The Highland Clearances

by John Prebble

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.

Genres: History, Scotland, Nonfiction, European History, Historical

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

John Edward Curtis Prebble, FRSL, OBE was an English/Canadian journalist, novelist, documentarian and historian. He is best known for his studies of Scottish history.

He was born in Edmonton, Middlesex, England, but he grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, where his father had a brother. His parents emigrated there after World War I. Returning to England with his family, he attended the Latymer School. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain but abandoned it after World War II.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Well to start with I picked this up by mistake, that's not true, I picked it up quite deliberately, as a rule books don't slip into my hands accidentally, but there was a case of mistaken identity. The weather decided to ignore Chaucer and instead of drought piercing showers smiled sunshine and warmth. Naturally this inclines the heart to a mild temper and cheerfulness, both frightful tendencies to be guarded against. Spotting this book I assumed it was Glencoe by the same author - the tale of a grim winter massacre as a result of dubious governmental conspiracies from the days of William III, but instead it turned out to be this book the grim cheerless story of the deportation of the population of the Scottish highlands and forced migration to the colonies in favour of sheep and shooting lodges. It may be that I do simply need glasses. Then again I made such a mistake previously, buying The waning of the Middle Ages thinking it was The civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. Attention plainly a problem area.

All of which is by the by. Prebble sees this book as following from his account of the battle of Culloden, his point I guess that the theme is the transformation and disappearance of the culture (broadly considered) of the Highlands. Though in this case we might see the issue as a subtler one, tugging economics and the changing performance of high social class rather than a battle lost and its repercussions.

I felt that Prebble struggles with the scope of his narrative here, Culloden is the better book, the flow is easy - introductory description of the two armies facing each other, then how they got there there ie recruitment and mustering, the fighting, the pursuit and post battle tidy up. Here instead is a protracted series of events over a broad spread of the Highlands. Prebble doesn't seize the big themes, instead he moves round the region discussing the clearances lordship by lordship - this is what happened on the domain of the Duke of Sutherland, then this is what happened on the lands of the clan chief of where-ever which means that we move back and forwards in time and repeat similar stories - the lord decides to drive the people off the land and does so.

There's also a tension in his story which Prebble never addresses, the human injustice of the evictions and clearances versus the flat statement that the Highlands were over populated. But to know if the Highlands were over populated then you have to have an idea of how many people the land could have supported and this is never evaluated. And it is question of geography and law and technology none of which are addressed.

Implicitly this is a clash of ideologies story. On the one side the men who had legal title to the land of the Highlands, these were the descendants of the clan chiefs, they leased out the land in tenancies for cash rents. Traditionally the aim was to support as many fighting men as possible, by the 18th century, the aristocrats wanted to participate in British aristocratic life which required money and they borrowed heavily to fund the lifestyle to which they aspired. The wars against the French from 1792 gave them an economic boast as the price of cattle on the hoof increased to meet war demands, however the dreadful arrival of peace in 1815 pushed them to the brink financially, whereupon enter from the south the villain of the story: the Cheviot sheep. This is a wonder sheep described as follows: countenance mild and pleasant...the head and ears long, neat and slender; the neck high and full;the back broad, straight and strong coupled; the shoulders and buttocks broad, and in due proportion to each other; the legs small, clean boned, and of a very moderate length (p.25). This period saw a great interest in cross breeding animals and producing optimal strains for meat or wool or both. By ending tenancies and letting the land to new tenants from the lowlands who brought in sheep, rents could be drastically increased, the sheep were good for wool and mutton, while the old tenants were subsistence producers of potatoes and oats or potatoes and barley raising a few head of cattle for market. Once these old tenants were served writs and then the roofs burnt off their houses to show the seriousness of intent then the ground was freed up so sheep may safely graze. Roof burning was not a new measure, but had a long history as a tenant management technique in the region. Harvest failures and potato blight seemed to vindicate the aristocratic contention that the ends justified the means, and that the basic problem was over population rather than their desire to have a Gothic style big house, loose money at Monte Carlo, and have a fancy house in London too. Public subscriptions helped to raise the money for transportation of the evicted to Canada or occasionally Australia.

Two exceptions were Sutherland, where for a while the Duke tried to drive the tenants off their potato patches and resettle them by the coast with the thought that they would transform into Herring fishermen and the Hebrides; where Kelp was harvested, burnt over peat and sold as fertiliser, the growth of this business sucked in migrants until the aristocrats learnt that the profits of sheep farming were better than fertiliser sales. Here too, there were land sales to speculators. In many regions there was the development of leisure hunting and the sale or rental of opportunities to shoot deer or grouse or even catch salmon. In short the land owners sought to maximise their income and the traditional highlanders either spoilt the view or blocked the grazing. The conflict came with the traditional Burkean romantic-conservative ideology of the clans: the chief was the father, the clan members the children who he protected, while they watched their belongings being thrown out of their houses by the chief's factors backed up as necessary by constables or soldiers, this was also for Prebble a spiritual blow to the people - their world turned upside down, somethng shameful and incomprehensible. Since, however, the aristocrats were the political and legal elite and their tenants at this point of time (early nineteenth century) didn't have the vote there was no redress or appeal possible - though in a sign of the changing times emerging mass media meant that it was possible to raise funds from Britain and even from the colonies for famine relief and to pay for emigration. The irony was that this was happening at the very time that Walter Scott was inspiring the romantisation of the Highlands and of traditional Highland culture, this Prebbles regards as a shroud, and that shortbread you were enjoying from a tartan decorated tin - it was baked from ashes and blood.

