Northern Scotland: Volume 8 9781474470438

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Northern Scotland

VOLUME 8 2017

Special Issue: Papers from ‘Land and People in Northern Scotland – the Strathnaver Conference’, September 2014 Edited by Elizabeth Ritchie, Alastair J. Macdonald and Jim MacPherson

Edinburgh University Press Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund

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Postage Print only and print plus online prices include packaging and airmail for subscribers outside the UK. Payment options All orders must be accompanied by the correct payment. You can pay by cheque in Pounds Sterling or US Dollars, bank transfer, Direct Debit or Credit/Debit Card. The individual rate applies only when a subscription is paid for with a personal cheque, credit card or bank transfer from a personal account. To order using the online subscription form, please visit www.euppublishing.com/nor/page/subscribe To place your order by credit card, phone +44 (0)131 650 4196 Cheques must be made payable to Edinburgh University Press Ltd. Sterling cheques must be drawn on a UK bank account. If you would like to pay by bank transfer or Direct Debit, contact us at [email protected] and we will provide instructions. This publication is available as a book (ISBN: 9781474415170) or as a single issue or part of a subscription to Northern Scotland, Volume 7 (ISSN: 0306-5278). Please visit www.euppublishing.com/journal/nor for more information.

CONTENTS

Special Issue: Papers from ‘Land and People in Northern Scotland – the Strathnaver Conference’, September 2014 Edited by Elizabeth Ritchie, Alastair J. Macdonald and Jim MacPherson CONTRIBUTORS

v

ARTICLES Ellen L. Beard, Satire and Social Change: The Bard, the Schoolmaster and the Drover

1

Iain MacKinnon, Colonialism and the Highland Clearances

22

Marjory Harper, ‘Quite destitute and . . . very desirous of going to North America’: The Roots and Repercussions of Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness

49

Ben Thomas, ‘The Clach’: Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question in the Late-Nineteenth Century Highlands and Islands

68

REVIEW ESSAY D. A. J. MacPherson, The Scots Abroad: Recent Approaches to Migration, Diaspora and Identity

87

REVIEWS James Miller, The Gathering Stream: The Story of the Moray Firth Wade Cormack

96

Alan Macniven, The Vikings in Islay. The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History Barbara Crawford

99

Contents Alasdair Ross, Land Assessment and Lordship in Medieval Northern Scotland Cynthia J. Neville

102

David Taylor, The Wild Black Region: Badenoch 1750–1800 Robert A. Dodgshon

105

Reay D. G. Clarke, Two Hundred Years of Farming in Sutherland. The Story of my Family Ian Whyte

107

Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson James Hunter

109

Ewan A. Cameron (ed.), Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement, and Community Ownership in the Hebrides Jim A. Johnston

111

James Hunter, with photographs by Cailean Maclean, From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland Jim A. Johnston

111

Ewen A. Cameron and Annie Tindley (eds), Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish 1871–1945 Deborah Brunton

114

Mairi Stewart, Voices of the Forest: A Social History of Scottish Forestry in the Twentieth Century Keith Kirby

116

Jayne Glass, Martin F. Price, Charles Warren and Alister Scott (eds), Lairds, Land and Sustainability – Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management David Adams

119

iv

CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Ritchie is a Lecturer at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Her main research interests lie in the social and cultural history of the early nineteenth-century Highlands, with an especial focus on religion, education, land use, and the family. Ellen L. Beard received her PhD in Celtic from the University of Edinburgh in 2016. Iain MacKinnon belongs to the Isle of Skye and obtained his PhD at the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritage at the University of Ulster. He is presently Research Fellow in the Governance of Land and Natural Resources at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University. Marjory Harper is Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen and Visiting Professor at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Ben Thomas is a Lecturer in Modern Scottish History at the University of Dundee. D. A. J. MacPherson is Programme Leader in British Studies at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands.

NORTHERN SCOTLAND Northern Scotland is an established scholarly journal that has been in existence since 1972. Initially produced by the University of Aberdeen, it was relaunched latterly by the UHI Centre for History and Aberdeen University. Since 2016, its institutional supporters have been UHI, the Centre for Scotland’s Land Futures and Centre for Scottish Culture. It is a fully peer-reviewed publication whose editorial board, contributors, reviewers and referees are drawn from a wide range of experts across the world. While it carries material of a mainly historical nature, from the earliest times to the modern era, it is a cross-disciplinary publication, which also addresses cultural, economic, political and geographical themes relating to the Highlands and Islands and the north-east of Scotland. It contains substantial articles and book reviews, as well as interviews and reports of research projects in progress. It actively supports cutting edge and early career work, in all relevant disciplines, via its annual essay competition, ’Northern Scotland Prize Essay in Land Futures’, which showcases the best new work being pursued today. Centre for History, UHI: https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-history

Centre for Scotland’s Land Futures: www.scotlandslandfutures.org

Centre for Scottish Culture: https://dundeescottishculture.org/

In addition, Volume 8 (2017) is published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

SATIRE AND SOCIAL CHANGE: THE BARD, THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE DROVER

ELLEN L. BEARD

Sutherland bard Rob Donn MacKay (1714–78) left over 220 published poems, far more than any other eighteenth-century Gaelic poet, and probably composed his own melodies for some thirty of the one hundred songs with known tunes.1 This extensive corpus remains underutilized by scholars; despite its value as folk song, oral poetry, and social history, much of it has not previously been translated, published with music, correlated with contemporaneous records, or read in light of modern historiography on the period. The present article takes an inter-disciplinary and dialectical approach to a group of satires attacking the schoolmaster John Sutherland and the drover John Gray, asking both what conventional historical sources can tell us about the poetry and what the poetry can tell us about history, particularly education and the cattle trade in the eighteenth-century Highlands. The first section of the article introduces the topic of Gaelic satire, the second introduces the main protagonists, the third examines the poems on schoolmasters, and the fourth discusses those on cattle dealers. Gaelic satire In English, a satire is a ‘poem . . . which uses humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize prevailing immorality or foolishness, esp. as a form of social or political commentary’.2 In Gaelic, the equivalent term is ‘aoir’, defined as ‘satire, lampoon, ribaldry, raillery’.3 This was Rob Donn’s specialty, but he worked in a tradition as old as the mythological history of Ireland.4 As explained by Kenneth Jackson: . . . from the earliest times satire was one of the main functions of the Celtic poet. A chief who did not reward a bard for his song of praise with gifts thought adequate to the occasion would be punished through a satire; and in a warrior aristocracy, where a reputation for the princely virtues of generosity Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 1–21 DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0124 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

