The Scottish Clearances by TM Devine - a review

The name of the book, The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900, highlights Sir Tom Devine’s central premise that what occurred was a deliberate and nationwide process that affected lowland areas as much, arguably more so, than the Highlands. At the heart of the narrative is an evidentially robust but also often grim and very human story of how Scotland was transformed from the rural society of old to the largely urban nation we know today. The end of traditional Highland life is here, warts and all, but crucially so too is the far less well-known story of the demise of an entire class of lowland folk, the cottars.

Ewen MacAskill's review at The Guardian:

In this book, he chronicles land ownership, the clan system and shifting attitudes towards Highlanders, from heroic soldiers to lazy aborigines. But this is a serious book, which includes a large section on dispossession in the Borders – intended to put what happened in the Highlands and Islands into perspective.

read more here

@ The Scotsman - The Highland Clearances

@ Wikipedia - The Highland Clearances

@ The Herald - review

The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600‑1900 by TM Devine

The Highland Clearances are modern Scotland’s foundational tragic story. More than the Jacobite rebellions, or the story of the Scottish regiments, more than the Enlightenment, more than the medieval wars of independence, they have established Scotland’s identity: that of an oppressed, misunderstood people unto whom great evil was done.

The clearances, which stretch back to the 1760s, but were at their height from 1815 to the 1850s, have their own poems, novels, songs and iconography.

A definitive new history of the terrible process by which much of Scotland was 'cleared' of many inhabitants, written by Scotland's foremost living historian.

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@ The Sunday Times

@ The Herald - Scotland

@ Penguin Books