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In this essay I will evaluate the opinion that the highland clearances of the nineteenth century were the best solution for the economy but a disaster for the inhabitants of the highlands. As the title suggests there was and still is a dual point of view to this question. One has to consider the subtenants and cottars who were the subject of the clearances and on the other hand Britain's contemporary economy and politics. To tackle this question I will first give a short overview over the situation of the Highlands until ca. 1800.
Up ti the end of the 18-century the highland society was based on clanship with hierarchical structure. The chief of the clan had several tacksmen who formed the clan's army and let the land to subtenants who themselves let it to cottars. It was not a system of land letting that was based on economic relations but on kinship and mutual respect and trust.
Apart from the Highlands' agriculture the people lived from seasonal migration to the lowlands to help with the harvest or fishing. They also exported their black cattle. From the money they bought cereals. Thus there was an early specialisation in industry.
Since 1700 the chiefs were involved in southern politics. They slowly abandoned the traditional clanship. Since 170 they raised the rents of their peasants to be able to lead a life similar to that of the Lowlands. They gave land not because of kinship anymore but according to the highest rent. In 170 Sir Alexander Mac Donald of Sleat and Norman MacLeod of Dunvegan sold some of their clansmen into slavery, which can be seen as the very beginning of the clearances.
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Scottish lowlanders and the English government always wanted to pacify the Highlands. They felt threatened by the Jacobites. After Culloden they forbade Highland arms and tradition.
Finally the chiefs that had turned into landlords found possibilities to involve in politics and to increase their personal wealth kelp, sheep and deer. To progress with that profound changes were made.
All together the Highlands were much less developed than the rest of Britain at that time. It remained a quite primitive society with poor communication, low capital and ancient traditions. Apart from the early but stagnating specialisation in cattle the Highlands did not participate in Britain's economy. They bought cereals from the cash they got for the cattle but otherwise lived on home industry and self-sufficient farming. Thus the regional interest of the Highland did not comport with the rest of the nation.
As seen above the landlords wanted to improve their land from an early age. Their common opinion was that the peasants were indolent and lazy and therefore opponent to improvements. "The attachment of the wretched creatures in question was a habit; the habit of indolence and inexperience, the attachment of an animal little differing in feelings from his own horned animals." For the landlords the improvement consisted in abolishing the small uneconomic fields of the cottars. They wanted to create large sheep farms inhabited by new sheep breeds from England and a few shepherds to attend them. Besides sheep farming the Highlands offered another resource. The soap and glass factories in England needed huge amounts of kelp, an alkali rich product won from seaweed. Therefore the landlords wanted the peasants to clear their fields and to settle along the coast to harvest the seaweed, while sheep were grazing on their former land. As kelping was labour intensive the landlords were afraid of a loss of population through emigration. Thus the clearances in the beginning of the 1-century were a shifting of population within the land rather than an eviction from the land. Fishing was attempted but failed due to inexperience and too primitive gear.
The supposed effect on society was first of all a relief of congestion on the Highland farms, partly a real overcrowding and partly a population only too big for sheep farming. Secondly the landlords with their adoption of lowland habits wanted to "civilise" the peasants. They should get used to regular work in one sector like kelping that they could later work in the factories of the lowlands. Thus they were given only a tiny patch of land (which was later even more reduced) and a tiny hut, a croft. The crofters had to work in the kelping industry because otherwise they were not able to pay for rents and supplementary food. With the population concentrated in one area it was also easier to introduce law, order and lowland education. It was assumed that the Highlanders would move out of their free will to areas were there was the most capital like the fishing industry and the new factories and towns. Although these theories sounded not too inhuman they did not apply to the crofters. When the kelp industry ceased even more sheep were brought into the Highlands. After the sheep had become uneconomical the landlords converted sheep walks into deer forests for the sporting upper class. According to the landlords' theory the crofters should have moved further and further to gain more capital but, deeply rooted on their land, they did not. They rather accepted poverty and overcrowding and hoped for redistribution of land than to leave. Thus the landlords increasingly pushed the crofters out of the estates, especially when the kelping industry ceased. Their new philosophy was expressed by J. MacCulloch "The longer a change is protracted, the more severe it will be, because great numbers will be added to great poverty."
The opinion of the crofters looked somewhat different. For them the most obvious thing was that their society and traditions were violated. Kinship was not important anymore, the tacksmen were abolished, which created a social vacuum between landlords and crofters. J. Hunter describes "The institutional forms of a society with a continuous history of at least 1000 years were, it is true, destroyed simply by passing and enforcing laws that abolished them." As the crofters' land became smaller and smaller seasonal migration became increasingly important to feed the families and to pay the rent for the croft. Whole families moved to the lowlands in summer and so virtually abandoned their land. However, despite the social changes that took place the Highlanders were not willing to leave their land and homes for good. Their ancient traditions of peasantry made them to oppose to the clearances and let them wait for redistribution of land. They regarded it as an enormous injustice that their land was taken away and given to sheep and foreigners. As the crofters did not benefit from the money their landlords made with kelping and sheep farming they did not regard the changes as an improvement.
The moving to a croft went together with a loss of status especially for those families that became almost landless. A moral decline was observed after the crofters were not able to improve their condition or even pay their rents despite hard work.
If one considers that the crofters were deprived of their securing traditions, their social status and were never organized into unions it is easier to understand why they did not protest earlier or became as violent as their Irish counterpart. Deeply rooted in clanship the crofters were used to follow their landlords and tacksmen. So they could be removed to the coast or convinced by the tacksmen to follow them to America without major protest. Few in waves occurring protests delayed the clearances but could not prevent them. The most famous protests were the Braes Strike in 1881 and the Sutherland Clearances. Only after the Crofters Wars in the 1880s the public became aware. Later rent strikes like in Ireland followed with the aim of land redistribution.