1

Ellen L. Beard and courage was of the highest social importance, this might be a disaster. Hence satire was always greatly dreaded; in some parts of Ireland people still hesitate to offend a poet for fear of being satirized.5 Satire is found in every period of Scottish Gaelic verse, including sixteenthcentury poems satirizing incompetent poets, singers, musicians and the bagpipe.6 As late as 1792, a particularly vicious satire reportedly led to the death of its victim only three days later.7 And even if this story is apocryphal – or the victim actually died of other causes – its very existence demonstrates the fear that satire continued to inspire in traditional Gaelic society. Because the technique was flexible, its targets could be adjusted to address current personal, cultural, socio-economic, and political issues, from Dr Samuel Johnson (perceived as slandering the Gaels after receiving their hospitality on his 1773 tour),8 to landlords and factors during the nineteenth-century Clearances,9 through Mussolini, the ruling class, and the fleas of Poland.10 With some notable exceptions, Gaelic poetry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was largely oral, composed by non-literate bards and songmakers and characterized by a rhetoric of praise and dispraise.11 Praise poetry was governed by a set of conventions known as the ‘panegyric code’, a group of stock symbols and images used to laud the virtues considered desirable in a clan chief in a violent and paternalistic age.12 In that setting, satire can be understood as the reverse of panegyric, premised on the same virtues but lampooning their absence rather than honouring their presence. As Ronald Black explains: Gaelic satire is a more or less systematic inversion of praise motifs. Just as a good chief is generous, hospitable and brave, portrayed as a handsome man drinking wine or hunting deer, and likened to an eagle or lion, so the object of satire is mean, inhospitable and cowardly, portrayed as an ugly man eating food or scavaging on a dunghill, and likened to a crawling insect, a toad, a hedgehog, or a smelly burrowing animal such as a badger.13 The praise component of this system of rhetoric was at its height from 1600 to 1745, when Culloden and its aftermath finally destroyed the remnants of the society it developed to serve.14 But elements of the rhetoric lingered while the objects of praise and dispraise shifted, as long as words had power ‘in a society where honour and shame, good reputation, and “face” were paramount’.15 This remained the case in eighteenth-century Sutherland, the world of Rob Donn, where ‘[b]y his satires he ruled the whole country round’.16 In short, Gaelic satire was a powerful means of persuasion and social control, a weapon in the arsenal of the traditional bard that could be wielded to achieve either personal or communitarian ends. Although rooted in ancient Irish tradition, it retained much of its power in eighteenth-century Gaelic Scotland, where Rob Donn was arguably its most accomplished but by no means its sole practitioner. 2

Satire and Social Change The protagonists Rob Donn was born about 1714 in Allt-na-Caillich, Strathmore, near Loch Hope, and died in Durness in 1778, where he is buried in the cemetery at Balnakeil.17 The son of a small tenant farmer, he had little opportunity for formal education and composed all his poems orally in MacKay Country Gaelic, a distinctive and now rapidly disappearing dialect.18 A clever child, at the age of six or seven he was taken into the family of John MacKay of Musal (Iain mac Eachainn), working initially as a herd-boy in a capacity somewhere between farm servant and foster son. Iain mac Eachainn, a tacksman and distant relative of Lord Reay, was a large-scale cattle dealer and grazier in the north, and Rob Donn remained in his employment in various aspects of the cattle business, at least intermittently, until the older man’s death in 1757.19 As a result, he regularly travelled the drove roads, visiting the cattle fairs at Crieff, Falkirk and Carlisle, and meeting drovers from other Gaelic-speaking districts and English speakers at the southern markets.20 At various times Rob Donn was also a loving husband, father of a large family, loyal friend and advisor, pillar of the church, poor subsistence farmer, soldier in the First Sutherland Fencibles, deer-hunter, social critic, and general thorn in the side of the rich and powerful, as well as a poet, entertainer, composer and singer. Despite his canonical status in Gaelic literature, Rob Donn’s poetry has always garnered mixed reviews. Scholars agree that his strengths were elegy and satire, that he spoke truth to power, and that his abiding interest was human behaviour and relationships; early commentators also credited his exceptional musical abilities.21 Otherwise, opinions vary. John Mackenzie described his poetry as ‘deficient in pathos and invention’ with ‘little depth of feeling’; John Lorne Campbell and Sorley MacLean agreed, the latter describing him as the author of ‘humanist, sermo-pedestrian verse’.22 But Donald MacKinnon argued that no other Gaelic poet could equal Rob Donn for his elegies, satire and humour, Derick Thomson called him ‘a poet of great stature’, and Donald MacAulay praised his ‘passion for humanity . . . courage to express his convictions and his exceptional poetic gifts’.23 These differing assessments are partly a matter of taste and partly attributable to his (usually) local subject matter, the very feature that makes his verse invaluable to social historians. Although scholars often assume that Rob Donn was a non-literate monoglot Gaelic speaker, the reality was more complex.24 There is some evidence that he attended school just long enough to begin learning his letters: a standard Gaelic manuscript catalogue identifies a now-lost manuscript by Alexander Irvine (1773–1824) stating that Rob Donn ‘Went to Ereboll school. Master John McKay’,25 and one of his early songs uses a series of initials for his romantic rivals.26 Apparently there was an SSPCK school on Loch Eriboll as early as 1715, founded by William MacKay, first SSPCK schoolmaster in Durness Parish, whose daughter was its first teacher.27 Graham Bruce, former Durness head teacher, identified its 3

Ellen L. Beard probable location as ‘Cambusaduine [Camas an Dùin] between Art Neackie and Kempie on the Eastern side of Loch Eriboll’,28 although an SSPCK record from 1735 refers to a school at ‘Humlean’ [probably Heilam, slightly farther north].29 The identity of John MacKay (a common name) is unknown; he might have been the person listed as ‘schoolmaster at large’ in Creich in 1725,30 or a son of William MacKay. In addition to any formal schooling he received, Rob Donn must have heard English in the homes of the local gentry and while attending the cattle sales, as his songs are sprinkled with English words, such as ‘globe’, ‘Pope’ (the poet) and ‘top’ (which he rhymes), ‘monkey’, and even ‘polygamous’.31 This suggests that he acquired English vocabulary informally in a linguistic environment where the common people spoke Gaelic but the gentry, ministers, schoolmasters and drovers were necessarily bilingual.32 One of those schoolmasters was John Sutherland or Iain Thapaidh, the SSPCK schoolmaster in Ribigill near Tongue from 1744 to 1753.33 His father, Donald Sutherland of Tongue, was known as the ‘Happy Catechist’, so the son’s nickname was probably inherited, although the adjective tapaidh in Gaelic means clever, manly, heroic and so on, a range of meanings upon which Rob Donn was quick to capitalize.34 Iain was a contemporary of Rob Donn, dying in 1801 at the age of 88 after serving some fifty years as an SSPCK schoolmaster in Sutherland.35 After ten years in Tongue, he moved to the parish of Creich, where he evidently became acquainted with the Grays, serving there from 1753 until his death.36 Most of Rob Donn’s Iain Thapaidh poems can be dated internally to the earlier period when he was still in Tongue working as schoolmaster, kirk session-clerk and psalm precentor.37 He was also a poet who made the mistake of exchanging insults with Rob Donn, although the surviving record of that flyting is completely one-sided. As Grimble put it: ‘Sutherland himself composed poetry, whose quality can only be assessed by the fact that not a line of it has been preserved in the Mackay country.’38 John Gray of Rogart and Robert Gray of Creich were minor landowners in southeast Sutherland, the area Rob Donn called Cataibh or Sutherland proper in distinction to Dùthaich MhicAoidh, the MacKay Country in the northwest. Donald Sage describes the Sutherland Grays as proprietors in Skibo, Creich, Lairg, and Rogart in the eighteenth century and mentions the two satirized by Rob Donn.39 John Gray called himself ‘Rogart’ after his 1733 marriage to the heiress Rachel Munro, although his interest in the estate was only a liferent, with their two daughters, Elizabeth and Isabel, eventually to inherit.40 In 1746, when called to testify before the House of Commons regarding the Jacobite rising, he was identified as ‘a Highland drover’ and described himself as owner of a small estate.41 In 1762, however, financial difficulties forced the family to sell the Rogart estate to the earl of Sutherland for £1575, explaining the £1375 debt still owed by the earl upon Gray’s death in 1766 at Inverchroskie House in Perthshire, survived by his two daughters (and possibly two grandsons).42