Against the tourist friendly version of the highlands, Prebble's vision is of the highlands as a colonial zone, manpower one of the resources extracted extracted from a people in a landscape neither protected nor represented within the political unit as a whole. This strikes me as a more modern but equally romantic picture as Walter Scott's, if we think of the British Isles as a whole, political representation was only regularly available to a minority of the population until arguably 1918 and legal protections were only universally affordable between perhaps 1945 until some point during the 'reforms' to legal aid of the 1990s. True the highlanders were ripe for exploitation, but so was almost everyone else. That grains were exported from the region during famine times a particularly egregious demonstration of the clash of ideologies: paternalism versus a laissez-faire free market.

Well it is a lively narration and I think ground breaking in bringing the story to a modern audience in Britain and the Scots diaspora. Indeed it is only recently that the law was changed in Scotland allowing communities to buy the land they hold as tenants from their owners, some of the issues discussed in Prebble's account remained live ones through the twentieth century even if the habit of armed soldiers throwing your best crockery out through the front door did come to an end. However the story was weakened for me because there was no sense of the numbers as a whole - some hundreds emigrating ship by ship, I had no sense of how the population was changing overall. Nor of how far this was a cultural disaster, although he stresses that the population pre-clearance was Gaelic speaking while it isn't now. The Irish potato blight and famine an obvious point of comparison as a coming together of tenure, land ownership, monoculture and a division of interests between the broad mass of population and a small elite responsible for the administration and legal system but it is not developed, famine was widespread in Europe still in the nineteenth century but Prebble doesn't compare to explain why the Scottish situation developed towards mass transportation of peoples overseas. Still a grim tale, well told.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something wrong in the British education system if a person can reach my age and have virtually no knowledge of this whole affair, that lasted over a hundred years and involved the removal of poor people from the Highlands of Scotland. It isn't told as part of the working class struggle, nor as the progress of the industrial revolution - it seems to have been kept secret from our history. So this book was a great revelation to me, I'm afraid to say. What was most disturbing was the cross-references to slavery, and how people were deported from the UK in worse conditions than slave ships. Harriet Beacher Stowe visited, and saw nothing of the hardships, although hardship is hardly a sufficient word to describe conditions. And Quakers, apparently, were blind to this long-lasting injustice. And nothing much gets better, as the poor of the twenty first century are priced out of London. What more could one say? I'm awaiting the arrival of Prebble's other books on this part of history.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are in a really cheerful mood and want to feel depressed, this is just the book for you.

After the 1745 rebellion, the Highland chiefs, due to the way society had changed, no longer needed to be able to raise large numbers of fighting men. They figured out that by running sheep on their land they could make a lot more money than by accepting the relatively low rents paid by their tenants. So guess what? The tenants had to go. Some were forced to the coasts, to take up fishing - of which they had no experience - while others were 'encouraged' to emigrate to Canada or Australia, usually in conditions that were not far off those of slave ships. The evictions were ruthless, and not even the helpless or the old were spared. The inhumanity is almost indescribable.

Of course then, as now, there was the general attitude that a man (or woman) could do whatever he or she wanted with his property, irrespective of the broader implications for society. Then, as now, there was a general attitude that if people were poor it was through their own idleness and wickedness, not because their means of livelihood had been taken away from them. Have we really progressed?

Amusingly, at the time of the Crimean War, Authority suddenly discovered that it could no longer raise large numbers of men from the Highlands for the army. Even those that remained saw no reason why they should serve a society that had betrayed them. The Duke of Sutherland gathered a meeting of men and offered them £6 each from his pocket if they would only join up. One of them made a lovely speech (too long to quote here) which essentially added up to **** off - your Grace. Only one man was recruited. Believe it or not, no sooner was he away than the Duke's agents evicted his family from their dwelling! You really could not make stuff like this up.

[Marguerite Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very surprised to see that I'd rated this 3 stars the last time, and I've changed my mind so radically that I'm re-writing my review.

Okay, this is a very biased book, and if you want to get technical, it's a Marxist interpretation of history. It's also dated, being written in the 1960s. But do you know what, this is such an emotive and under-reported subject, I think it required emotion and bias!

