Highland Clearances

Scotland

Jun 26, 2024

The Scottish Highlands experienced revolutionary change in the eighteenth century. Following the defeat of the last Jacobite rising a drive for agricultural, economic, and social ‘Improvement’ spread across the region, led by some prominent landowners, surveyors, and writers. Examples of estate improvement were set by the eleven estates forfeited by Jacobite landowners and administered by the government.[1] Drainage, enclosure, and the introduction of new stock became widespread. Essentially, Highland estates were re-drawn along commercial lines, with increasing rents for owners and managers. This process had already been in place, but the pace of change accelerated after 1746.

The first wave of population clearances began in the 1780s and continued past the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815. Initially, the intention of most estate owners had been to deploy their tenants to other parts of their estates, principally the coast for the fishing and kelping industries. However, many evicted people entirely; There was ‘a great deal of variation as to intention, execution and results.’[2]

One infamous clearance policy was on the Sutherland estates between 1809 and 1821. The million-acre estate was owned by the Countess of Sutherland who was married to Lord Stafford, one of the wealthiest men in the British Isles. With her husband’s investment and the organisational talent of her commissioner, James Loch, the Countess embarked on clearances, of nearly 15,000 people. Land in the interior was converted to sheep pastures which brought high commercial returns and a new crofting economy was established on the coastal fringes. The scale of these clearances was staggering, in cost and number of people involved, and the methods used to evict.

The Sutherland clearances, despite being atypical in many ways, have come to symbolise the entire sweep of clearances in the early nineteenth century. The speedy and often violent process of clearance was often met with stiff resistance, although this was overcome in all cases.[3]

Following the first wave, there was some consolidation as managers and owners hoped the crofting population would settle into their new lots and work. However, the end of the Napoleonic wars brought falling prices and returning soldiers. Poverty deepened, exacerbated in 1836-7 when potato blight hit the region, followed in 1846-8 with an even more serious subsistence crisis, the Great Highland Famine.[4] Only the efforts of charities, landlords, and the state prevented widespread mortality. Crofting rents collapsed and many Highland landowners were bankrupted. Others saw an opportunity to re-organise their estates along more profitable lines, most famously the Duke of Argyll. This was a ‘second wave’ of clearance, where landowners, dismayed by destitution evicted the poorest class of small tenants and occasionally even arranged and paid for emigration.

The Cairngorms from Dorback © Joe Saunders

Economic conditions stabilised with rising prices for goods and stable rent levels. This period of relative prosperity abruptly ended in the winter of 1880-1, with a general agricultural depression and terrible storms. 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. This time, protest and resistance spread across the region, especially Skye, Lewis, Tiree, and parts of western Sutherland. Added to this was support from urban Scotland and a broadly sympathetic Liberal government. In 1883 a Royal Commission was appointed to investigate claims of the crofters. This provided the historical and contemporary basis of state intervention in 1886, with the Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act. This benchmark piece of legislation gave the Highland crofters security from eviction, the benefit of their improvements, and set up a court, the Crofters Commission, to set crofters’ rents, adjudicate on arrears, and facilitate extensions to crofts. This Act was followed by decades of political efforts to tackle chronic land hunger and regional underinvestment.

The Highland Clearances are amongst the most controversial subjects in modern Scottish history. There is no historical or contemporary consensus on the causes, methods, and results of the clearances. Much research has been done on the subject, however, so there is no shortage of material for the interested reader.

Contemporary sources are available for examination. One of the most valuable is 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. Some key collections are in public hands, in the National Archives of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. Some estate papers in the clearance period have been collected, edited and published under the direction of the Scottish History Society. Additionally, local newspapers carry material on the clearances and their aftermath. For the small tenants’ perspective, Donald Meeks work in collection and translation of original sources is important.[5] Government inquiries, reports and legislation are also useful.

References and Resources:

Information for this post was taken from the excellent webpage ‘The Highland Clearances’ by The Scottish History Society, https://scottishhistorysociety.com/the-highland-clearances/

A. Mackenzie, The History of the Highland Clearances (Inverness, 1883)

J. Prebble, The Highland Clearances (Harmondsworth, 1969)

J. Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976)

D. Meek, Tuath is tighearna: tenants and landlords (1995)

E. A. Cameron, Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c.1880-c.1925 (East Linton, 1996)

E. Richards, The Highland Clearances (Edinburgh, 2000)