4

Satire and Social Change Robert Gray of Creich, also known as Captain Rob Gray (apparently for his military service during the ’45), was either a nephew or cousin of John Gray, and worked at various times (like his father William and brother Alexander) as a drover for the earl of Sutherland.43 Malcolm Bangor-Jones describes Robert as ‘an extensive dealer in cattle, a former factor, and a ready proposer of schemes’, who may have advised Earl William as early as 1765 to begin clearing his estate for sheep farms – a full generation before his daughter actually did so.44 Since Rob Donn worked in the cattle business, he must have encountered the Grays at markets where he could observe their commercial ethics at first hand, although he may also have heard reports from his own employers and from the local tenantry with whom the Grays had business dealings. We have now met Rob Donn the bard, John Sutherland the schoolmaster, and John Gray the drover, three men who can be seen as representing different stages and roles in the ongoing processes of social change in the eighteenth-century Highlands. Rob Donn was an exemplar of the older Gaelic-speaking oral culture founded on subsistence agriculture, but he learned some English and participated in the market economy as a cattleman and drover. John Sutherland was a native Gaelic speaker and poet but fully bilingual and literate, remaining in Sutherland but spending his life teaching English. John Gray, also literate and presumably bilingual, was even further removed from traditional Gaelic culture, an aspiring (if unsuccessful) capitalist who spent his last years in Perthshire. John Sutherland and the SSPCK The SSPCK was founded in Edinburgh in 1709 as a charitable organization ‘to erect and maintain schools to teach to read, especially the Holy Scriptures and other good and pious books: as also to teach writing, arithmetic and such like degrees of knowledge in the Highlands, Islands, and remote corners of Scotland’.45 It has long been controversial, derided as an agent of ‘Lowland cultural colonialism’ and blamed among other things for teaching only English literacy and banning the Gaelic language in the classroom.46 Despite this linguistic mandate (later modified), SSPCK schoolmasters in the Highlands were expected to be bilingual and the most effective ones were, as shown by the contrasting records of Durness schoolmasters William MacKay (1712–1722) and John Ewing (1738–1742).47 One question to be explored here is whether Rob Donn’s attacks on John Sutherland or his comments on other schoolmasters coincide to any extent with these critiques by recent historians. Generally they do not, although some reflections on literacy and Gaelic can be found. In particular, if John Sutherland was an agent of Lowland cultural colonialism, he was co-opted from within the Gàidhealtachd, as he was born and raised in Tongue and spent his entire life in Sutherland. The poems leave no doubt that Rob Donn considered him a cultural insider, a local boy with whom he 5

Ellen L. Beard exchanged insults and counter-insults in oral and colloquial Gaelic. Although their satire contest later escalated to open warfare, it may have begun innocently enough as a light-hearted rivalry between two young men exercising their verbal dexterity. For example, several poems mock Iain’s lack of success in courtship, bargaining for animals, and handling a gun: Ach a fhleasgaich mhill iad t’ alladh, Chuir am braman flò ort, ’N uair a chaidh do chiùrradh anns a’ bhathais, Le gunna ghlas an Leòdaich; ’N uair thilg thu ’n capull anns a’ bheinn, Do réir cleachdaidhean a’ ghille, Bha e coltach bhi mi-chinnicht’, Thug thu gunna leat gun teine, ’S an damh ceanfhionn chur gu cinn.

But, lad, they spoiled your excellence, The misadventure dazed you, When you were wounded in the forehead By MacLeod’s grey gun. When you shot the mare on the mountain As a young boy might do, I have my suspicions That you took an unloaded gun with you And put it to the head of the white-faced ox.48

Similarly, Iain once made a bet that he could shoot a seagull and got nothing but bird droppings for his efforts: Chaill thu ’n geall bh’ agad ris a’ ghrìobha, Se leud a chaolais a thug do shàr;

You lost the bet you made against the grieve; Your violence covered the breadth of the Kyle; When you fired at the seagull in Port-na-Craoibhe, She scattered her droppings far and wide.49

’N uair thilg thu ’n fhaoileag bha ’m Port-na-Craoibhe, Gur h-ann a sgaoil i m’ a tarraing mhàis.

This sounds juvenile and harmless enough, although in terms of the panegyric code a good deer-hunter like Rob Donn is noble and praiseworthy, while a poor shot like Iain Thapaidh who attempts and fails to kill ignoble animals (a mare, an ox, and a seagull) is the reverse and thus worthy of satire. Another incident, where Iain physically assaulted an older man, the local maltster, for unexplained reasons, was more serious: ’S mi-chliùiteach a’ cheist ort, An cliù th’ ac’ a nis ort, Gun aon neach a’ teicheadh air t’ àilghios.

This controversy is disgraceful, The reputation you now have, That anyone had to flee your aggression. 6

Satire and Social Change * * * Bhris Uilleam Cothardach Fèithean a ghobhail, A’ ruith thun an t-sobhail d’ a theàrnadh.

Foamy William broke Sinews in his groin, Running to the barn to escape you.

Mu chùis Iain Thapaidh, Chuir crùn air a mhasladh, ’N uair mhùch e am brachadair càbach.

In the matter of Clever John, Was placed a crown of disgrace, When he smothered the toothless maltster. You about killed the man Who was preserving the ale — Only a pitiful poet would suffer it.

Mu mharbh thu an duine, Bha gléidheadh an leanna, No thruaighe mu dh’ fhuilingeas bàrd e.

* * * ’S e sin a thuirt Dòmhnull, “Bithidh so ann ad chòmhdhail, ’N uair théid thu Di-dòmhnuich do ’n Bhàghan.”

