Download or read book The History of the Highland Clearances written by Alexander Mackenzie and published by Mercat Press Books. This book was released on 1883 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragedy of the Clearances, brought about by cynical, often absentee landlords, is a black page in Scotland's history. Written while the effects it describes were still unfolding, Mackenzie's history brings the distress before the reader.
Download or read book The Scottish Clearances written by T. M. Devine and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A superb book ... Anybody interested in Scottish history needs to read it' Andrew Marr, Sunday Times Eighteenth-century Scotland is famed for generating many of the enlightened ideas which helped to shape the modern world. But there was in the same period another side to the history of the nation. Many of Scotland's people were subjected to coercive and sometimes violent change, as traditional ways of life were overturned by the 'rational' exploitation of land use. The Scottish Clearances is a superb and highly original account of this sometimes terrible process, which changed the Lowland countryside forever, as it also did, more infamously, the old society of the Highlands. Based on a vast array of original sources, this pioneering book is the first to chart this tumultuous saga in one volume, with due attention to evictions and loss of land in both north and south of the Highland line. In the process, old myths are exploded and familiar assumptions undermined. With many fascinating details and the sense of an epic human story, The Scottish Clearances is an evocative memorial to all whose lives were irreparably changed in the interests of economic efficiency. This is a story of forced clearance, of the destruction of entire communities and of large-scale emigration. Some winners were able to adapt and exploit the new opportunities, but there were also others who lost everything. The clearances created the landscape of Scotland today, but it came at a huge price.
Download or read book The Lowland Clearances written by Peter Aitchison and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forced removal of family farmers across the Scottish Lowlands in the 18th and 19th centuries is chronicled in this enlightening social history. The Scottish Agricultural Revolution came at great cost to the poor cottars and tenant farmers who were driven from their homes to make way for livestock and crops. The process of forced evictions through the Highlands known as the Highland Clearances is a well-documented episode of Scottish history. But the process actually began in the Scottish Lowlands nearly a century before—in the so-called Age of Improvement. Though largely overlook by historians, the Lowland Clearances undeniably shaped the Scottish landscape as it is today. They swept aside a traditional way of life, causing immense upheaval for rural dwellers, many of whom moved to the new towns and cities or left the country entirely. With pioneering research, historian Peter Aitchison tells the story of the Lowland Clearances, establishing them as a significant aspect of the Clearances that changed the face of Scotland forever.
Download or read book Set Adrift Upon the World written by James Hunter and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were - thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned. Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode, involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. What was done in the course of that episode was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but they are by no means irrecoverable. In this book James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His researches took him to archives in Scotland, England and Canada, to the now deserted straths of Sutherland, to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people's struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster which includes experiences which have not featured in any previous such account.
Download or read book On the Crofter s Trail written by David Craig and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Clearances of the 19th century, crofts - once the mainstay of Highland life in Scotland - were swept away as the land was put over to sheep grazing. Many of the people of the Highlands and islands of Scotland were forced from their homes by landowners in the Clearances. Some fled to Nova Scotia and beyond. David Craig sets out to discover how many of their stories survive in the memories of their descendants. He travels through 21 islands in Scotland and Canada, many thousands of miles of moor and glen, and presents the words of men and women of both countries as they recount the suffering of their forbears.
Download or read book The Desperate Journey written by Kathleen Fidler and published by Floris Books. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twins Kirsty and David Murray are forced to leave their crofting home in the north of Scotland, and struggle to cope with life in Glasgow, where the work is hard and dangerous. Then comes a chance for a new adventure on a ship bound for Canada. Will they survive the treacherous Atlantic crossing, and what will they find in the strange new land? The Desperate Journey is Kathleen Fidler's best-known story, a true Scottish classic whose thrilling plot will keep children gripped till the end.
Download or read book The Highland Clans written by Alistair Moffat and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brisk and accessible guide to a thousand years of reiving and rivalry in the Highlands.” —The Scotsman The story of the Highland clans of Scotland is famous, the names celebrated, and the deeds heroic. Having clung to ancient traditions of family, loyalty, and valor for centuries, the clans met the beginning of their end at the fateful Battle of Culloden in 1746. Alistair Moffat traces the history of the clans from their Celtic origins to the coming of the Romans; from Somerled the Viking to Robert the Bruce; from the great battles of Bannockburn and Flodden to Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Risings; and from the Clearances to the present day. Moffat is an adept guide to the world of the clans, a world dominated by lineage, land, and community. These are stories of great leaders and famous battles, and of an extraordinary people, shaped by the unique traditions and landscape of the Scottish Highlands. It’s a story too about the pain of leaving, with the great emigrations to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that began after Culloden. Complete with a clan map and an alphabetical list of the clans of the Scottish Highlands, this is a must for anyone interested in the history of Scotland.
