Highland clearances

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Highland clearances were evictions which eliminated the bulk of the Gaelic-speaking population from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Between 1763 and 1775 thousands of Highlanders migrated to colonial British North America motivated by resentment at higher rents and consolidation of farms, and led by tacksmen, former clan gentry who were leasees of land, but were being eliminated as unnecessary middlemen.

Next, large-scale sheep-farming came to the Highlands, based on the replacement of the small indigenous sheep by commercial breeds such as the black-faced Linton. With Lowland sheep came Lowland farmer-capitalists and often Lowland shepherds, though some former tacksmen contrived to thrive. By the early 19th cent. this revolution had reached the vast Sutherland estates north of Inverness. Tenants were resettled on the coastal areas to combine fishing with farming and ancillary activity such as gathering kelp on the beaches to make commercial alkali.

The collapse of kelping due to cheaper imports after 1815 was followed by the decline of wool prices due to the arrival of cheap Australian and then New Zealand wool, and in 1848–9 by widespread famine conditions. After 1860, tenants were cleared to create deer forests, treeless shooting estates which, by 1914, covered 3½ million acres in the Highlands. By 1886 a residual crofting population clung to the margins of the region with legal security of tenure.

Bruce Philip Lenman

Highland Clearances The deliberate removal of Scottish “crofter” peasants by landlords during the 19th century. In the later 18th century, Scottish society in the Highlands suffered severely with the collapse of the system of chiefs and fighting clans. Subsistence farming could not sustain an increasing population and this was aggravated by the policy of many major landowners of clearing their land for sheep farming by expulsion of crofters and the burning of their cottages. The potato famine during the HUNGRY FORTIES aggravated the problem and in the 1880s, after the arrival of the railway, sheep were replaced by deer. In 1882 there were outbreaks of violence, the “Crofters War”, which was investigated by a Royal Commission. In 1885 the crofters voted for the first time in a general election, and an Act of Parliament in 1886 gave them some security of tenure. Yet depopulation steadily continued. Many Scottish Highlanders emigrated throughout the British empire.

Highland clearances were evictions which eliminated the bulk of the Gaelic‐speaking population from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Between 1763 and 1775 thousands of Highlanders migrated to colonial British North America motivated by resentment at higher rents and consolidation of farms. Next, large‐scale sheep‐farming came to the Highlands, based on the replacement of the small indigenous sheep by commercial breeds such as the black‐faced Linton. By the early 19th cent. this revolution had reached the vast Sutherland estates north of Inverness. Tenants were resettled on the coastal areas to combine fishing with farming and ancillary activity such as gathering kelp to make commercial alkali. After 1860, tenants were cleared to create deer forests.