The Clearances

[JS Sanders]

I suppose politics can be injected into most subjects. I don't consider the Clearances political any more than the displacement of native peoples in the United States.

The Clearances almost exclusively were motivated by greed in its basest form.

And for those few who may be asking what the Clearances were:

Once the chiefs lost their authority following Culloden, many of them lost also any parental interest in their clansmen. During the next 100 years they continued the work of Cumberland's battalions. They leased their glens to sheep-farmers from the Lowlands and England and cleared the crofts of men, women, and children, using police, soldiers, and brute force.

The Highlanders were betrayed by their own chiefs’ pure self-interests. It is a story of how sheep were preferred to men, and force used to drive them from their generational homes.

The Clearances ended over 150 years ago - but the hills are still empty & silent. If you've ever walked thru their remains, you'll find them as haunting as any place in the whole of the country.

It is worth remembering, that while the rest of Scotland was permitting the expulsion of Highlanders, it was also forming the highly romanticized notion of kilts & tartan.

When the Crimean War erupted, there were only three participating Scottish regiments. Army recruiters found that there simply no men left in the Highlands. It was commonly said, "Since you prefer sheep to men, let sheep do your fighting."


Slainte,
steve

[JS Sanders]

<< Do you think it is only Scottish History that people are woefully ignorant of? >>

Panache,
Good grief no. History is woefully under-taught in the US and it is painfully obvious.

I've spent a lotta time at Shiloh National Military Park as re-enactor & living historian, and the ignorance of our nation's past is too often astounding.

Slainte,
steve

[Galician]

I deal with cultures other than American (and certainly Scottish). As a lover of history, I have long come to the realization that most humans consider history as something that has nothing to do with their own lives. They see it as having little or nothing to do with the demands of their daily needs.

Only sometimes, as we grow older, do some of us appreciate how the ripples of past actions and decisions echo in our own.