As Donald said: “This will be before the assembly, When you go on Sunday to the Church-yard.”50

This song neatly illustrates Black’s description of eighteenth-century mechanisms of social control: ‘At that time there were two kinds of public censure. One was denunciation from the pulpit, along with any action taken by the kirk session; the other was bardic satire.’51 Although Rob Donn never directly criticized Iain’s competence as a teacher (perhaps recognizing his own limitations in that respect), he repeatedly lambasted his shortcomings as psalm precentor, complaining that he ‘handl[ed] the Word of God like a clumsy satire’ and criticizing him both for poor singing and negligent preparation (‘to go astray in singing to us every single Sunday’).52 Rob Donn no doubt found this irritating (if not excruciating) since he was quite musical himself but could not act as psalm precentor because he could not read out the line. Iain, on the other hand, could read but not sing, and his deficiencies as precentor were apparently severe enough that Rob Donn considered them offenses against religion as well as musical taste. And since he believed Iain was only acting as precentor for the stipend it paid, not because he was a good Christian, Rob Donn advised the clergy to remove him.53 He also criticized Iain for leaving his post to avoid the ‘cairbheist’ (the unpaid agricultural services required of most tenants), for deceitful verse, arrogance and boastfulness, greed for bread and silver, and unspecified faults ‘in keeping Christian confession’.54 7

Ellen L. Beard Only once did Rob Donn squarely address the subject of literacy, revealing his fear that Iain Thapaidh’s education gave him an unfair advantage in their satire contest, and expressing his own regret and frustration at being excluded from ‘the world of readers’: Cha b’ fhiach do ghnothuch chur an leabhar, A dh’ iarradh cobhair cuilbheirt, Gu ’m faic a’ chléir, gu ’n chuir iad féin thu, Anns a cheum nach b’ fhiù thu;

Your business is not worth putting in a book, That would invite help with deception, That the clergy will see, who themselves put you In the rank you do not deserve; * * *

Fhir a shaothraich dheanamh aoire, Cha robh saoil fir céill’ ort, Coimeas t’ aoire ris na daoine Bh’ anns an t-saoghal leughant’; Dean-sa t’ fhìrinn air a Bhìobull Is cuir ri aodann cléir’ e; ’S cha ’n e do thuigse mhill do laigs, Ach meud do chreidimh féin duit.

Man who laboured to make a satire, You did not think like a man of sense, Comparing your satire to the people Who were in the world of readers; Speak the truth on the Bible, And put it to the face of the clergy; It is not your understanding that betrayed your weakness, But the extent of your belief in yourself.55

This reference to ‘the world of readers’ may be the most poignant line in Rob Donn; he knew what he was missing, and it was more than just a temporary advantage in a satire contest. The major barrier to understanding this conflict, of course, is our lack of direct access to Iain’s songs, Iain’s conduct, or the attitude of other members of the community. Rob Donn claimed to speak on behalf of others when he said: Ach na fuilingeadh tu spòrs’ uainn, Cha rachadh ’n t-òran so shèideadh, Mur b’ e na thug thu do thàmailt, Do na thàmh ’s do na dh’eug uainn.

But the scorn you have endured from us Will not dissipate with this song Unless you remove your insult To those at rest and those who died.56

Unfortunately we have no way of knowing what Iain actually said (other than calling Rob Donn a new Balaam);57 he could even have insulted Rob Donn for speaking poor English or being an illiterate cowherd. Nor do we know exactly why Iain was transferred to Creich. In 1753, Walter Ross, the minister at Tongue, wrote to the SSPCK recommending that Sutherland take up a vacant position at Creich because he had a numerous family and needed more land to support them.58 That may be the full explanation, or Iain may have requested the transfer 8

Satire and Social Change in part because Rob Donn was driving him crazy and making his position in Tongue untenable. Rob Donn also composed songs about two other local schoolmasters. One was a Peeping Tom, satirized in these lines to the catchy tune ‘Roy’s Wife of Aldievalloch’: ’S grànd’ an togar, Sheumais, thug thu, ’N àird do ’n tobar ’n robh am bùrn.

Shameful the desire, James, That took you to the well.

Cha ’n ’eil litir anns a’ Bhìobull, A ’s trice chì thu le do shùil, Na na h-ainmeanna59 bh’ aig Céitidh, Anns an léine bh’ air a glùn.

There is not a letter in the Bible That you see with your eye more often, Than Kitty’s private parts, In the shift that was on her knees.

Nach bu ghrànd’ an sealladh, Dominie ’G éiridh lomnochd as a’ chùil, Ged bha bhriogais aige leathann, Bhris an leathair bha ’n a cùl.

Wasn’t the sight disgraceful, the Dominie Rising uncovered from the hiding place, Although his trousers were wide, The leather tore in the back.

’S ann bha sinne ’g a do chleachdadh, Mur gu ’m biodh ann Parson ùr, Cha b’ e Gnàth-fhocail Sholaimh Bha air t’ aire dol do ’n bhùrn.

It is we who were on your case In the absence of a new Parson; There was no Wisdom of Solomon On your mind going after water.60

Whoever James was, it is hard to imagine that he kept his position after this song was circulated! At the other end of the spectrum is the bard’s glowing elegy for another schoolmaster, Donald MacKay. Although Mackintosh Mackay placed him in the parish of Farr, he must instead have been the Donald MacKay who appears in SSPCK records as schoolmaster in ‘Humlean in Westmoan’ from 1741–1754, dying in November of the latter year.61 Donald was from Durness, a son of former schoolmaster William MacKay, and taught first at the Durness parish school before replacing the useless John Ewing, first in Durness and then in Heilam, West Moine.62 Certainly the date would fit, and Rob Donn lived in West Moine at the time. The song, a double elegy to MacKay and John Munro, minister of Eddrachillis, includes this unstinting if conventional praise:

Dithis bha ’n geall Air gearradh à bonn, Gach ain-iochd, gach feall, ’s gach eucoir;

Two that were pledged To cut off at the foundation Every cruelty, falsehood and injustice;

9

Ellen L. Beard Dà sholus a dh’ fhalbh A earrannaibh garbh’, Dh’ fhàg an talamh-sa dorch d’ a réir sin.

Two lamps that departed From harsh provinces, Left the very earth dark behind them.

* * * ’S mac-samhuil dhuinn iad, Ged nach ’eil sinn cho àrd, Anns na nitheanaibh cràbhaidh, leughant’.

And they are a model to us, Although we are not so worthy, In the deeds of piety and learning.63

Since Donald MacKay’s background was very similar to John Sutherland’s (local, bilingual, and educated), Rob Donn apparently hated the latter not for what he represented but for how he behaved — especially the fact that he had the temerity to insult Rob Donn in verse! Regarding the broader politics of language and literacy, Rob Donn, unlike his older contemporary Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, composed no impassioned defences of the Gaelic language;64 nor did he opine on teaching Gaelic literacy in the schools. The latter was not unusual; according to Withers: ‘There is little evidence of any formal opposition from Gaels to the SSPCK, the establishment of schools or the role of schoolmasters’.65 Rob Donn did say twice that he believed worthy Gaels — even acculturated ones like William, earl of Sutherland — deserved to have elegies composed in Gaelic by a bard from their own country.66 And given his references to ‘the world of readers’ and the intellectual capacity demonstrated by his overall corpus, it seems indisputable that he would have valued the ability to read and write in either language or both — to read the Bible and Gaelic poetry independently, to satisfy his general intellectual curiosity, and to facilitate the process of publishing his own poems. Although Donald William Stewart has argued that Rob Donn ‘didn’t aspire to the status of a published writer; indeed, he never had the opportunity’, that is an oversimplification.67 While Rob Donn was essentially an oral poet who composed topical verse for a contemporary listening audience, the fact that he spent untold hours of his time dictating as many as 240 poems to the literate minister Aeneas MacLeod and the literate minister’s daughter Janet Thomson certainly implies some interest in preserving his work for a broader (and posthumous) readership.68 He must have known that several other Gaelic poets published books of poetry during his lifetime (Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair in 1751, Dugald Buchanan in 1767, and Duncan Bàn MacIntyre in 1768), and he must have hoped (or been persuaded) that he could follow suit.69 While this did not occur until 1829, fifty years after his own death, it was not because he was indifferent to the value of a written legacy.70 10

