The Highland clearances of the 1760s to 1880s are some of the most controversial and emotion-fraught events in Scotland s long Scottish history|history..
Sun Sep 29 2002 at 17:59:51
The Highland clearances of the 1760s to 1880s are some of the most controversial and emotion-fraught events in Scotland s long history. Poverty-stricken tenants and their families were evicted from long-held land by landlords keen to make money by farming sheep on the land. Some of the most horrific clearances took place at Strathnaver in Sutherland in 1814, but they had begun some time before this, principally at Glengarry, near Knoydart and Fort William. Evicted families were often forced onto the coastline to fish or gather kelp. Some landlords, or
lairds, tried to keep tenants on their lands to enable military drafts and naval press gangs. Others encouraged or enforced emigration to Canada or America. Famine and cholera further decimated highland populations, and crofting was encouraged as an alternative method of farming. Protests against the clearances and the conditions of the crofters broke out in Skye in the 1880s and led to greater awareness i