The Highland Clearances History History 12

HISTORY 12 THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES

The Highland Clearances, known in Gaelic weakened the Highland population. ‘The inhabitants of these distressed districts as ‘Fuadach nan Gàidheal’, which is The people were relocated to poor crofts. The ongoing clearance policy resulted have neither capital enough to cultivate the translated as ‘The eviction of the Gael’ was Others were sent to small farms in coastal in starvation, deaths, and a secondary extent of the land necessary to maintain the forced displacement during the 18th areas, where farming could not sustain the clearance, when families either migrated them if it could be provided, nor have they and 19th centuries of a significant number population, and they were expected to take voluntarily or were forcibly evicted. There land enough were the capital supplied to of people from traditional land tenancies up fishing as a new trade. The weather were many deaths of children and the aged. them’ in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. conditions were so harsh that, while the As there were few alternatives, people The Clearances were a complex series of women worked, they had to tether their emigrated, joined the army, or moved to Richards considers this observation to events occurring over a hundred years. livestock and their children to rocks or growing urban centres such as Glasgow, be "the central dilemma of the crofter posts to prevent them being blown over Edinburgh, and Dundee in Lowland economy". After the potato blight, there The Clearances are particularly notorious the cliffs.Other crofters were transported Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne and were more people than the land could as a result of the brutality of many evictions directly to emigration ships, bound for Liverpool in the north of England. In support. at short notice and year-by-year tenants North America or Australia. places some people were given economic had almost no protection under Scots law. incentives to move, but in many instances The potato famine gave rise to the There was also an abruptness of change It was only in the early 19th century landlords used violent methods. Highland and Island Emigration Society from the traditional clan system and the that the second, more brutal phase of which sponsored around 5,000 emigrants increasing effect of the Clearances, and the Clearances began. Most notorious In 1851, following his tour of the Western to Australia from the affected areas of the large-scale "voluntary" emigrations are the examples of landlords trying to Highlands and Isles, Sir John McNeill Scotland. over the same period, devastated the exploit changing economic circumstances wrote: cultural landscape of Scotland. The effect to their financial advantage by clearing of the Clearances was to destroy much of uneconomical tenants from their land, the Gaelic culture. making room for more profitable uses such as sheep, deer forests or tourism. The Clearances resulted in significant Two of the best documented such emigration of Highlanders and Islanders clearances are those from the land of the to the coast, the Scottish Lowlands, Duchess of Sutherland, carried out by her and further afield to North America and factor Patrick Sellar, and the Glencalvie Australia. clearances. BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Year of the Sheep Potato famine The Desperate Journey by Kathleen Fidler

Another wave of mass emigration came As in Ireland, the potato crop failed in Fuadach nan Gàidheal by Donald Gunn agus Mari Spankie in 1792, known to Gaelic-speaking Scotland during the mid 19th century, and Highlanders as the Bliadhna nan Caorach a widespread outbreak of cholera further ("Year of the Sheep"). Landlords had been clearing land to establish sheep farming. In 1792 tenant farmers from Strathrusdale led a protest by driving more than 6,000 sheep off the land surrounding Ardross. This action, commonly referred to as the TIMELINE 1846 "Ross-shire Sheep Riot", was dealt with 1830 1832 1836 1745 1792 Famine in the Potato Blight in at the highest levels in the government 1739 Year of the Sheep (Bliadhna nan Newspaper reports a Cholera First recorded evictions Last Jacobite Highlands the Highlands of Caorach) - Landlords begin moving “fever of emigration is outbreak in the and they brought the ringleaders to trial. on Skye by Macdonald of Rebellion. Jacobites Scotland leads tenants from hills onto coastal raging in Sutherland.” Highlands. Sleat. First migrations from are finally defeated to failure of the They were found guilty, but later escaped margins providing them with land Macleod evicts tenants Scotland to Cape Fear, North at the Battle of potato crop. insufficient to support their families. on Skye. custody and disappeared. Carolina. Culloden

HISTORY