Debating the Highland ClearancesStorm clouds always gather over the story of the Highland Clearances. The eviction of the Highlanders from the glens and straths of the Highlands and Islands of the north of Scotland still causes great historical dispute more than a century after the events. The Highland Clearances also generated a great deal of contemporary controversy and documentation. The record comes in diverse forms and with radically different provenances, offering excellent material for exercises in historical analysis and selection. Debating the Highland Clearances introduces the Highland Clearances as a classic historical problem. Eric Richards reviews the historical debate and examines the methods and sources employed by the combatants past and present. The debates among historians, novelists, politicians and economists are no less passionate today and raise major questions about interpretation and the appropriate frame of reference for the noisy and continuing public debate about the Highland Clearances.This book presents a representative anthology of documents illustrating the historical foundations on which the debate is built. The debate is set in context and the author explains why it is not only important for Scottish patriots but for history in general.Key Features: - Organised into two parts; the first considers debates surrounding the Clearances, the second examines a selection of the sources which inform these debates- Presents and analyses an anthology of source material compiled to introduce the debates surrounding the Highland Clearances to audiences learning about historical analysis- Asks why passionate debate about the Clearances has been sustained and provides a modern introduction to its main issues |
Contents
Debating the Clearances 3 336 | 3 |
Before the Clearances | 26 |
The Age of the Clearances | 45 |
Copyright | |
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Alexander Mackenzie America Annexed Estates Argyll Assynt Australia Bangor-Jones black cattle British Caithness clearing landlords coast Coigach communities consequences Crofter Commission crofters crofting Culloden debate decades depopulation destitution district documentation Dodgshon Donald Easter Ross economic Edinburgh ejected emigration employment entire episodes eviction evidence factor famine farmers fishing Gaelic Gairloch Glen Glengarry Greenyards Highland Clearances Highlands and Islands historians houses Hugh Miller improvement increase industry inhabitants Inverness Inverness-shire Isles James Loch John kelp Knoydart labour lairds land landowners letter Lord Macdonald Macinnes Mackenzie Macleod military ministers Napier Commission nineteenth century North Uist officers old Highlands parish Patrick Sellar Perthshire poor population possessed potatoes poverty pre-clearance production proprietor radical region removal rents reports resistance Richards Ross rural Scotland Scottish sheep farming Skye small tenants Source Strath subsistence subtenants Sutherland estate tacksmen tenantry traditional Uist west Highlands women