The Highland Clearances and the Politics of Memory
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2014 The iH ghland Clearances and the Politics of Memory Daniel Guy Brown University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, and the International and Area Studies Commons Recommended Citation Brown, Daniel Guy, "The iH ghland Clearances and the Politics of Memory" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 451. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/451 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY by Daniel G. Brown A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2014 ABSTRACT THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES AND POLITICS OF MEMORY by Daniel G. Brown The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2014 Under the Supervision of Professor Andrew Kincaid This dissertation explores the ways that the Highland Clearances of Scotland have entered into public consciousness through primary and secondary sources. My dissertation argues first that the Highland Clearances fall within the sphere of colonial intervention, and secondly that there exists a robust body of cultural production that reflects the postcolonial nature of the Highlands. This cultural production is the subject of my dissertation, which examines primary and secondary histories, historical novels, drama and public memorials that preserve and reconstruct the memory of the Clearances. The first chapter examines a number of primary and secondary histories of the Highland Clearances. The first sections focus primarily on Eric Richards’ The Highland Clearances (2000), John Prebble’s book, also called The Highland Clearances (1963), and Michael Fry’s Wild Scots (2005). The chapter concludes by examining several primary histories, primarily the writings of James Loch and Patrick Seller, two estate managers who oversaw clearances on the Sutherland estate. Chapter two focuses on three historical novels set during the Clearances: Neil Gunn’s The Butcher’s Broom (1934), Iain Crichton Smith’s Consider the Lilies (1968) , and Fionn MacColla’s And the Cock Crew (1945). Throughout this chapter, I argue that these three novels constitute a postcolonial literature invested in identifying the colonial forces at work during the ii Clearances. The third chapter focuses on the work of John McGrath, particularly his play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. My final chapter considers the ways that the Clearances have been remembered in public memorials and museum installations. The chapter begins with a discussion of the Emigrants Memorial erected in Helmsdale, on the northeast coast and the statue of the First Duke of Sutherland in Golspie. The second section of the final chapter considers the ways that the Clearances have been represented in the National Museum of Scotland and at the Strathnaver Museum. The final section of the fourth chapter examines the memorial that emerged at Croick as a result of the clearance of Glencalvie in 1845. iii © Copyright by Daniel G. Brown, 2014 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Historical Record and the Historical Debate The Chisholm Incident: Sparking the Debate about the Clearances 13 “To Improve the Wretched Condition”: Motivations for Clearance 26 Clearance as Trauma: the Human Cost of Eviction 34 Rearranged After a New Fashion: Depopulation or Dispersal? 46 The Question of Coercion: Why they Left 55 What the Improvers Saw: Top Down Perspectives on Clearance 64 Post-Clearance Geographies: Spatiality and Surveillance 80 Chapter 2: A Postcolonial Literature of the Highlands Clearance and the Historical Novel: Perspectives from the Postcolony 94 The Church as Ideological Apparatus 109 The Unhomely Moment: Colonial Alienation in the Highlands 126 Chapter 3: A Drama of the People Introduction 142 “Nationalism is not enough”: Socialist Perspectives on the Clearances 144 The Lament Syndrome: the Uses of Nostalgia 159 “I’m English for Christ’s sake, or Irish”: Who Claims this History? 168 v Chapter 4: Remembering the Highland Clearances in Public Space Clearance Monumentalism: a Highland Parallax 177 Museum Narration: the Clearances in the core, the Clearances in the Periphery 189 A non-Narrative Memorial: the Churchyard at Croick 197 Conclusion 211 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Statue of the First Duke of Sutherland 181 Figure 2: Original Design of the Clearances Centre Monument 184 Figure 3: The Emigrants Memorial 186 vii 1 Introduction Historian Eric Richards writes that “The Highland Clearances is one of the sorest, most painful, themes in modern Scottish history” (3). That the “passionate indignation lives on, swollen rather than weakened by the passage of time. A rage against past iniquities has been maintained, fed by popular historians and every variety of media construction” (3). These Highland Clearances that Richards refers to were the forced relocation of the Highland lower classes as land use in the Highlands shifted from subsistence to capitalist ventures. Most displaced Highlanders were moved to make room for commercial sheep farming, as Cheviot sheep were introduced throughout the Highlands. Clearances took many forms; some involved just a few tenants, while others displaced whole villages, even entire valleys, at once. During the most sensationalized clearances,1 hundreds of poor Highlanders were evicted en masse. Homes were sometimes burned to keep former residents from returning, and the heather on the hillsides set alight to encourage growth of new grass for the grazing of sheep. Some displaced Highlanders were given new plots or homes elsewhere on their landlord’s estate; others weren’t so lucky, as they were simply cast adrift to fend for themselves. Evicted tenants carried away their few possessions to start a new life on the coast or across the sea. The majority of the evicted Highlanders were removed to make way for large-scale sheep farming. The Clearances began around the final third of the 18th 1 I follow the convention of Richards and other scholars in capitalizing the word “Clearance” when it refers to the “Highland Clearances” as a proper noun, but using the lower case “clearance” in reference to the act of eviction itself. 2 century and continued until the end of the 19th century. During this period “several tens of thousands” (323) of people were evicted from their homes. The Highland Clearances have continued to spur a “rage against past iniquities” in popular opinion, academic discussion and political posturing. Class exploitation is perhaps the most obvious point of entry into debate about the Clearances. Owners of large estates were clearly far wealthier than peasant farmers who leased plots from them. At their most basic level, the Clearances entailed exploitation of the poor by the rich. Wealthy land owners used their power and capital to brush aside those with fewer resources. In the process, the wealthy expropriated land that had been providing subsistence for the lower classes of society. While many landlords responsible for the Clearances held the title of clan chief, few were involved with their clan in any social or cultural way. Mostly these were absentee landlords living in Glasgow, Edinburgh, or London. By the time the Clearances became widespread most landlords were alienated from their tenants, not just because of class differences, but because of cultural differences. Landlords assimilated into cosmopolitan aristocratic society and spoke English, while their tenants still spoke Gaelic and lived an essentially subsistence lifestyle. Along with serious questions about class exploitation, cultural differences between the exploiter and the exploited raise the specter of cultural antagonism within the Clearances. This clash of cultures demands that we consider the extent to which Gaelic tenants were specifically targeted by their English speaking landlords. The Highland Clearances embody a complex dynamic of class, cultural, and economic factors, and the potential for many fruitful lines of inquiry. One such line is whether the Highland Clearances can be understood in the context of colonialism. In 3 their seminal work The Empire Writes Back, Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin write that inclusion of Scotland within the colonial discussion has been hedged and qualified amid a sense that “complicity in the British imperial enterprise makes it difficult for colonized peoples outside of Britain to accept their identity as post colonial [sic]” (33). While Scotland may not be as obviously post-colonial as sites in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it does bear significant similarities. Similarities are particularly evident in the historically Gaelic speaking regions. In his famous work Internal Colonialism, Michael Hechter writes of a “colonial incursion of England into the Celtic lands” (343) reinforced by “English military and political control in the peripheral regions […] buttressed by a racist ideology” (342). Hechter’s internal colonial model posits that the colonial process functions just as insidiously within national borders as it does when crossing them. The culturally distinct Gaelic speaking regions—predominantly