The Clearances

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

But on a side note, obviously MAc' Rath' was upset by my comment, and deleted his post, if you would like to continue this discusiion in private please feel free to PM me, and I assure you it will be an open and honest converstaion between us.Phil C

I actually deleted my post because I felt dragging the Darien catastrophe (1698) into the argument as possibly the economic trigger that fired off the clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries was really prolonging the agony of what I considered to be a rather well-worn, if not worn out, topic.

I did find your posting interesting, but flawed in its one-sided presentation of the conflict between the Maori and the European settlers. As any first year student of the lead up to the Maori wars knows, the Maori were in the vanguard of asking the British to step in to what was a lawless outpost prior to New Zealand being annexed by London.

However, as this forum is about kilts and kilt wearing-- and thus, by extension, tied to things Scottish (hence "X Marks the Scot")-- I really didn't think an on-going discussion about the 19th century British colonial expansion in the Southern hemisphere was really germane to the core topics at hand.