Description
Book SynopsisStorm clouds always gather over the story of the Highland Clearances. The eviction of the Highlanders from the glens and straths of the Highlands and Islands of the north of Scotland still causes great historical dispute more than a century after the events. The Highland Clearances also generated a great deal of contemporary controversy and documentation. The record comes in diverse forms and with radically different provenances, offering excellent material for exercises in historical analysis and selection. Debating the Highland Clearances introduces the Highland Clearances as a classic historical problem. Eric Richards reviews the historical debate and examines the methods and sources employed by the combatants past and present. The debates among historians, novelists, politicians and economists are no less passionate today and raise major questions about interpretation and the appropriate frame of reference for the noisy and continuing public debate about the Highland Clearances. This book prese
Table of ContentsTable of Contents; Preface; How to use this book; Part One: Debates; Chapter One: Debating the Highland Clearances; I Leaving the Highlands; II Definitions; III The Original Controversy; IV Contemporary Reactions; V The Modern Debate; VI Responsibility; Chapter Two: Before the Clearances; I The Benchmark Problem; II Conditions of Life; III Security and Food Supplies; IV Population before the Clearances; V Change before the Clearances; VI Emigration Before the Clearances; VII Mobility and Capital Flows.; Chapter Three: The Age of the Clearances; I Harris, Arichonan and the Uses of Eviction; II The New Sheep; III The Timetable of Clearance; IVYears of Pessimism; V Landlord Power, Landlord Weakness; VI Perceptions, Contemporary and Retrospective; Chapter Four: Protest and Resistance During the Clearances; I The Passive Highlanders; II The Common Pattern; III Three Exceptions; IV A disgruntled and pious people; V Resistance in Perspective; Chapter Five: The Blame Game; I Reputations and Decline; II Indictments and Good Intentions; III Responsibility for Famine and Decline; IV The Dislocated Society;; Part Two: Documents;; Chronology; Glossary; Guide to further Reading; Works Cited; Essay questions and projects; Brief Guide to places, museums, libraries, galleries, websites.; Maps; Illustrations; Statistical tables; Index.
