EMIGRATION FROM SCOTLAND
THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES

by a Stevenson student

To understand the Highland Clearances we need to take a look at what Scotland was like in the middle of the 18th century. The Gaels were the original people of Scotland. They came from Ireland and arrived in Scotland about 1500 years ago. The main language of the Highland Gaels was Scottish Gaelic which was one of the Celtic family of languages.

Over the years Scotland became a divided country. Most people in the Lowlands were English speaking. The Gaels and the Lowlanders mistrusted each other. The Lowlanders looked down on the Highlanders, but also feared the military power of the Highland chiefs. King James VI of Scotland described Highlanders as 'utterly barbarous'. The Gaelic language began to die out after laws were introduced in the early 17th century to try and control the Gaels. Highland Chiefs were forced to send their sons to Lowland schools to be taught in English.

The Highlands were ruled by clans. These were groups of people with close ties who believed they had a common ancestry.

England and Scotland became joined in the Union of the Crowns, after Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and King James VI of Scotland also became the King of England.

Many Scots resented this and Jacobite supporters of Catholic King James staged a rebellion in 1715 and again in 1745. These rebellions were crushed and the Highlanders were subjected to crimes committed by British soldiers. They were not allowed to carry weapons or play the bagpipes, and they were not permitted to war traditional Highland dress. The clans were being destroyed.

After 1745 things changed in Scotland. Many people moved to the factory towns of the Lowlands. New methods of farming were introduced. These included crop rotation and land drainage. Hardier animals were introduced along with newly invented farm machinery. Previously Highland landowners (lairds) shared the land with the clans, but now they were introducing the new farming methods to make more money for themselves.

Small township farms were being turned into large farms, primarily to be used for the more profitable sheep farming. Lairds now wanted farmers on their lands that would pay high rents. Traditional Highland life was being swept away, the small townships destroyed and the people scattered.

From 1780 onwards more Highland landowners were introducing sheep on to their estates. A new breed of sheep called the Cheviot was introduced. These sheep need to graze iin the shelter of the valleys during the winter. A result of this was families in the valleys were thrown off their land and lost their homes. They now had no way of feeding themselves.

Elizabeth Gordon, Countess of Sutherland, and he husband, George Leveson-Gower, the Marquis of Stafford, combined their estates. This gave them the ownership of two thirds of the land in the Sutherland county of Scotland. They planned to turn many of the small farms into large farms to rent out to southern sheep farmers. They also planned to move the original Highlanders from these lands to the coast to take up other work like kelp farming. (Kelp is a kind of seaweed).

The Stafford's estate manager, James Loch, did not like the Gaels. He evicted most people from the glens (valleys) in Sutherland, where many people lived. The Highlanders were not given a choice about moving, and promises to resettle them were not always kept. Between 1807 and 1821 10,000 people, which was almost half the population of Sutherland, were evicted from their homes and land.

Patrick Sellor, a lawyer employed by the Countess of Sutherland, was responsible in 1814 for evicting tenants in Strathnaver. He burned the kill grazing areas so there would be no food for the tenants' cattle. He even burned the buildings so that people had to leave the land. Sellor stood trial in 1816 for murder and fire-raising but, unsurprisingly, was found not guilty.

It may be asked why the Highlanders didn't rebel after all the harsh treatment they were receiving. There were many reasons for this. The Highlanders were forbidden to carry weapons after the rebellion of 1745. Many also remembered the cruelty of the government soldiers after the rebellion. Landowners used soldiers and the police to assist them in evicting people. They would baton-charge and assault anyone who resisted the evictions.

Churches also failed to support the Gaels as landowners were often responsible for the appointment of ministers to local churches. Some ministers were unhappy about this and left the Church of Scotland in 1843 to form the Free Church. A lot of the people that were cleared off the land decided to emigrate. For the poorer passengers emigration was a painful experience and many died on the journey. During the century of the clearances 100,000 people left the Highlands for the 'New World'.

In the 1850s sheep farming became less profitable because of cheaper imports of wool. Some landlords started clearing the land to be used for things like deer-hunting. The Highlands thus became a holiday playground for the rich. The clearances were a social disaster in that they were largely responsible for the decline of the Highland Chieftain and the clan system. They also caused thousands of people to leave Scotland, never to return.