I read this as research, but I became embroiled in it almost instantly from pure interest, and though the Clearances play a small role in my current book, reading this book has decided me to write more. This is a case study book, told in chronological order, of the first sweep of the Clearances in the (mostly) mid- and eastern Highlands in 1792, The Year of the Sheep, right through to the mid-Victorian Clearances of the islands as far north as the Outer Hebrides.

Highlanders led a bleak, subsistence existence back then. Land was usually rented out from the owner in blocks to ‘tacksmen’, who then further subdivided it. When families increased, children got married, then the sub-tenants often divided the land up again. The way of life, scraping out a living growing potatoes and small amounts of grain, keeping a few cows and hens, was truly hard. They lived in what a lot of people would term squalor. But they were tough and very close-knit communities. They looked after their own. And they owed a huge loyalty to their laird. This, I found hard to swallow, because it is such an anathema nowadays, but it is fundamental to understanding just how vile the Clearances were: the laird or chief had power of life or death over their people. When it came to fighting wars, Highland regiments were famed for their bravery and their discipline. Lairds prided themselves on being able to raise (or coerce or bribe) the best regiments when called upon. Highlander shone at Waterloo. When many of them returned, it was to find their families dispersed, their homes in ruins. When the same lairds who had systematically cleared the land tried to raise regiments in 1854 for the Crimean, they failed spectacularly. There were hardly any men left. Those that remained suggested they get the sheep and the stags that roamed their lands to fight their battles.

You see, it’s emotive! It’s a book that makes you look at the vast empty spaces of the Highlands anew. It makes you see the ships that sailed to Canada and Australia with so many of your relatives with a fresh eye. The people were poor. Their way of life was inefficient. If it carried on they would have likely starved. But the Clearances was a foul, inhuman, greedy solution to the problem.
John Prebble’s book is full of heart-wrenching stories. It’s gutsy and it takes no prisoners. It paints a tragic picture of a hardy race no quite brought to its knees. It is undoubtedly flawed history, but it is also undoubtedly an excellent read.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

The term "Highland Clearances" refers to the evictions by the Scottish Nobility between 1750 and 1860, of large numbers of their tenants who were practicing subsistence farming in order to convert the land to sheep raising which for several reasons had become extremely profitable. The new breed of Cheviot sheep yielded more wool. Growing populations and the Napoleonic Wars increased the demand for meat while the new technology of the industrial revolution was creating a mass market for woollen goods. The tenants with their traditional methods of agriculture had no potential either to produce goods for the new world economy or to ever pay high rents. Logic said they had to go. I am giving Prebble's book four stars despite the fact that is generally considered to have been superseded by T. M. Devine's "The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed 1600-1900" which I have nought read.
Unlike Devine who is an academic, Prebble was a journalist and wrote like one. He conducted research to establish the existence of tendencies and to condemn guilty parties. He tried neither to quantify nor to assess in a balanced manner. Using vivid terms that reminds one of Balzac, Prebble describes the noble landowners as having been driven by greed and obsessed with living ostentatiously in London. They used the police, the courts and the military in brutal fashion to chase their poor tenants of their lands. Finally, they used any pretext however feeble to justify their ignominious conduct. Prebble may be right but his style inevitably rankles in academic circles.
What Prebble seems to have missed is that it was not just the Highland Nobles who evicted their unproductive tenants. The same process was occurring with the same intensity in the Lowlands. Another glaring weakness in Prebble's book is the lack of quantitative data. There are no charts to show the number of tenant departures, the growth in the sheep population or the increase in the sales of woollen goods.
In Prebble's defense, he provides a narrative that is consistent with the North American perspective of the clearances. Some of the landlords subscribing to the myth that America was the Garden of Eden herded their evicted tenants on ships bound for Canada or the United States where they would find a better life. As the ships were over-crowded and lacking facilities, cholera and typhus would break out. Many would die during the voyage or shortly afterwards. The lands assigned to them in the new world would typically be of poor quality. The new emigrants would be lacking in tools, agricultural animals and money to carry them through the start-up phase.
I greatly enjoyed John Prebble's "Highland Clearances" and learned a great deal from it. However, if you are currently an undergraduate majoring in history, you should read it only to find fault with it.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always slightly embarrassed at the lack of knowledge that I have as a Scotsman, regarding key events in my own nation's history. The Highland Clearances is just such an event. Well, it wasn't so much an event as a train of events, that lasted for around a century. The aftermath of the Battle of Culloden was really when it all started - after that, it was just one big continual shitshow for the Highlanders of Scotland.

John Prebble's The Highland Clearances is relatively short for a book that spans such a broad period in history as that of the event to which it's title refers. And yet in spite of that, it makes for pretty compelling reading material. My aforementioned lack of knowledge stems, at least partially, from the fact that (certainly when I was at school), the coverage of Scotland's history was woefully inadequate. Therefore my knowledge of the Highland Clearances was limited to something about sheep being more profitable than crofters, leading to their forced emigration. Prebble does a masterful job of filling in the blanks. Certainly, sheep were in the mix somewhere but as the author details in this book, there was somewhat more to it.