Download or read book Consider The Lilies written by Iain Crichton Smith and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eviction of the crofters from their homes between 1792 and the 1850s was one of the cruellest episodes in Scotland's history. In this novel Iain Crichton Smith captures the impact of the Highland Clearances through the thoughts and memories of an old woman who has lived all her life within the narrow confines of her community. Alone and bewildered by the demands of the factor, Mrs Scott approaches the minister for help, only to have her faith shattered by his hypocrisy. She finds comfort, however, from a surprising source: Donald Macleod, an imaginative and self-educated man who has been ostracised by his neighbours, not least by Mrs Scott herself, on account of his atheism. Through him and through the circumstances forced upon her, the old woman achieves new strength.
Download or read book The Cheviot the Stag and the Black Black Oil written by John McGrath and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-02-17 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strathoykel, Sutherland. "When the Sheriff and his men arrived, the women were on the road and the men behind the walls. The women shouted 'Better to die here than America or the Cape of Good Hope'. The first blow was struck by a woman with a stick. The gentry leant out of their saddles and beat at the women's heads with their crops." (John McGrath)
Download or read book A Dance Called America written by James Hunter and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dance was devised in eighteenth-century Skye. An exhilarating dance. A dance, a visitor reports, 'the emigration from Skye has occasioned'. The visitor asks for the dance's name. 'They call it America,' he's told. In his introduction to this new edition of his classic and pioneering account of what happened to the thousands of people who left Skye and the wider north of Scotland to make new lives across the sea, historian James Hunter reflects on what led him to embark on travels and researches that took him across a continent. To Georgia, North Carolina and Montana; to Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario and the Mohawk Valley; to prairie farms and great cities; to the Rocky Mountains, British Columbia and Washington State. This is the story of the Highland impact on the New World. The story of how soldiers, explorers, guerrilla fighters, fur traders, lumberjacks, railway builders and settlers from Scotland's glens and islands contributed so much to the USA and Canada. It is the story of how a hard-pressed people found in North America a land of opportunity.
Download or read book The Great Highland Famine written by Tom M. Devine and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2021-09-02 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Hunger in nineteenth-century Ireland was a major human tragedy of modern times. Almost a million perished and a further two million emigrated in the wake of potato blight and economic collapse. Acute famine also gripped the Scottish Highlands at the same time, causing misery, hardship and distress. The story of that lesser known human disaster is told in this prize-winning and internationally acclaimed book. The author describes the classic themes of highland and Scottish history, including the clearances, landlordism, crofting life, emigration and migration in a subtle and intricate reconstruction based on a wide range of sources. This book should appeal to all those with an interest in Scottish history, the emigration of Scottish people and the Highland Clearances.
Download or read book Wild Scots written by Michael Fry and published by John Murray Publishers. This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of How the Scots Made America, this is a definitive history of the Highlands, ranging from the depths of bloody clan warfare to the heights of Gaelic poetry. "This formidable, superb, spectacularly audacious history of the Highlands," wrote The Times, focuses squarely on its people. Michael Fry traces the ironies of their fate as emigration, forced clearances, and the breakdown of feudal relations undermined traditional customs. Fry's groundbreaking reassessment of the Highlands is not, however, the usual eulogy for a dying era. He argues that modernization simply had to happen, and he traces the many inventive ways in which Gaelic culture withstood decline. "Outstanding...best of all, deliciously written." (The Literary Review) The author of four previous books on Scotland, Michael Fry has also contributed to many major newspapers.
