The Scottish Clearances By T.M. Devine Reviewed Lives Ruined For Profit

Wed Jul 8 01:14:37 BST 2020

The Scottish Clearances By T.M. Devine Reviewed  Lives Ruined For Profit

<http://tlio.org.uk/the-scottish-clearances-by-t-m-devine-reviewed-lives-ruined-for-profit/>08/07/2020 
<http://tlio.org.uk/author/tony/>TONY GOSLING 
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<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/22/scottish-clearances-tm-devine-review-highlands>The 
Scottish Clearances by TM Devine review  lives ruined for profit

<https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-scottish-clearances/t-m-devine/9780141985930>
[]

[Would have been nice to have some positives like 
the fight back in Skye in 1882 which led to the 
Crofting Act  enshrining traditional tenures in law until this very day
TG]

An eminent Scottish historian chronicles the loss 
of land in the Highlands and records the voices of those sent into exile

Ewen MacAskill Sat 22 Dec 2018

<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/22/scottish-clearances-tm-devine-review-highlands>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/22/scottish-clearances-tm-devine-review-highlands

Once you have seen the machair you never forget 
it. It is Gaelic for the stunningly beautiful 
grassland found in the Hebrides and parts of the 
Highlands: fertile, a mass of wildflowers, 
fringed by remote sandy beaches. The first time I 
saw it, as a teenager on Harris, I wondered why 
my ancestors had chosen instead to live on the 
other side, on barren and rocky land, a hard 
place to grow anything. Within a matter of 
seconds, the answer dawned. They had lived on the 
machair but were forcibly moved in the 19th 
century, like many other casualties of the Highland Clearances.

The Clearances, the mass depopulation of the 
Highlands and Islands, still resonate today. They 
provide the backdrop whenever the Scottish 
parliament grapples with land reform or there is 
another community buy-out. This summer, the 
journalist and historian Max Hastings, writing in 
the Times, joined the discussion in a piece about 
his annual trip to the Highlands for shooting and 
fishing. Patronisingly, he wrote that the curse 
of Scotland is its sense of victimhood, lovingly 
nurtured over the past century and cited the 
Clearances as a prime example. He falls into the 
ranks of those who claim the scale and suffering has been exaggerated.

Scotland has until recently been ill served by 
historians. At school in the 1950s and 60s, we 
were taught more about the Tudors than our own 
history. A textbook at the time, a history of 
Scotland starting in 1702, ran to 335 pages, of 
which only one covered the Clearances. The writer 
John Prebble, English-born and brought up in 
Canada, broke this embarrassing near-silence with 
The Highland Clearances, published in 1963 and 
still the most popular Scottish history book ever 
written. Writing from a Marxist point of view, he 
portrayed the Clearances as the unnecessarily 
brutal expulsion of the population by greedy 
landowners and clan chiefs to make way for a more 
profitable source of income  sheep. Academics 
dismissed it as a blend of fact and fiction.

Revisionism was inevitable. It came in the shape 
of, among others, Michael Fry, a mischievous 
conservative and author of Wild Scots: Four 
Hundred Years of Highland History, published in 
2005. Fry, whose admirers include Hastings, 
portrayed the Clearances as a myth that falls apart once probed.

<https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-scottish-clearances/t-m-devine/9780141985930>
[]

Thankfully into the debate comes Tom Devine, 
Scotlands best modern historian. Although viewed 
as tainted by some Scots for coming out in 
support of independence during the 2014 
referendum, he makes history accessible, backed 
up with formidable original research and 
statistical evidence. In this book, he chronicles 
land ownership, the clan system and shifting 
attitudes towards Highlanders, from heroic 
soldiers to lazy aborigines. He is populist 
enough to find space for the romantic Jacobite TV 
fantasy Outlander, but this is a serious book, 
which includes a large section on dispossession 
in the Borders  intended to put what happened in 
the Highlands and Islands into perspective.

Clan chiefs in the Highlands were happy enough to 
have large populations at various points, 
especially during the Napoleonic wars. Devine 
demolishes the idea that Highlanders were by 
nature more martial than people in other parts of 
the UK. It was simple economics: the clan chiefs 
behaved as military entrepreneurs, providing 
recruits at a price. When the war ended and 
demand for soldiers fell, they looked for 
alternative sources of income. Sheep farming was 
one, and that meant clearing the land. Devine is 
fair minded, acknowledging landlords and chiefs 
who tried to devise ways to keep people, but they 
were in a small minority. Coercion was employed 
widely and systematically, he concludes.

The harshest of the expulsions came in the 1840s 
and 50s with the collapse, as in Ireland, of the 
staple crop, the potato crop. Families were 
evicted when they were at their most vulnerable. 
Devine finds space for the voices of those sent 
into exile, often ignored in the past because 
their accounts, mainly told through song and 
poetry, were in Gaelic. Coming from the Lowlands, 
Canada, the US and Australia, they record 
homesickness but also a rage and desire for 
revenge, against both landlords and sheep.

My own family were moved from the machair on the 
island of Berneray in the Sound of Harris in 
1850, according to local historian Peter Kerr, 
author of The Story of Emigration from Berneray, 
Harris. Forced out with them were other 
relatives: the family of one of Scotlands 
best-loved poets, and my cousin, Norman MacCaig.

MacCaig wrote extensively about his love of the 
Highlands and believed the land should be 
masterless. That does not equate to victimhood. I 
do not feel any sense of victimhood either, 
having seen the consequences when people around 
the world cling to historical injustices. I just 
want to know about Scotlands past, and am 
grateful to Devine for producing a balanced, 
detailed and extremely readable account of one of 
the saddest episodes in that history. He also 
makes it harder for conservatives who persist in the claim it was all a myth.

The Scottish Clearances by TM Devine review  lives ruined for profit
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/22/scottish-clearances-tm-devine-review-highlands

[Would have been nice to have some positives like 
the fight back in Skye in 1882 which led to the 
Crofting Act - enshrining traditional tenures in law until this very day...TG]

An eminent Scottish historian chronicles the loss 
of land in the Highlands and records the voices of those sent into exile
Ewen MacAskill

Ewen MacAskill Sat 22 Dec 2018 07.30 GMT