Devine is Scotland’s current pre-eminent historian. His general history of Scotland 1700-2000 is probably his best known work but Scotland’s Empire and To the Ends of the Earth have highlighted the huge contribution of the Scots to the British Empire and emigration.
The Scottish Clearances is most recent work. Note the title; not Highland Clearances but Scottish Clearances. The Highland Clearances are a potent part of Scottish mythology both in Scotland and amongst the diaspora. The popular view is that the dispersal of Scots across the seas was caused by greedy landlords. Devine shows from historical record that the realities of the diaspora are far from simple. Many more Gaels left the Highlands voluntarily rather than being evicted. Yet the myth of total eviction is hugely prevalent and powerful both historically and culturally. John Prebble’s The Highland Clearances has more influence among the general public than among historians. Given the absence of academic histories of the Clearances until recently it is unsurprising that the simple narrative of betrayal, loss and forced exile has held the field.
Devine attempts three main tasks; to de-mythologise the Highland Clearances; to address the Lowland/Border experience of clearance which has attracted hardly any attention compared to the romantic Highland history; and finally to place the Highland experience of rural transformation within a broader European context of urbanisation.
BORDER CLEARANCES
Devine discusses the definition of “clearance”. Traditionally the popular usage applied to the removal, often by force, of peasant communities in the Highlands, was to make way for sheep farms. Modern scholarship, discussed by Devine, shows that this is too narrow a definition.
Many peasant communities in the Borders were also dispossessed but attracted virtually no attention. This is partly because those dispossessed in the farming areas of the Eastern Borders made no noise. Devine suggests that this may be because of continuing employment opportunities there, both in the labour intensive large arable farms and in the woollen trade in the Border towns. Gradual dispossession was the norm, eviction was rare. It was Clearance by stealth.
In the hill areas of the Borders, more suitable for sheep rather than arable farming there was no such alternative employment opportunities for most of the dispossessed. In Galloway were protests involving levelling the dykes against the enclosing of lands for cattle rearing. This was a rare example of protest. Interestingly the memory of the Galloway “Levellers” revolt of 1724, though it lived on locally, has made no lasting popular expression.
An alternative to finding other work in Scotland was emigration. As Devine shows between 1700 and 1818 some 100.000 Scots emigrated to North America from lowland Border areas.
HIGHLAND CLEARANCES
Devine argues that a rapid and sustained increase in population was the critical factor in the social history of the Highlands c 1750-1850 though ignored in popular accounts of Clearance. In southern Argyll and the eastern Highlands the increase was small but in the far west and north, the poorest agricultural lands, it was very considerable. In the southern and eastern counties more people migrated to the booming Lowland towns and cities. The North and West Highlands have become notorious for the large scale Clearances to make way for sheep runs. Yet mass migration leading to depopulation did not automatically follow. Only where removals were particularly severe was there evidence of abandoned dwellings, e.g. in Sutherland. Indeed more Gaels emigrated after the Clearances than during. No other set of Clearances matched those of Sutherland. Gradual displacement was the norm; most people were not evicted but “moved voluntarily”. But for the rapid spread of the potato after 1750, there would have been much greater flight from the land.
The Highland military tradition metamorphosed into Imperial Service in the British Army. The connection between the new regiments and the traditional clans was superficial. Landowners harvested the population of their estates for the army in order to make money. Recruitment to the army provided the Chiefs with many benefits. In the late 18th century and early 19th they were opposed to emigration. It meant the loss of valuable military manpower and workers for the estates. Few Highlanders left for north America before 1790; many did so subsequently. Many army veterans also stayed in America after the Seven Years War, enjoying service land grants. After the American War of Independence the remaining British Colonies in Canada were more attractive, not least because most were Loyalists. This was not flight of the poor and dispossessed. They were the middling ranks of Highland society, particularly the Tacksmen. A mixture of demographic and economic factors were the reasons. Emigration was opposed by the state and the landowners but the emigrants prospered free from landlord oppression in America.
Much of the emigration of Highlanders in the 19th century was led by the search for opportunities overseas. But in the 1840s and 1850s emigration was driven by subsistence crisis, clearance and peasant expropriation. Potato blight was the background. Disaster was averted as compared to Ireland, by its smaller scale and intervention by the Scottish Authorities, churches, landlords and charities. The positive role of Scottish landlords contrasts with the indifference of their Irish counterparts. Scotland was also a richer society with a range of employment opportunities.
The deep recession in Scotland from 1848 changed the situation. Cattle prices fell by half. Relief work ended. In addition quite a number of Highland estates were insolvent and managed by trustees. Trustees were more rigorous than local owners.; their responsibility was to creditors and they could not assist the poor. Eviction was therefore unavoidable. Racist attitudes towards the Celts was also a factor as seen in Scottish newspapers. Anti Celtic racists saw poverty in the Highlands as not caused by economics but because of racial inferiority. The traditional values of the highlanders were in conflict with capitalism and the morality of the time.
In 1850 Sir Charles Trevelyan was convinced that emigration was the answer to the social ills of the Highlands. From 1840 to 1860 there was a huge decrease in the population of the Western Highlands primarily as a result of emigration. Coercion was employed widely and systematically. These extreme Clearances were unique in the history of the Scottish Clearances and made a deep mark and their memory endured while most of those that had gone before were forgotten.
Mass clearance in the highlands ended in the late 1850s. Economic conditions improved. Transport improved. Seasonal employment opportunities vastly increased. Life was still precarious. Recovery was modest and insecure. The Crofters Act of 1886 made clearances impossible. The legislation made the tenancy of a Croft heritable thus depriving the landlord of much of his right of ownership.
CONCLUSION
Clearance is an omnibus term. The forcing out of people in the Highlands is the most notorious, best documented and remembered. As Devine shows a myriad set of influences and pressures led to loss of land. But in the Highlands clearances were more dramatic. Highland landlords had fewer options than those in the Lowlands for industrial development. Racist dogma against the Gaels was present. Traditional Gaelic values were a factor including the belief that landlords had a duty to protect their people in return for rent and service. The tide turned against the landlords by the later C19th and sympathy for the Highlanders grew. Alexander Mackenzie’s ‘History of the Highland Clearances’ published in 1883 was the definitive guide to the subject, strongly influencing later writers such as John Prebble and Ian Grimble. The narrative of landlord iniquity and forced evictions is compelling and poignant but is only partially true. It ignores the limitations of natural resources in the Highlands; a large increase of population on poor land with no alternatives for subsistence or employment; bankruptcy of the old traditional landed class; and the power of market capitalism. These factors cannot be ignored but a tale of wicked landlords is more appealing. Many landlords did their best at considerable cost to avoid clearance but in the end they failed. Consumerism got the better of many.
The Members really enjoyed the book. “A triumph to cover such a broad sweep of history while doing full justice to its complexity and keeping the book readable.” One asked when the Clans stopped fighting. One of the themes of Scottish history is the gradual envelopment of the Highlands within the State. This was completed after the Union and resulted in the break-up of the Clan system. One of our number reported that Loch is a family middle name because an ancestor was Factor to the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland. James Loch was handsomely remembered. Another Member was descended from crofters who had been ejected from the Sutherland Estate during the same period.
Finally the military aspect where the unemployed could join the army was an interesting element that most had not appreciated.
Monthly Book Group 