Satire and Social Change Overall, then, the poems demonstrate that Rob Donn valued literacy and clearly understood its practical advantages, as shown, for example, in a satire about a Lowland notary who took advantage of his neighbours.71 So there is no reason to believe that he opposed formal education or bilingualism as a matter of principle or perceived schoolmasters generally as agents of cultural colonialism. Nonetheless, he intensely disliked Iain Thapaidh, repeatedly accusing him of dishonesty, greed, laziness, hypocrisy, and failing to conduct himself as an appropriate role model for schoolchildren. That charge of hypocrisy returned with a vengeance after the death of Gray of Rogart, to which we now turn. John Gray and the cattle trade Just as schoolmasters and English literacy were the leading edge of cultural integration in the eighteenth-century Gàidhealtachd, the cattle trade played the same role in the economic arena long before the coming of Na Caoraich Mhòr’ (the great sheep) and the Clearances. By 1700 the main foundations of the well-known cattle trade of the eighteenth century were all in place: the marketing centres (or trysts) at Crieff and Falkirk; the droving trails; the business connections between Highland lairds and Lowland buyers.72 According to Stana Nenadic, ‘the primary agents in bringing the introduction of market relationships to the Highlands were not the lairds but their tacksmen and senior clan servants’; these were ‘the traditional middle layer of Highland society’ who turned their efforts to the cattle trade and the market economy.73 In MacKay Country, those agents included Rob Donn’s employers Iain mac Eachainn in Strathmore and Bighouse in Tongue and Strath Halladale;74 the Grays must have played a similar role elsewhere in Sutherland and Caithness. The organisation of the eighteenth-century cattle trade made it susceptible to considerable abuse to the detriment of sellers in the north, particularly small tenants.75 Dealers and drovers who acted as middlemen bought cattle on credit not just from landlords and tacksmen (who may have received them as rentals inkind) but also directly from small tenants (who sold them to pay rent in cash).76 But prices were not fixed at the time of sale, leaving the sellers to bear the risk of a poor market at Crieff or Falkirk, resulting in payments that were not only delayed but sometimes reduced as much as 50% below the amount initially agreed.77 According to Baldwin, ‘the principal sufferers were the country people who depended on the produce of their herds and flocks to pay their rents and support their families’, and complaints of ‘malpractices’ were especially prominent in Sutherland.78 This sets the scene for Rob Donn’s own commentary depicting three cattle dealers he considered as different in character as the three schoolmasters just discussed: John Gray was a scoundrel, Iain mac Eachainn nearly a saint, and 11

Ellen L. Beard Bighouse somewhere in between. In fact, Rob Donn considered Gray so fundamentally evil that he took the unusual (although not unprecedented) step of composing a satirical elegy celebrating his death. It begins as follows (with a melody he may also have composed):

Or in English translation: Rogues are dispirited and sorrowful on both sides of the Crask, Since they heard about their Chief ’s final journey, that he died in Perthshire. Despite his tricks and deceit, no one ever believed in the truth Of one word that came out of his mouth; nor did he believe in Almighty God.79 Gray’s chief character flaws were dishonesty and greed, as the song continues:

’S fad o na chunnacas, ’s a chualas, Gur teachdaire gruamach am bàs; Gidheadh gu bheil cuid ann an daoch ris Thug rud-eigin gaoil da an trath-sa. Tha dùil ac’ an Cata’ ’s an Galladh, Nach urr’ iad a mholadh gu bràth, Air son gur h-e féin thug a’ cheud chàr As an fear thug cùig ceud càr á càch.

It has long been seen and heard That death is a gloomy messenger, Yet there are some who fear it Who rather welcomed it this time. In Sutherland and Caithness, They can never praise it enough, Because it played the final trick On the man who cheated the rest five hundred times.80

Since Gray could not have attended 500 cattle trysts in his lifetime, the last line must refer to his dealings with poor tenants who sold him their cattle. The

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Satire and Social Change final verse of the song couples ‘the work of the devil’ with ‘the man of Creich’, so Rob Donn was quite willing to tar Rob Gray of Creich with the same brush as John Gray of Rogart.81 This elegy was round one; in round two Rob Gray hired Iain Thapaidh to compose a response, using the same tune as Rob Donn’s.82 Unfortunately Sutherland’s elegy does not survive, but it infuriated Rob Donn and inspired round three, where he turned relentlessly on both Iain Thapaidh and Rob Gray. The first verse and translation are as follows:

First man who travels to Sutherland, Take word to Clever John of the verses, Isn’t his body handsome and shapely, And deformed the soul within it; The flatterer of the avaricious hollow eyes, Completely filled by greed, Praised the shrivel-assed, splay-footed, lichen-covered old person, And was proved to a hundred to be false.83

Several points of interest emerge from this stanza, beginning with its reference to oral transmission. By this time, probably 1767, Rob Donn was living in Durness and Iain Thapaidh in or near Invershin. Since Rob Donn could not write, he expected the first man who travelled from Dùthaich MhicAoidh to Cata to memorize the song and repeat it to Iain. The text contrasts the latter’s handsome external appearance with his deformed soul, so greedy that he falsely praised the unworthy and ludicrous Rob Gray for money. The tune may be a more subtle (and bilingual) insult, as the chorus of ‘The Jolly Miller’ (‘I care for nobody, no

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Ellen L. Beard not I, and nobody cares for me’) could hint at Iain’s cavalier disregard of the truth. The second verse contains this terse couplet:

Cha chreid duin’ ac’ thus’ mach o esan, ’S cha mhol duin’ ac’ esan ach thus’.

Not a man among them will believe you except he, And not a man among them will praise him except you.84

Verse four continues the double-barrelled attack:

Nis a Rob Ghré, ma phòs thu, ’S e Iain t’ aon òglach ’s an àm; ’S e ’s urrainn thoirt meas air do bheusan, Le ’mhiodal, le ’théis, is le ’rann; Ni e Sagart do dhuine gun chràbhadh, ’S ni e deadh chlàrc do fhear meallt’, Ni e stiùbhard do theaghlach gun iochd, Is fear-foghluim do ’n t-sliochd nach bi ann.

Now Rob Gray, if you married, Iain is your only offspring; He can honour your virtues With his flattery, his music and verse. He will act as priest for a man without piety, He will make a good clerk for a deceitful man, He will act as steward for a family without compassion, And a man of learning for a line that has none.85

This is a classic use of satire as the reverse of panegyric, in which Rob Donn cites approvingly the virtues of piety, honesty, compassion and learning, but castigates Iain Thapaidh for claiming falsely that the Grays possessed them. The last two verses sum up the indictment, beginning with a boast (probably metaphorical) that Sutherland was driven out of Tongue over the Crask (between Altnaharra and Lairg), and ending with a threat about his destination in the hereafter: Rinn sinn do sgiùrsadh mur throsg, Mach thar a’ Chrasg leis a’ ghaoith; Ach stiùireadh le d’ mhaighstir féin thu, Gu àit anns an séideadh tu ’n daoi; Cha ’n fhaighear fear fileanta focail An Cata, an Ros, no ’n dùthaich ’C-Aoidh; Ach Iain, gu moladh Rhob Grè, ’S ann ’s còir dha do ghleidheadh a chaoidh.