The Highland Clearances initial phase began with the introduction of the Cheviot sheep to the hills of the northerly regions of Scotland, to counteract the poor rents that were yielded by tenants that lived on those lands. Such tenants were forcefully evicted from their properties, sometimes becoming victims of cold-blooded murder, sometimes dying of exposure to the elements but invariably being condemned to a future of misery and despair. Landed aristocrats that actually owned the land meanwhile, accumulated vast reserves of wealth. Those who were evicted were forced into crofts which offered poor land and a subsistence lifestyle, consisting of fishing, seaweed farming and quarrying.

In 1846-47, Scotland suffered a series of crippling potato famines. I have to admit, I was utterly ignorant of the effects of this, or even the fact that it happened at all. Starvation was the most obvious by-product of this. But this was exacerbated by further evictions, as a result of the fact that lairds considered tenants a potential financial burden they were unwilling to bear. Because of the obligation under existing legislation to provide Poor Relief to any tenants that descended to a certain level of poverty, it was far more feasible financially, to simply not have them there in the first place - thus, evictions.

Emigration followed. Now, this wasn't simply encouraged. It was practically forced upon those who undertook it. At their own expense financially. And sometimes at the ultimate cost - many lost their lives on the journey, which would be to countries such as Canada, the USA and Australia. Disease ran rife through the ships upon which emigrants were berthed. Water and provisions were scarce. And even when they arrived at their destination, emigrants found that it really wasn't anything like the picture which unscrupulous shipowners had painted for them. They were basically left to scrabble about for food and shelter in extremely inhospitable conditions.

One of the key differences between non-fiction and fiction (apart from the fact that one is true, whilst the other is not), is that when a work of non-fiction furnishes the reader with fresh knowledge, it earns extra brownie-points that a fiction book cannot pick up in the same way. I can read a dozen fiction books on a single topic and they can all be completely and utterly different. A dozen non-fiction books on a single topic - not so different. Fortunately, this book picked up the extra brownie points. It was fresh, revealing and clearly written. Added to that, it possessed a strong human element, that lifted it from the possibility of being a dry rendition of facts and dates. Well worth a read.

[Dawn Dorsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thorough history of a little-known chapter of Scottish history, covering the sixty-year period when the clansmen were evicted by the thousands from their ancestral lands in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, to make room for the more lucrative pasturage of sheep for lowland farmers.

Following the bloody defeat of the highland army at Culloden in 1746, the English crushed highland society and seized the property of the rebellious Chiefs. When their lands and titles were restored forty hears later, most of the Chiefs had been educated and living in England, or sold their estates to wealthy English merchants and farmers, so the ancient link between laird and tenant as kin was broken. The clansman's value as a fighting man at his chief's beck and call was lost with the defeat of Scotland and destruction of her culture, and the anglicized lairds no longer felt the paternal obligation of protecting their children. They just wanted the easy income of sheep tenants, and not the responsibility for tenants who were no longer useful to them, but could be a liability to them should they lose all their means of work and become paupers on the estate.

While some clung to ever-shrinking and moving plots on the seacoast of their homeland, and others enlisted or were forced into the British Army, where they were often ordered to enforce more evictions against their own people, most of the evicted, burned-out tenants emigrated, sometimes bound and physically thrown onto ships more crowded and filthy that slave ships leaving Africa, which were better regulated as to space, food, and potable water for the passengers. These emigrants were sent to British North America and Australia, where those who survived disease and shipwreck tried to establish new lives and communities in the wild new lands. That so many succeeded is a testament to their strength and resourcefulness, but not to any assistance from the hereditary chiefs who were legally responsible for their welfare but who all too often betrayed their people and reneged on their promises to assist passage and give them lands in the new territories.

The romantic fiction of happy clansmen eager to emigrate with the benevolent assistance of their altruistic gentry is as much an invention of later writers as were the contemporary accounts of lazy highlanders unwilling to labor to support themselves and their families. In fact, the people had been cleared to make room for sheep, to smaller plots on less arable land, if they were given anywhere to live at all, and repeated crop failures, or shipments of grain to the more profitable London markets, brought on mass famine, starvation, and destitution. This books tells the sad history of the displaced population of one section of conquered Scotland, and explains the current diaspora of Scots existing today, and the nostalgia for a mythical utopia that never really existed except in the songs of the bards, the novels of great writers like Sir Walter Scott, and Victorian memories.

[Rena · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 50-75 pages are a little dense on the financial reasons why the highlands were cleared. But you do need to know the bottom-line, monetary motivation of the land owners to make you truly appreciate the horror of people getting forced off their land to be replaced by sheep. Made me cry/get very angry at how people treat each other.

