The Highland Clearances
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Product Description
In the terrible aftermath of the moorland battle of Culloden, the Highlanders suffered at the hands of their own clan chiefs. Following his magnificent reconstruction of Culloden, John Prebble recounts how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed into famine and poverty. While their chiefs grew rich on meat and wool, the people died of cholera and starvation or, evicted from the glens to make way for sheep, were forced to emigrate to foreign lands.
‘Mr Prebble tells a terrible story excellently. There is little need to search further to explain so much of the sadness and emptiness of the northern Highlands today’ The Times.
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First Sentence
MR MACLEOD of Geanies was 'much fatigued' this Sunday morning. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
MR MACLEOD of Geanies was 'much fatigued' this Sunday morning. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone visiting northern Scotland today often begins by admiring the unspoilt wilderness, but soon notices the stone walls of former houses scattered on the landscape. Caithness was not as badly affected as Sutherland, but the population is still one third of the figure 100 years ago. It may be easy to think that the drift away from rural isolation to the cities, and emigration, was by choice, or economic necessity, but this is simplistic. The Highland Clearances, a forced eviction from ancestral land mainly between 1810 and 1855, are a sad episode in Scottish history, with lessons for today.
Historically, in Britain as elsewhere, small communities of people living on the land have been surrendered in the name of economic progress and development.
Powerful landlords, in the case of the Clearances, most notably the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, convinced themselves they were benefiting their tenants, and distancing themselves from the misery through ruthless intermediaries, such as Patrick Sellar. John Prebble excels at drawing fine portraits of the characters involved, telling the story of a dispossessed people and a land that still bears the scars. A rare written testimony was given by Donald Macleod of Rossal, `Every imaginable means short of the sword or the musket was put in requisition to drive the natives away, to force them to exchange their farms and comfortable habitations, erected by themselves or their fathers, for inhospitable rocks on the seashore, the country was darkened by the smoke of the burnings, and its descendants were ruined, trampled upon, dispersed and compelled to seek asylum across the sea.' The church might naturally be expected to defend the people, but at least in Kildonan in 1813, Macleod tells us ` the churchmen threatened the vengeance of heaven and eternal damnation on those who should presume to make the least resistance, no wonder the Highlander quailed under such influence'.
When we consider recent conflicts in Bosnia, so-called `ethnic cleansing', or actions by ranchmen against Amazonian Indians, such an account is relevant. As John Preeble comments, `we have not become so civilized in our behaviour, or more concerned with men than profit, that this story holds no lesson for us'.
There are more recent books, possibly easier of access to school pupils, but John Preeble's account paints the complete picture, especially if preceeded by 'Glencoe' and 'Culloden' as he intended, and rightly placed in their historical context.
Historically, in Britain as elsewhere, small communities of people living on the land have been surrendered in the name of economic progress and development.
Powerful landlords, in the case of the Clearances, most notably the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, convinced themselves they were benefiting their tenants, and distancing themselves from the misery through ruthless intermediaries, such as Patrick Sellar. John Prebble excels at drawing fine portraits of the characters involved, telling the story of a dispossessed people and a land that still bears the scars. A rare written testimony was given by Donald Macleod of Rossal, `Every imaginable means short of the sword or the musket was put in requisition to drive the natives away, to force them to exchange their farms and comfortable habitations, erected by themselves or their fathers, for inhospitable rocks on the seashore, the country was darkened by the smoke of the burnings, and its descendants were ruined, trampled upon, dispersed and compelled to seek asylum across the sea.' The church might naturally be expected to defend the people, but at least in Kildonan in 1813, Macleod tells us ` the churchmen threatened the vengeance of heaven and eternal damnation on those who should presume to make the least resistance, no wonder the Highlander quailed under such influence'.
When we consider recent conflicts in Bosnia, so-called `ethnic cleansing', or actions by ranchmen against Amazonian Indians, such an account is relevant. As John Preeble comments, `we have not become so civilized in our behaviour, or more concerned with men than profit, that this story holds no lesson for us'.
There are more recent books, possibly easier of access to school pupils, but John Preeble's account paints the complete picture, especially if preceeded by 'Glencoe' and 'Culloden' as he intended, and rightly placed in their historical context.
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a moving account of an important piece of Scottish history. The depth of betrayal by the clan chiefs toward their own kith and kin is just enraging. Prebble has written another masterpiece, the details of which must sit uncomfortably on some shoulders even today. I just hope those attending the 'Edinburgh Tattoo' choke on their haggis.
21 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If one wants to read about The Highland Clearances, one would be very hard put to go past this work.
John Prebble again goes into a lot of and very fine detail. The extensive research he had undertaken shows out in this work. But one expects that with John Prebble.
The sad thing is that after all these years much of the Scottish Highlands are still in some degree suffering from the barbaric and cruelly undertaken Highland Clearances, which really fragmented for all time the true Highlander.
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