Tom Devine's book on the Clearances

I'm grateful to Professor Devine for publishing his book on The Scottish Clearances. 

As I keep saying, I'm very ignorant about Scottish history. Ask me anything you like about the French Revolution of 1789, the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 or the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. I'm your wumman. We studied all this in my Higher History class at my secondary school in Glasgow in the 1960s. At the time, I didn't know why. And my knowledge of what was happening in Scotland on those dates is - to say the least - sketchy. 

Of course, us Scottish kids heard about Mary Queen of Scots and Robert the Bruce and the spider. But that was all at primary school - and honestly, that was it for Scottish history. I know more about the Crimean War than I do about what was happening in Scotland in the 19th century. 

It's great that people are taking an interest in Scottish history. But It's quite alarming that the old myths persist. For example, the Clearances. These didn't only happen in the Highlands. People in the Lowlands also went through a traumatic period when feudal agriculture was brought to an end and farms were 'enclosed.' It just happened earlier in the Lowlands. 

'Forced emigration' in the Highlands didn't start after the 1745 Rebellion. That came later: people being taken down to ships waiting in the shallows below Highland villages and forced to go to 'the colonies' - well, that didn't happen until the 1850s. 

To understand the Clearances, we have to know a wee bit about what was happening all over Europe: 'modernisation' was the word in farming throughout the second half of the 18th century. We also need to know about the clans and how clan chiefs tried to hold on to their people and keep them in Scotland, moving them to coastal villages and putting them to work fishing and gathering kelp. The sheep came in but the ancient links still counted for something.

We also need to know a bit about how the clan chiefs were swept away. Not in war or revolution, but by lack of money. 

And we definitely need to know about the development of 'knowledge' in the 19th century: about theories of population growth and 'management', and the development of the racist attitudes that declared that the Gaels were 'aborigines' - lazy, inefficient and best got rid of. Although the Gaels fitted in fine in the British Army's Highland regiments when they were needed. 

One part of Tom Devine's book that really struck a chord with me was his description of the 'forced clearances.' 

Scotland was caught up in a potato famine in 1845, a year after Ireland, when 75% of the potato crop failed, but the community quickly organised itself to handle it: the Free Church of Scotland and 2 large charities in Glasgow and Edinburgh raised huge amounts of money (the equivalent of 16 million quid today) for famine relief in the Highlands - and organised it well. There was suffering: there were outbreaks of flu, dysentery and typhus but nothing like the catastrophe that happened in Ireland. 

But then along came the politicians. Their main concern was that the Gaels as the 'Celtic aborigines' of Scotland (an inferior race, they'd been told) were lazy and feckless and would come to depend on handouts. Stop me if this sounds horribly like what's happening now with Universal Credit. The politicians set up a bureaucracy, which ate into the funds, of course, and created a series of hurdles to stop people asking for help. For example, people who were starving had to work an 8 hour day to get a hand-out of meal. Women did the same work as the men but got half the ration...

It was in all racist, sexist, cruel and deeply immoral. 

Scotland survived the Famine but landowners decided that this was the time to take drastic action. They had done their bit during the famine but didn't want to have to do it again. 

What came next, of course, were the 'forced' migrations, with huge numbers of people being deported to 'the colonies.' 

By 1850, all the big estates in Scotland had passed out of the hands of clan chiefs and had been bought by bankers, entrepreneurs, etc, from outwith the Highlands. They didn't recognise the ancient bonds people had with their native areas. They were about money. 

The Clearances are a vastly complex topic and I have to hand it to Tom Devine for working his way through it in a sensible and sensitive way. 

If you only read one book this year, make it this one.