The Clearances

A good start is John Prebble’s The Highland Clearances and David Craig’s On The Crofters' Trail: In Search Of The Clearance Highlanders. Craig goes off in search of the descendants of cleared crofters in Scotland and Canada to hear their stories. His more recent title, The Glens Of Silence: Landscapes Of The Highland Clearances, is an illustrated title on cleared townships and the consequences on the land. Tom Devine’s Clanship To Crofters' War: The Social Transformation Of The Scottish Highlands gives an excellent overview of that area of Scotland, and sets the period in its historical context. A contemporary observer, Alexander Mackenzie, wrote The History Of The Highland Clearances.

In Patrick Sellar And The Highland Clearances: Homicide, Eviction And The Price Of Progress, Eric Richards, author of The Highland Clearances, examines the life and legacy of one of the Clearances’ most notorious figures, Patrick Sellar. Ian Grimble also tackles the subject in The Trial Of Patrick Sellar.

How the Clearances were seen by the rest of the Scotland, the Lowlands, is examined in some detail in Contempt, Sympathy And Romance: Lowland Perceptions Of The Highlands And The Clearances During The Famine Years, 1845-1855 while The Lowland Clearances: Scotland's Silent Revolution 1760-1830 argues that clearances took place in the Lowlands too, on a greater scale, but that there is much less discussion of it.

The Clearances affected parts of the country in different ways. Here are some books pointing to specific areas: A Season In Dornoch: Golf And Life In The Scottish Highlands; from an archaeological perspective, there is Barra: From The Clans To The Clearances, and The Little General And The Rousay Crofters: Crisis And Conflict On An Orkney Estate.

Fictional treatments of the Clearances are illuminating and the main Highlands and Islands writers have written novels that have become Scottish classics. Iain Crichton Smith’s classic novel, Consider the Lilies, is a poignant look at the period through the eyes of an old woman. There is also Neil Gunn’s The Silver Darlings and Butcher's Broom, and Fionn MacColla’s And the Cock Crew. For children, Kathleen Fidler’s The Desperate Journey, remains the classic title.

The most recent titles are Michael Fry’s Wild Scots: Four Hundred Years of Highland History while The Highland Clearance Trail by Rob Gibson is due in January 2006.

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