WIMPY HIGHLANDERS

[rich]

Wade's roads were extremely limited - there were no real roads in most of the west or the north come to that. When John Sinclair of Ulbster went to Westminster as MP for Caithness and - was it Rothesay? - he took the boat. By comparison the Irish had a substantial road network - the product of successive wars and uprisings. The French in 1798 marched along them to some effect. I believe the Highland army of 1745 largely avoided Wade's roads and went cross-country but I may be wrong about that.
And of course there is the larger question about demography. It is seriously argued - and the case has some merit - that the Highland evictions forestalled a demographic disaster like that which overwhelmed the Irish in successive famines betweem 1846 and 1848. All the economists were reading Malthus in the early 1800s!
And how about the historical revisionists - Eric Richards: The Leviathan of Wealth - who think that the Sutherland clearances were part of a benign and well-intentioned scheme to improve life for the tenants. After all then - who built all the wee harbours that played such a role in the herring fishing boom that followed the Clearances! The Duke - that's who!
I'm not saying I agree with this but the case has been made and as is usually the case with serious academic historians they contradict the "whit my granny telt me" school of history.

[George Brims]

I think the point about the clearances or *something* having to come along to change things is well made. The economy of the Highlands was a disaster waiting to happen; the question is really how did each landlord deal with the issue.

But that guy saying it was a "benign and well-intentioned scheme to improve life for the tenants" reminds me why I detest many academic historians. Such historians are simply concerned with making a point and building a publication record based on it - they're often no more emotionally invested in the point they make than in a proposition given them to support or counter in a debating society. In fact they often *have* to take a contrarian view just to summon up any interest in what they have to say. They forget that somewhere deep down, the study of history is supposed to be a search for TRUTH.

[rich]

Truth?
Truth in history is a somewhat limited concept. It means not falsifying the documentary evidence. It means you may slant the facts but you'll be whistled down if you slide over into blatant falsehoods.
But capital letter TRUTH?
That's a bone for the philosophers to snarl over...

[George Brims]

Historians used to pride themselves on searching for truth, instead of promoting their own agenda or biases. The modern-day "publish or be damned" (or more like "publish or fail to get tenure") culture has made than seem a quaint world-view now.

Oh and just don't get me started on the philosophers!

[gleeber]

There are degrees of TRUTH. As Gearge said the history presented by the scholars is governed by their own agendas and biasis. The same applies to the reader. For me, the bare bones is enough to get by. I will add my own meat, like the novelist who knows no boundaries.
Heres a wee link to a site which explains the clearances adequately for me.
http://members.aol.com/Jimsutherl/clearances.html
It dosnt explain Richs original question and as is evident from this thread, that wouldnt be easy.
For me, the church and centuries of obedience is enough to answer the question. They allowed themselves to be enslaved, especially after the clan chief got a taste of the high life. They were trapped by the same helplessness as a child in danger would know when it calls out for its parents.
The same prisons still exist to this day.

[Anonymous]

I notice an advert for Dunrobin Castle on the homepage fo this website does that make it complicit in its support for the Clearances

[rich]

KW, you don't know the half ot it.
There is something called the Clan Sutherland Society which has regular meetings at Dunrobin and which reveres the Countess(?) Duchess(?) as clan chief.
I find this fascinating as a piece of historical revisionism.
Or is it just snobbery?
Perhaps some member of this travesty "clan" might enter the discussion to provide an explanation of their activities. The normal function of these clan societies is usually to repair the roof of the landlord's castle.....

[Kenn]

Has any one else read "The Highland Clearances" by Eric Richards? I came across it recently whilst browsing my favourite bookshop.It gives an easily readable well documented account of the whole era.
He argues neither for or against what happened but explores in depth using whatever documentary evidence is available.It may alter or soften some of the views on the matter and gives much insight into a very controversial time in Scottish history.

Partan..Humm at least the PROPER football team win matches An besides what else could they do with a mighty warrior from Kernow in the attack

[Anonymous]

The clan system broke down after the '45. The popular image of the war-like Highlanders was down to allegience to (or more realistically, a hold over by) the clan chiefs. The destruction of the clan system after Culloden, and the persecution of clan chiefs and sequestration of lands, left the door open for incoming landlords.

And the tenants no longer had the security of clan and community. And they were picked off in small numbers at a time, over a long period, by the likes of Patrick Sellar. What chance of co-ordinated resistance over such a vast geographical area?

The Kirk must take much of the blame. With one or two notable exceptions, eg Croick, the stipend was paid by the incoming landlord.

If your home and all your possessions were burned, your crops razed and your livestock slaughtered; and you had a wife and family to support - would you take up arms, and die a heroic but inevitable death, or would you grab any other option open to you, which gave even the slightest chance of survival for your family?

[Anonymous]

FREEEEEEEEEDOM!!!!

[squidge]

Lol KW14 however thats an easy thing to say when you re warm and well fed in a nice well paid job in Saudi.

Note that these people had nothing - crushed, demoralised and beaten, even their churches as corrupt, cold and mercenary as any landlord what choice did people have?

The only thing they were able to hold onto was pride in their history and their families and their heritage. They passed this down through the generations so that it is visible even here on an internet message board hundreds of years later.

Search these boards and you will see the legacy of those people forced out during the clearances - you will see pride in Scotland, in being Scottish. What greater legacy could they have foreseen? I would suggest none.

[Anonymous]

it was of course said tongue firmly in cheek in my best Mel Gibson Scottish accent

[rich]

I'm sorry to have to take a slightly different approach, Squidge.
The 19th century was brutal for many working people, not only Scottish Highlanders and their Irish counterparts but for everybody.
The indignation expended on Highland evictees takes on a romantic, death of a civilization, end of an ancient way of life, a lament that positively throbs with emotion.
Does anyone expend similar angst upon Lancashire cotton operatives?
The industrial revolution was nowhere pretty.
But it may have saved the British from a much worse fate. Large numbers of people faced death from starvation due to the expanding population. The population was expanding because certain diseases were quiescent and fewer died in childbirth; also general availability of the potatoe led to higher nutrtition standards.
The price to be paid can be seen in the Irish Famine which was caused in part by the bakruptcy of the irish landlord class. In the rural warfare that racked Ireland the peasants won. And multiplied. And perished.
The factory jobs opened up by the Industrial revolution offered an escape.
To return to the Highland/Ireland comparison. The people who benefitted most from the potatoe famine in Ireland were the graziers. They flourished Until the 1880s when refrigeration was invented and the British market was flooded with frozen Argentinian beef.
Faced with economic difficulties the Irish reacted with rent strikes, boycotts etc.
This was put to political use by the Irish parliamentary party at Westminster and by an organization called the Land League of Mayo.
As soon as the Irish farmers got a decent settlement from the British governemnt the Mayo peasants were abandoned. In spite of the fact that the agitation was in their name. They were still struggling with potatoe blight in Mayo in the 1930s!
Today we call this political use of sentiment and simple minded history spin doctoring.
Is there not an element of spin doctoring in the romantic weeping over the Sutherland evictions?

[rich]

SO who in Scotland would have benefited from spin doctoring the Highland clearances?
I would suggest that in the 20th century the Scottish National party fills the bill.
In the 19th century Karl Marx the left wing of the Liberal party, and the crofters candidates who stood in various constituencies including Thurso in (I think) 1886.
In this century various anarchic anti-landlord groups, utopian visionaries, eco-freaks, the tourism industry.