Abstract
The Highland Clearances were the process by which between c. 1760 and c. 1860 the inhabitants of entire districts in the Scottish Highlands and Islands were displaced and evicted from their lands. It is one of the classic themes of Scottish history but also of much more general historiographical significance. The subject offers an unrivalled opportunity for an examination of the social consequences of agrarian modernisation. The Clearances bring into particularly sharp focus the titanic conflict between the forces of peasant traditionalism and agrarian rationalism. All the great themes are there: the powers of the landed classes; the constraints of economic and demographic pressure; dispossession; peasant resistance; cultural alienation; migration and emigration.
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References and Further Reading
E. Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions, 1746–1886 (London, 1982).
M. Gray, The Highland Economy, 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957).
J. Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976).
J. M. Bumstead, The Peoples Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America 1770–1815 (Edinburgh, 1982).
E. Richards, The Leviathan of Wealth (London, 1973).
P. Gaskell, Morvern Transformed (Cambridge, 1968).
A. J. Youngson, After the Forty Five (Edinburgh, 1973).
T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1988).
A. I. Macinnes,’ scottish Gaeldom: the First Phase of Clearance’, in T. M. Devine and R. Mitchison (eds), People and Society in Scotland, 1760–1830 (Edinburgh, 1988).
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© 1989 ReFRESH
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Devine, T.M. (1989). The Highland Clearances. In: Digby, A., Feinstein, C. (eds) New Directions in Economic and Social History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20315-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20315-4_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-49569-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20315-4
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