Download or read book Clans and Clearance written by Alwyn Edgar and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you go to the Scottish Highlands now, you will find many valleys almost without people. Yet we know from history and archaeology that many people lived in the Highlands for thousands of years. What happened? Between about 1740 and 1900, the Highland landlords decided to clear out the people, and establish great sheep farms instead. Five volumes will tell the story, starting with volume one - "Clans and Clearance". In Highland histories, some beliefs (though clearly at odds with the evidence) re-appear regularly, all these, and other, misapprehensions are dealt with in "Clans and Clearance" e.g- * There was an enormous Highland population increase in the century after 1750: this never happened - the highest possible increase is 37% in the years 1750-1840 - during which time food production doubled or trebled.*. Some figures in original documents are clearly inaccurate, but have been accepted by writers who feel that documents cannot lie; they claim that Highland parishes averaged 400 square miles. This is clearly wrong, and can be disproved by anyone who has an atlas and a ruler: the average was about 100 square miles. * The clearances were carried out by "the English". In reality they were carried out by the clan chiefs, after the Lowlanders and the English conquered the Highlands, following the Battle of Culloden, 1746. The British state forced the private-property system on to the Highlanders; the clan chiefs were made into landowners, who suddenly realized they could make themselves rich by driving out the clansfolk and letting the land to large farmers. * Most of the Highlanders were Catholics. In fact 96% of the Highlanders were Protestant. * The old Highlanders were "crofters". In fact the Highlanders were hunter-gatherers, with a second ample food source in their vast flocks and herds. The crofters appeared only after the clearances, when some of the evicted were kindly allowed to try growing potatoes in an acre of two of barren, waste ground. * The clan chiefs were tyrants, jailing and executing clansfolk indiscriminately. No, the chiefs had no state apparatus - police, soldiers, lawyers, courts, jails, torturers, executioners etc - so had to rule with the general approval of the clansfolk. * The Highlanders' cattle lived under the same roof as the Highlanders . No, the herds far too large; this only happened after the clearances, when Herds no longer had enough pasture for their great flocks, and therefore had very few animals left - and very little grazing, so the cow had to be housed in the same building. * The clansfolk were wildly licentious, drinking enormous quantities of whisky, while at the same time they fervently believed in a strait-laced religion. No, both these opposite convulsions appeared as extreme reactions to the social misery caused by the clearances.
Download or read book The Clans Septs Regiments of the Scottish Highlands written by Frank Adam and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 1970 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given by Eugene Edge III.
Download or read book Flight of the Highlanders written by Ken McGoogan and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author Ken McGoogan tells the story of those courageous Scots who, ruthlessly evicted from their ancestral homelands, were sent to Canada in coffin ships, where they would battle hardship, hunger and even murderous persecution. After the Scottish Highlanders were decimated at the 1746 Battle of Culloden, the British government banned kilts and bagpipes and set out to destroy a clan system that for centuries had sustained a culture, a language and a unique way of life. The Clearances, or forcible evictions, began when landlords—among them traitorous clan chieftains—realized they could increase their incomes dramatically by driving out tenant farmers and dedicating their estates to sheep. Flight of the Highlanders: The Making of Canada intertwines two main narratives. The first is that of the Clearances themselves, during which some 200,000 Highlanders were driven—some of them burned out, others beaten unconscious—from lands occupied by their forefathers for hundreds of years. The second narrative focuses on resettlement. The refugees, frequently misled by false promises, battled impossible conditions wherever they arrived, from the forests of Nova Scotia to the winter barrens of northern Manitoba. Between the 1770s and the 1880s, tens of thousands of dispossessed and destitute Highlanders crossed the Atlantic —prototypes for the refugees we see arriving today from around the world. If today Canada is more welcoming to newcomers than most countries, it is at least partly because of the lingering influence of those unbreakable refugees. Together with their better-off brethren—the lawyers, educators, politicians and businessmen—those indomitable Highlanders were the making of Canada.
Download or read book The People s Clearance written by J.M. Bumsted and published by Univ. of Manitoba Press. This book was released on 1982-01-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a revisionist account of Highland Scottish emigration to what is now Canada, in the formative half century before Waterloo.
Download or read book A History of the Highland Clearances written by Eric Richards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-05 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1982, A History of the Highland Clearances looks at the forcible clearance of tenants from land they had farmed for centuries by landlords in the Highlands of Scotland in the early nineteenth century. It examines the general context of historical change, provides a full narrative of the clearances and offers a critical evaluation of the documentary sources upon which the entire story depends. By placing his subject in its historical perspective and into the context of the rest of Britain and Europe, Eric Richards vividly illustrates the realities of the Highland experience in the age of the clearances.
