ever pitched battle to be fought on British soil took place on 16th April 1746 on Drummossie Moor…. 1800: First clearances in Sutherland. These historians (such as Malcolm Gray’s in his seminal, The Highland Economy, 1957) asked fundamental questions about the Highland economy and population and put the clearances into the context of industrialisation and urbanisation. Those people in the south now identified more with their southern counterparts than with the old clan culture of the highlands and islands. At the time, they owned most of the country of Sutherland. Although we think of the period of the Highland Clearances being from 1750 to 1860, lets think back to the 1600s. The ‘first wave’ of clearances began as early as the 1780s and continued into the wake left by the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. These 5621230. . Of the 6,000 Jacobites, 1,000 are thought to have died, although the exact number is unknown. In 1814 two elderly people who did not get out of their cottage in time were burned alive in Strathnaver. The Highland Clearances remain a controversial period in Scotland’s history and are still talked of with great bitterness, particularly by those families who were dispossessed of their land and even, to a large extent, of their culture, over the period of around 100 years between the mid 18th to 19th centuries. ntury. There was an idea of the Highland culture and way of life being ‘backward’ and ‘old-fashioned’, out of step with the rest of Scotland and the recently United Kingdom. Sinclair was convinced that the population on his estate could be re-deployed and that the introduction of sheep would not entail any diminishment of the numbers of small tenants. When James ascended the throne of England in 1603, he moved south to Westminster and ruled Scotland from there, only visiting the nation of his birth once more before he died. The Clearances fall into three distinct stages. . Unfortunately, every one of the passengers had contracted typhus by the time they arrived in Canada. Loch gave emphatic instructions intended to avoid another public relations disaster: rent arrears could be excused for those who co-operated, time was to be taken and rents for the new crofts were to be set as low as possible. He was one of the first landowners in Caithness to introduce commercial sheep farming, a policy which led to large scale evictions on his lands and the creation of clearance villages (Badbea, for example) on the coastal fringes of his estates. Their land in the interior was converted to sheep walks which brought high commercial returns and a new parallel crofting economy was established on the coastal fringes. The speedy and often violent process of clearance was often met with stiff resistance, although this was overcome in all cases. This is known as the Highland Clearances. 5 The Highland Clearances. Essentially, Highland estates were being re-drawn along commercial lines, with increasing rents the target for owners and managers. These clearances were at their worst during the period 1763 – 1775, but they did not end until around 1881. However, it was not always voluntary. For centuries the Highlanders of Scotland had eked out a living for themselves and their families by cultivating a small…. Cottages were burned to make them uninhabitable, to ensure the people never tried to return once the sheep had been moved in. Yet, the Highland leaders, the Chiefs, are as much to blame, if not moreso, for the calamity of the Highland Clearances once the horrible process had begun. From 1725 onwards, garrisons manned by English soldiers or ‘redcoats’ sprung up all over the Scottish Highlands, notably at Fort William and Inverness. Mackenzie’s book set the tone for much of the published work on the Highland clearances up to the 1970s. In the 1700s and 1800s, large numbers of crofters and their families were forced out of their homes and land. He also stood at the head of a noted Loch ‘dynasty’ which remained influential throughout the nineteenth century in the fields of estate management, governance and the military. Some historians have identified this as the ‘second wave’ of clearance, where landowners, dismayed by the destitution of their small tenantry (something which the ideology of the ‘first wave’ of clearances was meant to prevent), evicted the poorest class of small tenants and occasionally arranged, and paid for, emigration out of the region altogether. Although these two countries are thousands of miles and cultures apart, they have an unusually similar shared history of oppression. The Highland Clearances refer to the forced eviction of Scottish inhabitants of the Highlands of Scotland, beginning in the late 18th century and continuing intermittently into the mid-19th century.The removals cleared the land of people primarily for sheep raising. 2. Patrick Sellar is perhaps the individual most closely associated with the Highland clearances; as one of the most successful evictors and sheep farmers, accused but acquitted of culpable homicide, he is also one of the most vilified characters in Scottish history. The common drivers of clearance are as follows: In 1707 Scotland lost the right to self-rule, and the Catalans lost the same to the Spanish a mere 7 years later in 1714. This was to ensure that the peoples’ allegiance remained to their King and not to their clan Chief. A plethora of contemporary sources are available for the interested scholar to use, although they are scattered across the country. He collected together a broad range of contemporary reports on the clearances of the early nineteenth century (nearly all less than complimentary about the clearance policy and its results) and published them as a single volume in the early 1880s, at the height of the crofters’ agitation in the region. The potato blight and the subsequent potato famine rendered the already difficult lives of these resettled crofters almost untenable. A 17th century Scottish prophet known as The Brahan Seer once wrote. Sinclair is a key figure in the history of the Highland clearances for his contribution to the development of the improving ideology behind them, and putting that ideology into practice. ilification, and his reputation in current times has not improved. Scots-English and Gaelic Throughout the centuries, Scotland acquired a rich mixture of races through both invasion and immigration. In 1857, motivated by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854), which included favourable impressions of the Sutherland family, McLeod re-published his letters in book form (Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland), plus a full rejection of Beecher Stowe’s arguments. From their very inception, the Highland Clearances have been among the most controversial subjects in modern Scottish history. Once Franco had won the Spanish Civil War in 1939, he treated the Catalans in much the same way the Highlanders were treated after Culloden. During this time tens of thousands of men, women and children were evicted, often with violence and cruelty, from their homes in order to make way for sheep farming. It was deduced by those landowners on whose lands the clans lived and worked, that sheep were exponentially more financially productive than people. He is best known today for sponsoring and organising the great social and economic survey The Statistical Account of Scotland (Old Statistical Account), based on information collected from parish ministers and published in 21 volumes from 1791-99. This Act was followed in 1897 with the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, which legislated for state land purchase on behalf of crofters and investment into the transportation and agricultural networks of the region, and then by Small Landholders (1911) and Land Settlement Acts (1919) aimed at addressing (with mixed success) the chronic land hunger of the region, which many blamed on the clearances of a century ago. After the initial swift and bloodthirsty retribution for the Jacobite rebellions, laws were instigated to prevent any further groundswell of support for the previous monarchs. Examples of estate improvement were set by the Forfeited Estates, the 11 estates forfeited and administered by the government as punishment for prominent landowners who had taken up the Jacobite cause. This ‘transportation’ was not that uncommon, as it was often cheaper for landowners to pay for passage to the New World than to try and find their tenants other land or keep them from starvation. 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