[Rosalind]

Lochaber no more
Sutherland no more
Lewis no more
Skye no more
— C&C Reid

Scotland is currently much exercised about its history, and in particular whether what took place between the middle of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century constituted a genocide. We have become accustomed these days to thinking of genocide as involving a systematic industrial extermination programme, as in the Endlösung of the Nazis or the mass killings of Tutsi in Rwanda in the 1990s. By those standards the elimination of thousands of Gaelic speaking Highlanders from their homes in Scotland's northernmost counties may not strictly be genocide. It certainly fits the definition of "ethnic cleansing" as practiced in the Yugoslav wars and elsewhere. To the English, the Lowland Scots, even the clan chiefs the Highlanders had looked to as fathers for generations, now growing accustomed to the sophisticated ways of Edinburgh and London, the Gaels were an embarrassment, less than human and squatting in the way of profit. The hardy Cheviot sheep was found to be well-suited to the harsh climate and terrain, lucrative in mutton and wool, and worth rich rents from southern would-be sheep ranchers who didn't need peasants getting in the way. The people had to go.

John Prebble's account of the brutal removal of the Highlanders, first to barren, boggy coastal plots to gather seaweed and ultimately to be crammed into unhealthy and often unseaworthy ships bound for the colonies is chilling. Though there was stiff resistance to the removals, the agents of the Lairds enforced the writs as they had once raised armies: by tearing down the houses and burning them if the people didn't cooperate and often by burning or grubbing-up crops in the fields. Even the potato famine of the 1840s, which hit the Highlands just as hard as it hit Ireland, brought scant pity and was used as an extra excuse to cleanse the land. The Highlanders could drown or die of smallpox or starvation before they reached Canada or Australia, so long as they were out of the way. Even if they made it to the new lands, there was nothing there waiting for them so they had to start from scratch or perish. And it was all done in the name of "Improvement".

All this happening just as, down in London, a hubristic Britain was showing off its industrial might to the world at the Crystal Palace Great Exhibition. The Clearances are a hidden shame; not much taught in our schools I fear. This is angry stuff, and so it should be.

[Froggles · Rating 1 out of 5]

Descredited bunk, written at a time when the serious study of Scottish history was in its infancy, by an Englishman who was not an historian, but a member of the Communist Party, with a political agenda.

If you really want to know what happened, read Sir T. M. Devine's 'The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed'.

[nettebuecherkiste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Im 18. Jahrhundert waren viele schottische “Clan Chiefs” bereits “anglisiert”, d. h., sie waren in England zur Schule gegangen und hatten sich an den Lebensstil und die englische High Society angepasst. Doch dieser Lebensstil kostete viel Geld. Gleichzeitig kam die Industrialisierung in Gange und den Lairds blieb nicht verborgen, dass man mit Schafen und ihrer Wolle sehr viel mehr Geld verdienen konnte, als die Landbevölkerung dem kargen Land in den Highlands jemals abringen konnte. So kam es dazu, dass immer mehr Chiefs ihre Pächter und Clanangehörigen aus ihrem Land vertrieben, teilweise an noch unwirtlichere Orte an der Küste, wo sie sich als Fischer verdingen sollten, doch größtenteils wurden sie zur Emigration nach Nordamerika oder auch Australien gezwungen. Wer die schottischen Highlands kennt, weiß, was für eine Katastrophe es für einen Highlander sein muss, dieses karge, aber doch wunderschöne und so eigentümliche Land verlassen zu müssen. Und dass sie von ihren eigenen Clan Chiefs vertrieben wurden, teilweise mit einer unglaublichen Grausamkeit und Brutalität, machte das Ganze doppelt schlimm. Das Resultat der Highland Clearances sind die heute größtenteils einsamen und entvölkerten Highlands, die früher wesentlich dichter besiedelt waren.

Mit der Geschichte dieser Episoden, die heute als “Highland Clearances” bezeichnet werden, beschäftigt sich der 2001 verstorbene englische Journalist und Volkshistoriker John Prebble in seinem gleichnamigen Buch.

Das Buch schlummerte schon seit meinem Austauschstudium in Edinburgh auf meinem SuB. Ich sage euch jetzt nicht, wie lange das her ist, das ist echt peinlich. An der Uni in Edinburgh gab es damals für uns Austauschstudenten auch einen Kurs über schottische Geschichte, den ich belegt habe und in dem ich von den Highland Clearances und auch von diesem Buch erfahren habe. Schottische Geschichte wurde dann während meines Studiums mein Steckenpferd im Bereich Landeskunde, und ich habe auch meine mündliche Diplomprüfung darüber abgelegt.