We scourged you like a stupid fellow, Out over the Crask with the wind; But you were led by your own master To a place where you would flatter a rogue; A man fluent with words will not be found In Sutherland, Ross, or Mackay Country, Except Iain, praising Rob Gray — It is right for it to be preserved forever.

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Satire and Social Change Cha ’n fhaighear do leithid do shiomlaich, Ged a dh’amhaircteadh timchioll a’ ghlob; Ma leanas tu ’n còmhnuidh ri t’ eucoir, Masgul is breugan nach ob,— An uair a théid t’ anam gun reuson, Mach a dh’ aon leum air do ghob, Bidh tus anns a’ chuideachd an còir dhuit, An Donas, is Ròghard, is Rob.

Your kind of chicken-heartedness will not be found If one searches around the globe; If you continue dwelling in injustice, Flattery and falsehood not shunning, When your soul departs, senseless, Out at one leap from your mouth, You will be in the company you deserve — The Devil, and Rogart, and Rob.86

‘Rob’, incidentally, is Rob Gray, not Rob Donn; the latter reveals little evidence of humility, religious or otherwise. It is worth noting, however, that Rob Donn still considered Iain redeemable, in contrast to both of the Grays. To contextualize Rob Donn’s opinion of the Grays, it is instructive to consider his views on his employers Iain mac Eachainn and MacKay of Bighouse. Rob Donn criticized Iain mac Eachainn only once, in a short poem accusing him (with Bighouse) of deceiving Lowland buyers at a cattle tryst.87 Otherwise he was the bard’s model landlord but represented a dying breed, as Rob Donn was well aware: Dearbh cha b’ ionann do bheatha, ’S do fhir tha fathast an caomhnadh, Thionail airgiod is fearann, Bhitheas buidheann eile ’g sgaoileadh. Bhitheas féin air an gearradh, Gun ghuth caraid ’g an caoineadh, Air nach ruig dad do mholadh, Ach “Seall sibh fearann a shaor iad.”

Indeed your life did not resemble Those of men still living Who have gathered money and lands That others will scatter, Men who will be cut off Without a friend to mourn them, Whom no praise will reach Save: “Look at the land they redeemed.”

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Ellen L. Beard Tha iad laghail gu lit’reil, ’S tha iad ’n an deibhtearan geura, Is iad a’ pàidheadh gu moltach, Na bhios ac’ air a chéile; Ach an còrr, théid a thasgaidh, Ged ’s cruaidh a cheiltinn o ’n fhéile, Is tha an sporan ’s an sùilean, Cheart cho dùint’ air an fheumnach.

They are within the letter of the law And they are sharp over debts And they are punctilious in paying What they owe one another. But for the rest, it will be stowed away, Though it’s hard to hoard against hospitality: And their purses and their eyes Are equally shut to the man in need.88

These two verses (part of a much longer elegy) provide considerable scope for speculation regarding the bard’s implications. For instance, the last line of the first verse just quoted refers not to land that was purchased or acquired but instead uses the verb ‘saor’, which translates as ‘free, deliver, rescue, liberate, save, redeem,’ and so on.89 This could mean to free from debt, to drain, to redeem from antiquated land use practices, or to free from unproductive tenants; in any case, it seems to hint at some awareness of the incipient stages of agricultural improvement.90 Another question is who Rob Donn had in mind when he composed these verses. Grimble and Nenadic both argue that he was referring to Bighouse, of whom the bard became progressively more critical as the years passed.91 This is illustrated vividly in the following lines, composed after Bighouse invited Rob Donn to admire a new suit: Ach chan eil putan innt’ no toll There is not a button nor a button-hole in it Nach do chost bonn do dhuine bochd. That hasn’t taken money off a poor man.92 Bighouse was ambitious and fond of luxury; Nenadic quotes from a letter he wrote in early 1752 to his ill-fated son-in-law Colin Campbell of Glenure asking him to purchase dining room furniture and framed prints of the Hanoverian royal family for him in Edinburgh and arrange to ship them by boat to Thurso.93 Bighouse thus lived and died in a more acculturated social milieu than his older clansman Iain mac Eachainn, dying in 1770 in Bath, where Earl William and his wife had predeceased him in 1766.94 But Rob Donn could also have been thinking of the Grays, likewise more notable for self-interest than altruism. In summary, Rob Donn was not a radical egalitarian who attacked capitalism in general or the cattle trade in particular; instead he was a realist in an excellent position to observe how vital that trade was to his own livelihood and that of his neighbours. Nevertheless, he vociferously condemned the worst abusers of the existing system, like the Grays, who exploited their economic position and superior knowledge to cheat and deceive others. He also knew – as he said in 16

Satire and Social Change his elegies to Iain mac Eachainn and others not discussed here – that the society underlying the old paternalistic virtues of the panegyric code was disappearing before his eyes, never to return. Conclusion This article has endeavoured to present newly-compiled information plus an insider perspective on two important themes in eighteenth-century Highland history, formal education and the cattle trade, and to illustrate the benefit of studying Gaelic poetry in conjunction with conventional documentary sources to obtain a fuller understanding of the past. Regarding education, the facts show that Rob Donn received a few rudiments of formal schooling (probably at an SSPCK school on the east side of Loch Eriboll), provide additional biographical details on the bard’s nemesis, schoolmaster John Sutherland, and clarify the likely identity of schoolmaster Donald MacKay. The poems reveal that Rob Donn valued formal education and literacy, and that his distaste for Iain Thapaidh was founded on his character and conduct rather than his role as a bilingual SSPCK schoolmaster. Regarding the cattle trade, the facts show that John Gray was a somewhat peripheral player, and the same dishonesty excoriated by Rob Donn was also noted by the earl of Sutherland’s lawyer. The songs on the Grays exemplify Rob Donn’s ability to combine well-crafted verse with catchy tunes to ensure that his satires were memorable enough to pass by oral transmission from one end of Sutherland to the other. More generally, the poetic exchanges between Rob Donn and Iain Thapaidh show that, despite the introduction of English literacy, Gaelic satire continued to flourish in an oral context in eighteenth-century Sutherland, practiced by SSPCK schoolmasters and nonliterate poets alike. Rob Donn himself was a bard, not a social or economic theorist. He could not read the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, so his intellectual and moral frame of reference was necessarily limited to the Christianity he heard expounded in religious settings, the Gaelic oral tradition, his own personal experience, and ideas transmitted orally by his literate and bilingual acquaintances. Yet he was a penetrating social observer in his own community and occasionally demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of broader political developments, as in his poem ‘The Black Cassocks’ on the aftermath of Culloden.95 Thus his central value to the social historian is to supplement the records of government, church and landed estates with the voice of the people their policies affected. For Gaelic culture, his legacy is a peerless collection of music and poetry that opens a window to a lost world.96 Notes 1. For musical analysis, texts and translations, see Ellen L. Beard, ‘Rob Donn MacKay: Finding the Music in the Songs’, 3 vols, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Edinburgh, 2016). 2. Oxford English Dictionary, < http://www.oed.com > , ‘satire, n’.

