Uncovering the Tragic History of the Scottish Clearances: Displacement and Struggle from 1600-1900

mark: Wow, now I know why, so many things come out of this book, really opened up my outlook on what these people had to suffer under the rich.

United Kingdom on Nov 20, 2023

Sybil M Ungar: Excellent insight into the issues revealing a different perspective on the topic

Australia on Aug 19, 2023

Mike A. Marr, Sr.: Discovered the probable reason my ancestors left Melrose, Roxboroughshire Scotland for the New World. The timeframe matches perfectly.

United States on May 05, 2022

Dora A. Smith: This book is a key part of the underpinning of the current view of the Scottish Clearances that it practically didn't happen, certainly didn't happen the way people who experienced it said it happened, and by the way, definitely was NOT part of some deterministic social force toward socialism or whatever.

??????? Though very suspicious, I read it because very little decent HAS been written about the highland clans OR the clearances. Most books transparently repeat a few pieces of mythology without relating anything at all about what happened. I WANT to know who and what my ancestors in a certain part of Scotland might have been and the story of how Catholics from there would have gotten to Montreal.

In reality the book puts a considerable amount of flesh on clan life in the highlands and the clearances. It's actually a far better book about clan life and its ending, than it is about the highland clearances. For people who want to know how people lived in the Highlands, the details of politics in the 17th and 18th century, and how the system began to end, this answers a lot of questions.

The clearances themselves are downplayed. Out migration is made to look...

United States on Aug 14, 2021

invisible: There are a lot of stories about the Clearances, but this book takes on the task of trying to sort them out. It is admirable that they are able to point out patterns, trends and contradictions in the history.

Finishing the book, the reader will be better informed, better able to sort through the myriad of opinions about the subject. We have to remember that the Highlands have been in flux for not just the time of the Clearances but for the thousand years before, so there is not just one answer.

I just wish that there was a sequel by the same writer, telling more about the Irish, Australian, American children of the Clearances.

United States on Jan 07, 2021

Marguerite: Professor Devine has written a history of the Scottish Clearances, as opposed to the Highland version, and his is a very different tale from the one made very popular by John Prebble (a book which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed). Devine argues that the clearing of Scottish lands of small holders and cottars (agricultural workers) was a process that took place across the country, in the Lowlands from the 1750s to the turn of the century, and in the Highlands subsequent to that, reaching a peak in the 1850s and subsequently tailing off.
There is no disputing his facts. He is an erudite and excellent economic historian who backs up his arguments with a plethora of data (unlike Prebble, for example, who relies heavily on persona and third party accounts). The first half of the book, which is devoted to the Lowland Clearances and in particular the issue of why they have gone ‘unrecorded’ was absolutely fascinating and all pretty much news to me. There is no question that the upset, turmoil and heartbreak of what happened in the Lowlands was severe, and has been unjustly ignored by historians (because it’s not got the romance of the Highlands) but there’s also no doubt...

United Kingdom on May 29, 2020

Ireland: Interesting book, and many of the insights are good as well, however I don’t agree with the authors perspective.

United States on Apr 21, 2020

M Bowden: This is a very good book by an outstanding historian. I learnt a great deal from it. The only reason I haven't given it 5 stars is because, like so many modern history books, it is poorly edited. There is a good deal of unnecessary repetition and some passages that just don't make sense. For instance, in chapter 7: 'Ruthven parish in Forfarshire had forty tenants in 1750 but the number had shrunk to twelve by the early 1790s. There were ninety-one in 1750 and fifty-one forty years later.' There must be several words, perhaps a whole sentence, missing there. Later, in chapter 9, we read that: 'Between 1805 and 1812 the average annual price for wheat ... was 85/- per quarter. Between 1813 and 1820 it fell by 7 per cent to 5/- per quarter.' I am no mathematician but that can't be right. Talking about the success of the establishment of the Scottish Women's Rural Institutes, Devine says that 'five years later' there were 242 branches but as we haven't been told the date of the foundation that doesn't help. Most curiously, in chapter 11, there is mention of the Battle of Fontenoy 'fought a few weeks after Culloden in May 1745' but Culloden was fought in April 1746, 11 months after...

United Kingdom on Dec 09, 2019

Phil Bunch: It goes into the sociology and economics of the period. Very useful.

United States on Jul 05, 2019

Richard Ellis: TM Devine says in his conclusion how writers, from Alexander Mackenzie in his 1886 “History of the Highland Clearances” to John Prebble in “The Highland Clearances” have “opted for the single explanation of human wickedness” – a famed warrior race betrayed by its leaders whose greed and lust for riches led to empty glens populated by sheep. The truth, as explained in this outstanding book, is infinitely more complicated. Surprising facts: Highland populations continued to rise during the age of the Clearances, landlords strenuously opposed emigration in the late 18th-early 19th centuries, and from the end of the Seven Years War onwards emigration for many was a positive choice. This book is a powerful social and agrarian history of Scotland from the seventeenth century, and as the title suggests is not limited to the Highlands. Indeed, the central third of the book gives a detailed account of the clearances in the Lowlands and Borders which have been little examined by historians.

The first section deals with the “Long death of clanship” from James VI/I onwards. The odds were stacked against the Highlands agriculturally – with only 9% in cultivation and...

United Kingdom on Nov 25, 2018