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The Highland Clearances - An Introduction

by Steve Blamires

In 1866 one half of Scotland belonged to 10 people. Today in Scotland 0.08% of present day population own 80% of the land; 17 people own 70% of Caithness; 38 people own 84% of Sutherland; 76 people own 84% Ross-shire; the Countess of Sutherland owns 158,000 acres and another 359,000 acres are owned by a mere 6 people. A 1976 study showed that 35 families or companies own one third of the Highland's 7.39 million acres of privately owned land.

In 1993 two farmers on the Isle of Arran were evicted from their family farms to make way for more deer. In the same year managers on the Wester Ross estate of the absentee landlord Sheik Mohammen bin Rashid al Maktoumm of Dubai bulldozed houses on the estate allegedly because the tenants had been poaching. Twelve family homes were reduced to rubble in an area where there are already 800 applicants on the local authority's housing waiting list. Despite the legislation the Clearances have not stopped.

The question has often been asked as to whether the Clearances were an act of attempted genocide against the Gaelic people. Certainly the earlier Act of Proscription was a blatant attempt at cultural genocide. It is interesting, with this in mind, to note that the vast majority of Clearances only occurred in Gaelic speaking areas. As late as 1820 the Highlanders were commonly regarded as an aboriginal fringe of the British nation, still awaiting civilization. This notion was prevalent in English-speaking Lowland Scotland too. The main Sutherland Clearances between 1811-1821 were definitely seen as racial as the in-coming landlord, the Duke of Stafford, was English and many of his agents were English or Southern Scots who had no Gaelic and who hated the Highlanders. One of his more infamous factors, James Loch, commented in 1829, "They (the hills) are getting so much greener, especially those under sheep, in fifty years heathing hills and the Gaelic tongue will be rarities in Sutherland."

Just as the truth behind the Irish Famine is still not fully explained in Irish schools today so too is the history of the Scottish Clearances glossed over in Scottish schools - if it is taught at all. I was certainly never told anything about the Clearances during my whole time at school in Scotland. The brothers Calum and Rory MacDonald of the tremendously popular Gaelic rock group "Runrig" wrote a song called "Fichead Bliadhna" which is Gaelic for "Twenty Years". Calum and Rory were born and raised on the Isle of Skye where the worst of the Clearances took place, where the people rioted and had the troops turned out against them and where a stand was finally made against the injustices of the Clearances. Yet Calum was twenty years old before he ever heard of these events.

In 1995 a proposal was made to have the statue of the Duke of Sutherland, which still stands in Sutherland today, removed. The 'subscriptions' which paid for this statue were forced out of the destitute crofters on pain of further eviction if they did not comply. The present day local people were totally opposed to the suggestion which had come from "outsiders" not living in Sutherland to remove the statue. These outsiders were in fact the survivors of the families Cleared by the Duke and now settled in America and Canada. The local people have already forgotten what a monster this old Duke was whereas the people who are now considered to be outsiders remember and acted upon that memory. That is how quickly history can be lost if we are not taught and made aware of our history and culture.

Several of the main reference encyclopaedia to be found in libraries today and what they say about The Clearances and The Irish Famine:

Academic America Encyclopedia mentions The Famine but all it says about The Clearances is one sentence, "Much of the Highlands were forcibly depopulated by the landlords during the late 18th and 19th centuries when large scale sheep grazing was introduced."

Encyclopaedia Brittanica 15th Edition mentions The Famine but has only one sentence on The Clearances which implies they took place in Strathnaver between 1810 and 1820.

Hutchinson Dictionary of World History 1993 mentions both very briefly.

New Book of Knowledge 100th Edition mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

"The Reader's Adviser" 14th Edition mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

The World Book Encyclopedia 1993 mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Concise Columbia Encyclopedia 3rd Edition mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Cambridge Encyclopedia 2nd Edition mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Collier's Encyclopedia 1989 mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Bruce Wetterau World History 1993 mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Timetable of World History 3rd Edition mentions The Famine but not The Clearances.

Barron's Student's Encyclopedia 1988 mentions neither.

Some contemporary eye-witness accounts of Clearances

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