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  • Published: 6 June 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141985930
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

The Scottish Clearances

A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900




The definitive history of the terrible process by which much of Scotland was 'cleared' of many inhabitants, written by Scotland's foremost living historian

Eighteenth-century Scotland is famed for generating many of the enlightened ideas which helped to shape the modern world. But there was in the same period another side to the history of the nation. Many of Scotland's people were subjected to coercive and sometimes violent change: traditional and customary relationships were overturned and replaced by the 'rational' exploitation of land use. The Scottish Clearances is a superb and highly original account of this sometimes terrible process, which changed the Lowland countryside forever, as it also did, more infamously, the old society of the Highlands.

Based on an extensive use of original sources, this pioneering book is the first to chart this tumultuous saga in one volume, with due attention to evictions and loss of land in both north and south of the Highland line. In the process, old myths are exploded and familiar assumptions undermined. With many fascinating details and the sense of an epic human story, The Scottish Clearances is an evocative memorial to all whose lives were irreparably changed in the interests of economic efficiency.

  • Published: 6 June 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141985930
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $28.00
Categories:

About the author

T M Devine

T. M. Devine is University Research Professor and Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Among Professor Devine's previous publications are The Tobacco Lords, Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, Improvement and Enlightenment, The Great Highland Famine, Clanship to Crofter's War, Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society and The Scottish Nation 1700-2000.

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Praise for The Scottish Clearances

The definitive word for an academic generation at least on this most controversial of topics in Scottish history ... Dramatic

Herald Scotland

Persuasive... A necessary book

Scotsman

Powerful ... admirable lucidity ... important.

Ewen A Cameron, Irish Times