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Ellen L. Beard 3. Edward Dwelly, Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary (Edinburgh, 2001), 39. 4. Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees (eds), Celtic Heritage: Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales (London, 1976), 33 (describing ‘the first satire ever made in Ireland’). 5. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed.), A Celtic Miscellany: Translations from the Celtic Literatures (Harmondsworth, 1971), 195. 6. Wilson McLeod and Meg Bateman (eds), Songbook of the Pillagers: Anthology of Medieval Gaelic Poetry (Edinburgh, 2007), 266–7, 278–81. 7. Ronald Black (ed.), An Lasair: Anthology of 18th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 2001), xv, 318–27, 508–12. 8. Black, An Lasair, 292–9, 495–9. 9. Donald E. Meek (ed.), The Wiles of the World: Anthology of 19th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 2003), 170–1, 422–3; Anne Lorne Gillies (ed.), Songs of Gaelic Scotland (Edinburgh, 2010), 267–9. 10. Ronald Black (ed.), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 1999), 156–67, 188–97, 254–9. 11. Derick Thomson, An Introduction to Gaelic Poetry, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1989), 117. 12. John MacInnes, ‘The panegyric code in Gaelic poetry and its historical background’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 50 (1978), 435–98. 13. Black, An Lasair, xxiii. 14. MacInnes, ‘The panegyric code’, 459. 15. Donald William Stewart, ‘The art of satire’, Am Bratach (September 2014), 8. 16. Hew Morrison (ed.), Songs and Poems in the Gaelic Language by Rob Donn (Edinburgh, 1899), xlix. 17. Morrison, Rob Donn, xii, xlvii. 18. See Seumas Grannd, Gàidhlig Dhùthaich Mhic Aoidh (Melness, 2013); Charles M. Robertson, ‘Sutherland Gaelic’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 25 (1901–03), 84–125; Adam Gunn, ‘Peculiarities of the Reay Country dialect’, Celtic Monthly 6 (1898), 78–80, 94–6,119–20, 122–4. 19. Mackintosh Mackay (ed.), Songs and Poems in the Gaelic Language, by Robert Mackay (Inverness, 1829), xv-xvi; Morrison, Rob Donn, xvii, xxi; Ian Grimble, The World of Rob Donn, rev. edn (Edinburgh, 1999), 112. 20. Mackay, Songs and Poems, xvi; Morrison, Rob Donn, xxi; see also A. R. B. Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1997), 44, 141–2, and Donald Beck Adamson, ‘Commercialisation, Change and Continuity: An Archaeological Study of Rural Commercial Practice in the Scottish Highlands’ unpublished PhD thesis (University of Glasgow, 2014), 307, 331–2, 337 (opportunities for social interaction along the drove roads and at the trysts). 21. Lachlan MacKinnon (ed.), Prose Writings of Donald MacKinnon (Edinburgh, 1956), 243, 246; Thomson, Gaelic Poetry, 194–204; Black, An Lasair, 429–32, 478, 494; for music, see Mackay, Songs and Poems, xlii; John Mackenzie (ed.), Sàr-Obair nam Bàrd Gaëlach (Glasgow, 1841), 208; MacKinnon, Prose Writings, 245. 22. Mackenzie, Sàr-Obair, 187; John Lorne Campbell, Highland Songs of the Forty-Five (Edinburgh, 1984), 228; Sorley MacLean, ‘Some thoughts about Gaelic poetry’, in William Gillies (ed.), Ris a’ Bhruthaich (Stornoway, 1985), 131. 23. MacKinnon, Prose Writings, 246; Thomson, Gaelic Poetry, 194; Donald MacAulay, ‘Reconstructed heroes? A portrait of the “virtues” in the panegyric verse of Rob Donn’, in Sharon Arbuthnot and Kaarina Hollo (eds), Fil Súil Nglais: A Grey Eye Looks Back (Ceann Drochaid, 2007), 73–82, at 82. For possible literary influences on Rob Donn’s satire, see Natasha Sumner, ‘How Popean was Rob Donn?: A study in intertextuality’, Aiste 4 (2014),

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Satire and Social Change 96–113, and Donald John MacLeod, ‘The poetry of Rob Donn MacKay’, Scottish Gaelic Studies 12 (1971), 3–21. 24. Black, An Lasair, 429 (‘no experience of education outside the ceilidh-house’); Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 14 (‘he never learned to speak [English]’). 25. John Mackechnie (ed.), Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in Selected Libraries in Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols (Boston, 1973), i, 342; Ulrike Hogg, ‘The life and papers of the Rev. Dr Alexander Irvine’, Scottish Gaelic Studies 28 (2011), 97–174. 26. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 24. 27. Graham Bruce, A History of Durness Parish School (Durness, 2010), 3–5. SSPCK stands for Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. 28. Bruce, Durness Parish School, 5. 29. Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland [NRS], SSPCK Records, GD95/9/1, 218–19. 30. NRS GD95/9/1, 273. 31. Morrison, Rob Donn, 186, 300, 169, 24. 32. Edmund Burt, Burt’s Letters from the North of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1998), 19; Haldane, Drove Roads, 141; R. A. Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1986), 82. 33. A. S. Cowper, SSPCK Schoolmasters, 1709–1872 (Edinburgh, 1997), 100. 34. John MacInnes, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland 1688–1800 (Aberdeen, 1951), 201; Dwelly, Dictionary, 933; Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 50, 154, 203. 35. A. S. Cowper and I. Ross, Pre-1855 Tombstone Inscriptions in Sutherland Burial Grounds (Edinburgh, 1989), 65. 36. Cowper, SSPCK Schoolmasters, 100; A. S. Cowper and I. Ross, Selected Notes on Sutherland and Reay Country Schools from SSPCK Records 1711–1857 (Edinburgh, 1980), 6. 37. Morrison, Rob Donn, 331 n. 2. 38. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 50. 39. Donald Sage, Memorabilia Domestica: Parish Life in the North of Scotland (Wick, 1889), 206–7. 40. Malcolm Bangor-Jones, Am Bratach (February 2000); Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland [NLS], Sutherland Papers, Dep. 313/255/109. 41. ‘Copy of the examination of John Gray of Rogart, a Highland drover, in 1746’, in Robert Forbes (ed.), The Lyon in Mourning, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1975), iii, 144–51. 42. For the sale, see Bangor-Jones, Am Bratach (February 2000); NLS Dep. 313/255/106. For Gray’s death, see ‘Testament Dative’ filed by his son-in-law William Ross (1767 Grey, John, Reference CC7/6/6 Dunkeld Commissary Court, 63–5; 1768 Gray, John, Reference CC7/6/6 Dunkeld Commissary Court, 110–11). The two possible grandsons, Walter and John, are mentioned respectively in John Gray’s testament and that of his daughter Mrs Elizabeth Gray Ross (1819 Ross, Elizabeth, Mrs, Reference SC9/36/1 Dornoch Sheriff Court, 168–9), as well as the final verse of Rob Donn’s elegy for their grandfather. Morrison, Rob Donn, 58. 43. Lesley Ketteringham, A History of Lairg, rev. edn (Lairg, 2004), 24–5. 44. Malcolm Bangor-Jones, ‘Sheep farming in Sutherland in the eighteenth century’, Agricultural History Review 50 (2002), 184. 45. Quoted in John A. Smith, ‘schools, SSPCK’, in Derick S. Thomson (ed.), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland, 2nd edn (Glasgow, 1994), 262. 46. Margaret Connell Szasz, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Norman, OK, 2007), 110. See also T. M. Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester, 1994), 113–14; Charles W. J. Withers, Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region

