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The Highland Clearances A Brief History of the Clan System in the Highlands. (Page 4) Dunrobin Castle, Golspie, Sutherland |
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The Highland Clearances A Brief History of the Clan System in the Highlands. (Page 4) Dunrobin Castle, Golspie, Sutherland |
The earliest emigrations may were
forced by rack-renting, rather than the introduction of sheep-walks
leased
to southern farmers. However it was not long before the proprietors
of the great estates understood that the
way to realise much larger amounts of cash from their lands was to
get rid of their people. The Highlands
had previously had a cattle economy, but in 1762 Sir John
Lockhart-Ross of Balnagown, Ross-shire, began to
experiment with large-scale sheep-farming. Twenty years later he
leased large parts of his estate to a southern
sheep-farmer, and in doing so found it necessary to remove numbers of
the original inhabitants from the areas to
be leased out. At almost the same moment, another Lowland farmer was
agreeing leases with Macdonnell of
Glengarry, and a couple of years later, in 1785, the first
large-scale evictions began. These were soon followed by
more removals from Knoydart, also part of the vast Glengarry estates.
The Clearances, the saddest and most
shameful epoch in all the history of the Highlands, had truly
begun.
xxxxxxCattle at Torvaig in Skye - a timeless scene.
xxxxxxxxxxx--------------------------------xxxxxxx
xxxxxx Blackface ram after
shearing
Afterwards, people called 1792
Bliadhna nan
Caorach - The Year of the
Sheep - not because it marked the start
of the Clearances, but because this was the year when the great white
sheep, the Cheviot, was widely introduced
throughout the Highlands. Its large size, its hardiness and tolerance
of Highland conditions, and its production of
great quantities of high-quality wool and meat meant that volume
sheep-farming suddenly became immensely
more profitable, and the death-knell was sounded for the traditional
way of life for tens of thousands of
people across the Highlands and Islands.
It is hardly possible to give more than the briefest outline of
events which lasted over a hundred years and saw
tens, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of people dispossessed, uprooted
and banished from their ancestral home-
lands. After many years during which the history of the Clearances
was ignored and glossed over there has been an
awakening, and in the past twenty years or so, much has been written.
(Elsewhere on this website there is a short
list of readily-available books on the Clearances.) So many people
were evicted, so many glens cleared and left
without any human presence, and so many hearts broken that it is
impossible to catalogue them. The cruelty
and inhumanity of the proprietors and, especially, their agents and
factors were unbridled, and when
the people in desperation sought help from their last possible allies
- the law and the church -
they were abandoned by both.
The Sutherland Clearances are perhaps the best-known, and were a
prototype for much that happened later,
elsewhere. They were among the earliest of all (beginning in Strath
Oykel around 1800); they were among the
longest-lasting (evictions from Badbea were still going on in the
1870's) and they were often put into effect with
the maximum of callousness. The Duke and his family, throughout,
affected complete ignorance of all that was
was done in their name. Their agents (the infamous James Loch and
Patrick Sellar) often benefitted directly from
the clearances they so cruelly carried out - Sellar ended up as a
substantial sheep-farmer in Strathnaver which
he cleared in 1814 and again in 1819 with great brutality. These acts
were not only cruel, violent and unlawful,
they were despicable on every level, and as corrupt as it is possible
to be. While the Duke and the Duchess
played with their fantasy castle at Dunrobin - adding a wing here and
an Italian garden there - and their
factor made himself rich, their pitful tenants were being evicted
without cause, to starve in hovels on the
foreshore at Durness or Bettyhill, or perhaps to die of cholera on a
rat-infested ship bound for distant,
unknown lands. This was the very essence of The Clearances.
Some of the principle events of The
Clearances:
1782 - the first lease to a Lowland sheep-farmer.
1785 - the first large-scale clearances from Glengarry (Macdonnell)
estates.
1786 - mass evictions from Knoydart, on the Glengarry estates, with
the people sent to Canada.
1792 - the Cheviot sheep introduced to the Highlands.
1800 - First Sutherland clearances, from Strath Oykel.
1801 - clearances from Strathglass and Glengarry
1807 - clearances from Farr and Lairg, in Sutherland.
1809 - Wm. Young and Patrick Sellar employed as agents by Lord
Stafford (Duke of Sutherland)
xxx--xxEvictions from many Sutherland parishes, and from
Strathglass.
1812 - Large-scale clearances from Assynt and Kildonan in
Sutherland.
1814 - First clearances in Strathnaver.