Ich ging daher natürlich mit großem Interesse an dieses Buch – und fachlich wurde ich auch nicht enttäuscht. Ich muss jedoch leider sagen, dass sich das Buch nicht wirklich gut liest. Ich habe Ewigkeiten dafür gebraucht, kam einfach nicht voran, und habe mich gefragt, woran das liegt. Mein Schluss war: Dem Buch fehlt es an Struktur. Eine gewisse lockere chronologische Ordnung gibt es durchaus, doch diese wird immer wieder unterbrochen, von einzelnen Ausweisungsszenarien springt Prebble zum Lebenslauf der Verantwortlichen und wirft dabei viele Namen ins Spiel, die es dem Leser sehr schwer machen, sich an späteren Stellen genau daran zu erinnern, wer jetzt dieser Herr und jene Dame war, war es ein Clan Chief oder ein Reporter oder doch einer der Verstoßenen? Es gibt zwar ein Personenverzeichnis, doch es unterbricht auch den Lesefluss, ständig dort nachzusehen. Stellenweise fragte ich mich auch: “Muss ich den Lebenslauf dieses Reporters jetzt wirklich kennen? Erzähl mir doch mehr davon, wie die Vertreibungen ausgesehen haben”. Die geschilderten Vertreibungsepisoden sind natürlich erschütternd. Da hatte ich immer wieder einen Kloß im Hals. Das ist auch das, was bei mir letztendlich hängenbleiben wird von diesem Buch, denn die meisten Namen werde ich bald schon wieder vergessen haben. Bis auf den Duke und die Duchess von Sutherland, deren Rolle bei den Clearances besonders prominent war. Was dem Buch außerdem fehlt, ist ein Glossar bestimmter schottischer Begriffe, die nicht allen Lesern geläufig sein dürften.

Fazit: Ein fachlich sehr gutes, jedoch schwer lesbares Sachbuch, das eine sinnvollere Gliederung hätte vertragen können.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's case-by-case recounting of this tragic episode in Scotland's history was informative, and his sources are good, but I felt his tone was more that of a novelist than an historian. There is very little attempt at objectivity or finding truth that might not always jive with popular perception. There are much better books on this topic.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a harrowing story of aristocratic arrogance clearing people off land they had held for centuries for sheep. The clearances broke the bond of mutual obligation that had held highland society together and still scar today. Prebble's sympathies are obvious (and shared by this writer).

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book on the subject. I have read and re-read his books and own most of them. Interesting and readable, you don't want to put his books down.

[Alex Helling · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Highland Clearances are a sorry chapter in Scotlands’ history where clan chiefs and landowners who following the crushing of the ’45 rising have mostly moved to London and as such are losing contact with their roots and looking to monetise their lands. The cheviot sheep provides the solution. But this requires the existing population surrender their lands, often by force. The Highland Clearances by John Prebble therefore makes a depressing read of forcible eviction, beating, famine, disease, and ultimately emigration. No happy ending here.

Excepting the problem that we are dealing with some very miserable history, and it can be quite repetitive as one clearance is much like the next and it seems to have happened as a staged process, this is an easy-to-read book. It is written in quite a journalistic style. Its’ sympathies on its sleeve – though sympathies most readers will share. It is easy to get into a fury at landowners who evict the families of soldiers whose regiments they themselves raised to fight in the Napoleonic wars.

Despite having studied history at a Scottish University I come to this with comparatively little knowledge of Scottish history so it is, at least in much of the detail, new to me. History that should be better known and explored further. Unfortunately, even to someone with comparatively little background there seems to be clear problems with this book. For a start it does not feel like a balanced objective study, and it leaves me with many questions.

Sutherland is of course known as the centre of the clearances. Here it practically takes the role of a case study. Unfortunately, it does not acknowledge this, and has no discussion as to whether it is representative or not. It is implied that Sutherland is indeed representative, and there are some other examples such as Glengarry. Nonetheless I would have been interested to know if/how extreme Sutherland was compared to other areas’ landowners, were there areas that escaped the clearances and what did that mean for their later development? Did any landowners use their highlanders in the new economy they founded rather than evicting them all and replacing with lowland scots?

I say there is no happy ending here, but was there not? The book feels like it stops abruptly without considering what happens next. Prebble says a couple of times that bringing in the sheep is ultimately a failure, but this is not explained – it is presumably off the end of the book. Perhaps this is because we reach an endpoint of the misery. But it does mean there is no exploration of the later impact, whether good or bad. The book ends in 1854 – due to the Crimean war. But by coincidence the Great North of Scotland Railway reaches Inverness in 1854 too. The coming of the railways, and steamships, would surely have brought about major changes (and likely migrations) even without the clearances, but they also provide a way for the displaced communities – moved to often coastal villages – to begin to make their own living.

This then is a good book to read if you want to raise your awareness of a less well-known part of British history. But perhaps it requires further exploration alongside this book to ferret out other bits of context.

[Culdares · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading enthusiastically, willing to learn (which I have) and buoyed by the Author's engaging writing style, however as the book progressed a common theme emerged: he increasingly offered his own view on how the Highlanders should feel towards their Chiefs. When mentioning the lack of hostility towards them by their clansmen he, 100-150 years after the events, offered his judgements that the Chiefs do not deserve the love of their people. With these personal comments made so long after the events one can extrapolate a larger view, that his writing reflecting is own bias; he is a Toff basher!