However, the most common form of protest was emigration. Its numbers were a clear measure of the desperate situation of the people.
As we can see there was the crowd of poor or even starving crofters which felt unjustly treated on one hand, and on the other hand there were the landlords who wanted to participate in the national economy with all its advantages. Both had in common an insatiable land hunger. The reactions of the two groups were naturally different crofters emigrated, landlords cleared. For both there were push and pull reasons. Surely the crofters were urged to emigrate by the landlords, raised rents, sunken cattle prices and the famines of the 180s and 1840s. Yet there was encouragement to emigrate by letters from relatives who had already gone to North America. The promise of very good land especially in Carolina and the promise of free profession of the catholic faith also helped. Added was that the population became more mobile once they had left their ancient home and moved to the coast. Pull reasons for the landlords were wealth, political influence and a southern lifestyle. Yet they were pushed by the national economy and competition and the fear of loosing their family heritage.
Proof that emigration was not due to landlords' fault was Lewis, where James Matheson spent a fortune on the improvement of the condition of his tenants. Overpopulation was not the consequence of sheep farming but the failure of kelping and the growth of the population. While in 1844 Matheson believed that emigration was not necessary he had changed his mind in 1850. He had to remove 0% of the population. He acted as friendly as before he cancelled rents, paid the passage and provided food and clothing. Yet even in this case of very liberal terms of emigration there was some pressure put on the people. Matheson told his agents that he would have forced them to leave if they had not accepted his help.
There were suggested solutions for the economic and social problem. David Stewart of Garth was the first writer who blamed the clearances for all problems of the Highlands. He was not entirely against sheep farming but wanted to integrate it into the old lifestyle in a slow change. He was concerned about the social benefit of the Highlanders. Unfortunately his ideas were too idealistic. He put them into practise on his own estate but saw himself forced to clear the land in 180. His ideas in extreme would have dispossessed the landlords and created an independent peasant state next to Britain. 4 Adam Smith offered capitalist ideas. He proposed regional specialisation and assumed that labour and capital would move to the most advantageous places. It was not his fault that this movement did not happen but the fault of Highland tradition and psychology.
As the example of Garth and others shows a major problem of the Highlands was overcrowding. This was increased by the introduction of the potato and kelping. Crofters on the coast lived on potatoes, shellfish and milk, which was a well balanced diet. The landlords were first not aware of this development. Later they tried to mitigate overcrowding by further clearances. The population grew so fast that it probably would not have managed to sustain itself even if the old system had remained. A growth of population was observed in the rest of Europe as well. The difference to the Highlands was the new labour intensive factories and the better natural resources elsewhere in Europe. The conditions in the Highlands could have been improved by giving the crofters as much land as to sustain by its crops. That would have meant to clear some more families, which would not have mattered regarding the anyway vast number of emigrants.
There was some (late) state intervention. The Napier Commission, the Passenger Vessel Act of 1884, emigration help and the Crofters Holdings Act and its successors improved the situation. State help could have been increased but that would not have comported with the Victorian laissez-faire politics. Another attempt would have been to move away from landlordism and create some form of co-operative between all Highlanders.
It is a paradox that the landlords' wish for an improved economy decreased the traditional specialised export of cattle and labour force (seasonal migration). The peasants had long been used to such an economic exchange with the lowlands. Although it did not bring as much wealth as kelp, sheep or deer it was important because the Highlanders needed the cash to buy supplementary food. Another paradox was the introduction of potatoes. First it helped to feed the growing population to an extend that was impossible with cereals because the potato was much better adapted to the condition of the Highland soil. Later it caused the worst famines because people relied so much on it that they hardly had any other food when the potato harvest failed due to blight.
All agrarian changes were either short sighted or unlucky. The war dependent need of goods, overgrazing and bad fishing gear could have been considered before. The chemical production of alkali, and wool and mutton from Australia (mostly sold by evicted crofters) were bad luck. Another problem was that the changes happened to fast. What had taken 00 years in the rest of Britain happened within a few decades in the Highlands. It was extremely difficult to take up a totally new lifestyle in such a short time. Even for the landlords it was too fast. Some of them went bust because they spent their new money in London or Edinburgh.
Altogether one can say that the clearances were necessary if the Highlands were to remain an economical and political part of Britain. If the Highlands had become an autonomic region the traditional life could have gone on until the Highlanders themselves had found changes necessary. Then the competition between Highland lords and the upper and emerging middle class of England would not have become so important. Yet the clearances were and are indefensible, even if one considers the contemporary laissez-faire politics. Contemporaries were shocked by the poverty and wretchedness of the crofters and the conditions of some emigration ships. The crofters had to carry all the disadvantages that arouse from the economic improvement of the whole of Britain. The capital from the economic changes was divided unequally. That in itself was unfair. And although the crofters' conditions have slowly improved since the Crofters Holdings Act in 1886 crofters today belong still to the poorest and less advantageous part of the British population.
Bibliography
Gray, M. The Highland Economy 1750-1850, Oliver and Boyd Edinburgh and London 157
Hunter, J., The Making of the Crofting Community, John Donald Publishers Ltd Edinburgh 176
MacAskill,J., We have Won the Land, Acair Ltd Stornoway 1
Richards, E., A History of the Highland Clearances, volume , Croom Helm Ltd London 185
www.norcol.ac.uk
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