1819 - Final clearances in Strathnaver and Kildonan. These immense
and fertile glens now effectively
xxx--xxempty except for thousands of sheep and a handful of
Lowland shepherds.
1820 - riots and evictions in Strath Oykel.
1821 - riots and evictions at Gruids, Sutherland.
1825 - the demise of the kelp industry, which had provided employment
for many Highlanders cleared
xxx--xxfrom their land, but permitted to remain elsewhere,
usually on relatively useless land.
1830 - wave of emigration caused by total poverty in the wake of the
kelp fiasco.
1832 - cholera breaks out in the Scottish Highlands.
1836 - deaths from famine in the Highlands.
1845 - Glencalvie, Easter Ross, cleared.
1845 - the start of potato blight, and famine throughout the
Highlands.
1849 - Evictions fron Glenelg in Invernesshire, and Sollas, North
Uist.
1850 - clearances from StrathConon
1851 - clearances from South Uist and Barra.
1853 - final clearances from Boreraig and Suishnish, Skye. The last
Macdonnells evicted from Glengarry.
1854 - final clearances from Strathcarron.
Even here there is no mention of
the clearances from mainland Argyll, Mull, Iona, Islay and Jura,
Colonsay,
Rum, Eigg, Muck and Canna, Tiree, Lewis and Harris, Mingulay,
Scalpay, Vatersay, Raasay, Orkney, Shetland,
the eastern Highlands, Perthshire, Caithness, other areas of mainland
Invernesshire, and many of the smaller
islands too numerous to list. The Clearances were not a 'one-off'
event but a process. The same glens and straths
were cleared again and again until not a soul was left, and fertile
ground which had provided for hundreds of
people were left as empty as the grave. They are still as empty
today.
Throughout the early years of the Clearances the people, for the most
part, went quietly and passively into exile.
They had been stunned into submission by the treachery of their clan
chiefs, to whom they had always looked for
protection and to whom, in spite of every vile thing which was done,
the ordinary clan members continued to
show the greatest loyalty and respect. But slowly, slowly, resistance
grew, and the first whisper of dissent was
from Clan Gunn in 1813, in the Sutherland valley of Kildonan. There
were riots and disturbances in 1820 and '21;
and again in 1840 and 1847. These were isolated and unorganised, but
the passivity and traditional deference of the
Highlander towards his "betters" was gradually being eroded. Outside
the Highlands, voices were also starting to
be heard, condemning the actions of the landlords and proprietors,
and as the century and the clearances wore on
there were further disturbances in North Uist, and notably at
Glendale in north-west Skye. Matters finally came
to a head at Braes on the east coast of Skye in 1882, when a force of
50 police constables from Glasgow were sent
to deal with a group of crofters who had staged a rent-strike, burned
court summonses and put their cattle back
on the grazings which had been denied to them. A violent skirmish
between police and crofters was inconclusive,
and though luckily there were no serious injuries this became known
as 'The Battle of the Braes". The police did
succeed in arresting five men they considered ringleaders, but the
crofters had gained great prestige by sticking
together and defying both their overbearing landlord and the forces
of the law.
xThe Braes, Isle
of Skye.
The government, weary both with
the demands of arrogant Highland proprietors and the agitation of the
crofters,
was at last stung into action, and a commission of enquiry was set up
to investigate "the conditions of the crofters
and cottars in the Highlands . . . . and everything concerning them."
It had wide powers to call witnesses, demand
any document, and to visit any place deemed necessary in order to
obtain the fullest possible information. Starting
in 1883 the commissioners travelled widely among the Highlands and
Islands, interviewing hundreds of witnesses,
both crofters and landlords. In April 1884 they made their report,
less than a year after they had carried out their
first interviews in Skye.
Though the Napier Commission's recommendations were less sweeping
than some of the crofters had hoped,
there was much they could be pleased with. London was slow to act,
however, and there was further trouble and
more rent-strikes on Skye, to the extent that the Government felt it
necessary to send ships and around 400
marines to keep order. Four out of five Highland Members of
Parliament were now committed to land reform,
and the Libaral Government's slim majority gave them bargaining
power. In 1885 the Crofters Act was passed
through Parliament, and brought the crofting community substantial
benefits. For the first time they had security
of tenure, and this could be passed on to another family member. They
had the right to compensation for any
improvements they carried out, and a Land Court was set up to fix
fair rents. It had taken over a hundred
years of evictions and banishments, grief and separation, and finally
anger and rebellion, but at last the
remaining Highlanders had a right to a life in their own country.