Highlands Clearance

[rayѕparx1]

Hello Scotties, Were any of your families affected by this unbelievable thing that went on? jesus how people were treated by others with money amazes me, but never surprises me, if your family was affected, how did they cope? any stories been passed down to you? thanks, Ray

a link for those unsure of what went on,

http://www.highlanderweb.co.uk/clearanc.htm

[4GS]

Hi Ray,

I think that all the people who were affected are now living in Canada, USA, Austraila or England.

[rayѕparx1]

Cheers John, what a way to treat people, even the heads of the clans were getting a pay off, disgusting, makes me so angry

[4GS]

Yeah, do you think it was an early form of 'ethnic cleansing'?

[rayѕparx1]

Hi John, all down to money at the end of the day, wasn't it, even The Clan leaders were involved in the evictions, peoples lives were just destroyed overnight, and some of the same families still own the land it happened on,

[4GS]

As far as I can remember from my lectures it was a lot to do with sheep being worth more that tenants. I'm sorry ray, I haven't looked at your link yet, I'll have a butchers later

[Ice.Maiden]

Hi ray. This is just one of many instances where feudal law seemed to reign. Terrible, wasn't it? What makes it worse, is that it happened in relatively modern times. Ordinary people must curl their noses up at the treatment dished out to the highlanders. As ever, the nobility and the governments of the day were not much better than they are now.

[raysparx1]

Hiya icy, hope you are well, it is mad the way people are allowed to ruin not just one life but hundreds of them in this case, I know they weren't killed like they are in Zimbabwe but it is still a real bad thing to have happened in a so called civilised society.

[dundurn]

This was largely a clash of two completely different sorts of society; a legal property-owning one which came in with the Normans and an older family-centred one which pre-dated the Romans. The modern rules of land ownership gave the chiefs the right to sell the land and/ or determine who would live on it and how. The older Gaelic culture saw the chiefs as leaders of their families (clans) but holding land (to the extent that they did) in trust for the greater good of all their adherents. Some clan chiefs like MacDonell of Glengarry just wanted a pot of money so they could go on livlng in some sort of baronial splendour and kicked their people off the land without another thought. Others like the Sutherlands really seemed to have had the best interests of their tenants at heart, but very little idea of how to go about making major changes to their lives. Both sorts of clan chief ended up in the same boat, with glens empty of people and full of sheep.

It wasn't ethnic cleansing as we currently define it because (by definition) the dispossessed and the evictors came from the same stock and in some cases from the same families. The situation was compounded by the potato famine (which hit much of Europe, not just Ireland) and the much reduced political power of the old Highland chiefs following the 1745 Rising. Some of the 'solutions' to the undoubted economic problems of Scotland at that time were nothing short of scandalous, but very rarely illegal.

I'm a Glengarry MacDonell and to this day there are more of 'us' in Canada than there are in Scotland. In my case the Roman Catholics who made up the majority of the clan obtaianed a grant of land in Canada and arranged their own transport there. My family was Protestant and stayed on in Badenoch working as shepherds - 'if you can't beat them.......'.

[raysparx1]

Thank you very much dundurn for such a brilliant answer, that has made it a lot clearer. very interesting, I am going to study it a bit more now, thanks again, Ray

[dundurn]

Ray,

thank you for the vote of thanks! My personal favourite reading material on the topic would be "The Highland Clearances" by John Prebble.

[rayѕparx1]

Cheers dundurn, I will look out for that book, so in a way this was a very similar thing to what Henry V111 etc did, but the kings gave land to people who did well in battle or had done some dirty deed for them,? but obviously the highland clearance was on a far larger scale and affected many people all at one time, and not spread over such a long period of time, or am I on the wrong path here, also obviously the clearance was also done for different reasons.