My opinion is justified yet further in that of the many thousands of people cleared, he mentions only limited examples of brutality, mostly in only a handful of areas and by only a few named perpetrators and quotes from limited sources. His lens is a negative one and he has only gravitated to material which suits his bias. Even when he mentions examples of Lairds helping their people, he does it begrudgingly, briefly and usually to summarise that it were not enough help, in his opinion. The worse (and only significant Chief mentioned) is the Duke of Sutherland, whom was an Englishman and arguably unaware of the methods employed by his zealous Lowland/English agents, most notably Loch and Sellers. In fact there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the Sutherland’s thought to the contrary, that they were genuinely improving the lives of their ‘people’ and that they were unaware of their Factors’ methods.

There is no doubt that there were unacceptable examples of brutality and hardship inflicted on a few belligerent Highland communities, but in context of the times, probably more acceptable levels than when the book was written.

Indeed it could be argues that the tide of progress was impeded and the Highland way of life was preserved far longer in the Highlands BECAUSE of their Chief’s; many Chiefs and ‘old’ Lairds had to sell their lands to less caring lairds (from England and the Lowlands) because they were bankrupted in the defence of their clansmen and their outdated way of life which was certainly the case far more often than examples of brutality. Should ALL Chief's be judged by the actions of a very few?

The book should not be viewed as a history of the Clearances, but a record of instances of brutality in the Upper Highland, more of being a local history of Sutherland and the Isles, not of the Clearances in general. The Highlands stretch all the way down to North of Stirling. Furthermore he makes little mention of what most proper historians claim to be the real problem; abject poverty and starvation caused by over population and that those that emigrated, mostly went willingly and often with the financial help of their Lairds/Chiefs or charity; The fact that there was much sorrow in leaving their ancestral homes does not equate to cruelty or brutality by their lairds when the bigger and more immovable wheels of a nature and of a changing World (the Industrial Revolution, the defeat of the Jacobites, implementation of poor laws, famines, over population and the INEVITABLE changes in land and agricultural practices) were upon them. I do not deny the suffering of the Highlanders or the part Lairds played, just the cause and the apportioning of the blame.

Even the simple Highlander, accepted they were victims of a changing World, not of a drunken, gambling foppish Chief as the author often states. This view fits better with the fact that the Clansmen still love their Chief’s and that there is little recorded of a Highlander at the time of the Clearances or immediately after saying otherwise, only the author suggesting they should despise them, an opinion formed 100-150 years later and much more fashionable at time of writing. The things people say to sell books......

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a popular history book describing the Highland clearances. It is a good work, quite readable, but I think my worst Prebble book so far. That does not mean it is terrible. It is definitely worth reading, but it will be less memorable and falls short in some other ways.

Prebble definitely has a knack for speaking history from the ordinary person's perspective. He makes good use of a wide range of sources, although I am aware that his use of sources for this book in particular was criticised. He relied almost entirely upon later 19th century secondary sources. It is popular history though, and although purists might tut at that, reliance on secondary sources can actually be preferable in what is ostensibly a tertiary source. Yet maybe his range of such sources should have been improved to take more account of later scholarship.

But sources aside, the author's objectivity seems to have deserted him somewhat in this book. One thing I liked about his other works was that he did spend time trying to show that no one came away from the events entirely vindicated nor entirely condemned. In this book, however, he does not seem to dig around for truth and perhaps just accepts the colouring of his sources or maybe his own preconceptions.

Nevertheless the highland clearances represent a dark piece of British history that should not be forgotten nor neglected, and despite its failings, this book still deserves its place on bookshelves.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had heard of the Highland Clearances but knew little about them previously. I had assumed that they were an extension of the brutality meted out by Cumberland's Royalist army after the Battle of Culloden. I hadn't realised that they clearances went on for so long or saw so many Highland people driven from their homes and homeland. John Prebble's book charts very effectively this shameful chapter of our history drawing on contemporary accounts of the privations visited upon a population who wanted no more to go on living their own modest lives. Instead, the tale Prebble narrates see those who should have been caring for those people, the Clan Heads, turning their backs on them for the sake of profit and "improvement." The voices against this, effectively, ethnic cleansing were gallant but, with the system against them, inevitably ineffectual. The Highlanders were replaced by sheep grazing on the homesteads they once tenanted, the former inhabitants forced to find a new to find new homes and livings, sometimes thousands of miles away. With the sheep, came new landowners who had no sympathy for old values or causes and the Highlands were changed for ever. A tragic story indeed and one well and sympathetically told by Prebble.

[Dominic · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has taken me well over a year to finish this book. Not because it is badly written or dull, but life sometimes gets in the way, and the subject is hardly a cheery one which makes me excited to come back to it.

