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