I learnt a lot about the Highland Clearances from this, and I'm glad for Prebble's research and inclusion of so many primary sources, he really does know what he's talking about. However, I would say that, like Culloden which I read by him before, you would probably benefit from already having at least a basic understanding of what exactly the Highland Clearances were before reading this book, as it goes more into detail than giving a general overview (though, it must be said that he does include a useful timeline at the end.)

What was strange is that it stops in the 1850s and not at the Napier Comission published in 1883 which basically brought an end to the Clearances (though several more did happen in years after that). I thought it would have benefitted with less minutiae and a bit more overview, though at this point I don't think that is Prebble's style.

I do have a couple more of his Scottish history books on my bookshelf, but I think I'll take a break from him before I read any more!

[Gaby · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It [the book] concerns itself with people, how sheep were preferred to them, and how bayonet, truncheon and fire were used to drive them from their homes. It has been said that the Clearances are now far enough away from us to be decently forgotten. But the hills are still empty. In all of Britain only among them can one find real solitude, and if their history is known there is no real satisfaction to be got from the experience"
- Preeble, 1963

A sleeper hit - one of the better books I've read this year. I think Prebble does a great job of explaining the various economic and societal forces which combined over a handful of decades to create the Clearances. He clearly helped the reader understand how many foreign forces impacted the Clearances, but also how many English, Lowlanders, and Highlanders took part in the tragedy. More timely than I'd wish.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this after having seen The Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black Black Oil at Dundee Rep theatre. It's not an easy read, as it's page after page of the historical abuses of the landed classes against the people of the Highlands, their livelihoods, and their culture. I found that this history filled out the background to Iain Crichton Smith's Consider the Lilies, which I had read earlier this year.

[Peter Harrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A polemic against the Highland clearances. An interesting read for those who might be tempted to think that the English involvement in Scotland has always been benign, and a counter to 'traditional' readings of British history. It sits in roughly the same camp as "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" but isn't quite so well written.

This is not an attempt at even-handed history but is a straight out denunciation of how the Highlands were cleared of people. It is sometimes a struggle, and the parade of stories without deeper analysis is occasionally frustrating. But a valuable corrective for all that.

[Adam Sharples · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd never been taught about the clearances. And knew little about what they were and how it shaped Scotland. This book reveals how brutal it was and how a land and people were changed and displaced for profit. Nothing has changed. As you read it you realise the same thing is happening elsewhere.

However, I found it seriously hard going reading this. It's dry and felt endless. In the end I was almost burnt out reading it. I'm thankful I did, but I think I'll skip Prebble's other books. I would only really pick this up if you are really interested, otherwise I'd just google about the clearances.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the Scottish Highlands being depopulated by the aristocracy so that they could bring in thousands of cheviout sheep. The brutality of the way that people were treated and sent of to Canada, Australia, America and South Africa is just sickening. Then at the end in the later 1800's they had the audacity to try and recruit an army from the Highlands. Not many signed up most of the folk left told the recruiter to let the sheep defend them. A very well written bu very sad book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Scottish history.

[Elizabeth Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I had never heard of the Highland Clearances until I went to the Highlands this year. Seeing this book in gift shops, I purchased it from Amazon when I got back to the US. I knew my family came to the Appalachian mountains from Scotland, Germany and England, but I never looked into the why and how they got here. Ancestry.com has also said that my family is from the Highlands. With all this being said, it is shocking and a lot of times I would read pieces again and again and out loud to my husband. I have to admit the part about Harriet Beecher Stowe was interesting.

[Tomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books I had to put down occasionally because it made me so mad. There is no group in history without blood on its hands, and this is the story of one such group. The "proprietors" (Lowland land owners) forced the Scottish Highlanders out of their homes to make room for sheep. Greed has done so much in history. I love the irony that the Australian descendants of those forced to emigrate eventually raised sheep that ruined the market for the sheep grown in the Highlands.

[Jordan Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly in-depth description of the Highland Clearances, presenting the theory that the clan chiefs exploited the generational loyalty and trust afforded to them by the clan system for short term financial gain. The book tends to come across as a little low level towards the middle at times, but the author conveys the brutality of the oppression very clearly.

[Sebvand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an important and well-researched book, written by a witty and humorous author, who is also a rigorous historian.

But the book could have been so much more. At times it focuses too much on individual events and fails to capture the greater picture. The scope of this book is both too broad and yet awkwardly specific.

But I still recommend this book and hope many more people will read it.

[Walter Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Highland Clearances' is a powerful and profoundly moving account that transports readers to one of the most tumultuous periods in Scottish history. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, the author brings to life the tragic events of the 18th and 19th centuries when entire communities were uprooted and displaced. and remind me of https://nbiclearancesonline.com/

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This horrifying account of the actions of the clan chiefs in the Highlands after the defeat at Culloden describes in depressing detail how the inhabitants of their lands were ruthlessly expelled from their ancestral homes to make way for sheep, which were to further enrich the landed gentry - 'the greater wealth of the few' has, and remains, the ruin of societies everywhere.