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Ellen L. Beard (London, 1988), 122–36; Withers, Gaelic in Scotland 1698–1981: The Geographical History of a Language (Edinburgh, 1984), 120–37. 47. Szasz, Indigenous Education, 82; Withers, Gaelic in Scotland, 122, 171; Cowper, SSPCK Schoolmasters, 63, 26; Church of Scotland, General Assembly Papers, NRS CH1/2/78, 194–96, 212–16; Church of Scotland, Presbytery of Tongue, NRS CH2/508/1, 281. 48. Morrison, Rob Donn, 333; see also 334–6, 390–3. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified. 49. Morrison, Rob Donn, 335–6. 50. Morrison, Rob Donn, 337–8. 51. Black, An Lasair, xxxvi. 52. Morrison, Rob Donn, 115, 113. 53. Morrison, Rob Donn, 112–15, 331–2. 54. Ibid. 55. Morrison, Rob Donn, 331–2. 56. Morrison, Rob Donn, 114. 57. Morrison, Rob Donn, 331. 58. Cowper and Ross, Selected Notes, 6. 59. Although this word does not appear in standard Gaelic dictionaries, the gist of the matter seems clear. 60. Morrison, Rob Donn, 357. In 1755, there was a parish school in Durness but not in Tongue, so James could have been a parish schoolmaster in Durness. NRS GD95/11/5(1) & (3). If so, the last verse may imply that the incident occurred in 1763 or 1764, after the death of Rev. Murdoch MacDonald but before the arrival of his successor Rev. John Thomson. Hew Scott (ed.), Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 8 vols (Edinburgh, 1928), vii, 102. 61. Mackay, Songs and Poems, 306; Cowper, SSPCK Schoolmasters, 61; NRS GD95/11/5(3). 62. NRS CH1/2/78, 212 & 214; GD95/9/1, 218–19. 63. Morrison, Rob Donn, 2–3. 64. See Thomson, Gaelic Poetry, 158. 65. Withers, Transformation, 136. 66. Morrison, Rob Donn, 36, 62–3. 67. Stewart, ‘Rob Donn’, Am Bratach (March 2015), 17. 68. For MacLeod and Thomson, see Morrison, Rob Donn, xliv; Scott, Fasti vii, 98, 102; NLS catalogue record, MS 1669; Highland Society of Scotland, Ingliston Papers, Letter of 20 July 1809 from John Campbell to Lewis Gordon, MS A.i.6(2). 69. Thomson, Gaelic Poetry, 172, 209, 186. 70. Mackay, Songs and Poems. 71. ‘Briogaiseag’, in Morrison, Rob Donn, 346–7. 72. T. M. Devine, Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700–1900 (Edinburgh, 2006), 101. 73. Stana Nenadic, Lairds and Luxury: The Highland Gentry in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 2007), 5. 74. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 9. 75. See generally John R. Baldwin, ‘The long trek: agricultural change and the Great Northern Drove’, in John R. Baldwin (ed.), Firthlands of Ross and Sutherland (Edinburgh, 1986), 183–220. 76. Adamson, ‘Rural Commercial Practice’, 309. 77. Baldwin, ‘The long trek’, 202–4. 78. Baldwin, ‘The long trek’, 204–5.

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Satire and Social Change 79. Text from Morrison, Rob Donn, 56; melody from Christine Martin (ed.), The Angus Fraser Collection of Scottish Gaelic Airs (Upper Breakish, 1996), 19; translation and tune setting mine. 80. Morrison, Rob Donn, 56–7. Gray also had an unsavoury reputation with his social superiors. In a letter of 21 June 1762 to the earl of Sutherland’s factor Dugald Gilchrist, his law agent John Mackenzie of Delvine refers sarcastically to Gray as ‘Honest John’, adding that ‘Poverty is an enemy to Honesty, otherways John Gray might have got thro’ the World with fewer Imputations and been engaged in fewer Scrapes.’ NLS Dep. 313/1096. 81. Morrison, Rob Donn, 58. 82. Patrick Turner (ed.), Comhchruinneacha do dh’Orain Taghta, Ghaidhealach (Edinburgh, 1813), 357. 83. Text from Morrison, Rob Donn, 184; melody from William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 2 vols (London, 1855–59), ii, 668; translation and tune setting mine. 84. Morrison, Rob Donn, 184. 85. Morrison, Rob Donn, 185. 86. Morrison, Rob Donn, 186. 87. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 57. 89. Dwelly, Dictionary, 790. 90. See Devine, Clearance and Improvement, 14–15 (although 1757 may be too early for significant manifestations of these changes in northwest Sutherland itself). 88. Gaelic text from Morrison, Rob Donn, 32–3; translation from Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 113–14. 91. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 124; Nenadic, Lairds and Luxury, 2, 25–8, 207. 92. Text and translation from Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 124. 93. Nenadic, Lairds and Luxury, xi; see also Malcolm Bangor-Jones, ‘From clanship to crofting: Landownership, economy and the church in the Province of Strathnaver’, in John R. Baldwin (ed.), The Province of Strathnaver (Edinburgh, 2000), 52–60. 94. Grimble, World of Rob Donn, 255–7. 95. Morrison, Rob Donn, 82–6. A complete if somewhat dated translation appears in Campbell, Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, 236–45. 96. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers who generously provided me with a long list of primary and secondary sources to consult. I am also grateful to the Gaelic scholars who reviewed my translations, my PhD supervisor Dr Anja Gunderloch and my fellow PhD student Dr Anne MacLeod Hill.

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COLONIALISM AND THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES1

IAIN MACKINNON

This article considers the late modern Gàidhealtachd2 as a site of internal colonialism where the relationship of domination between colonizer and colonized is complex, longstanding and occurring within the imperial state. It will build on criticisms of previous theoretical approaches that have been used to investigate internal colonialism in Scotland and elsewhere. These previous studies adopted a comparative approach. As such, they have been criticised for selecting for their analyses only those characteristics typical of colonial situations which could also be found in the proposed ‘internal colony’ and excluding other typical characteristics which could not be found there. Positive assessments of the existence of ‘internal colonies’ made on this basis have been described by the historian Robert J. Hind as arguably creating a misleading ‘artificial analogy’ of colonialism. Postcolonial scholarship on the Gàidhealtachd has sought to avoid this form of criticism by avoiding the question of historical colonization altogether. This article critiques the postcolonial position and elaborates on the criticisms of previous internal colonialism analyses in order to take a different approach to those of analogy or avoidance. It examines the historical record for evidence that promoters and managers of projects involving land use change, territorial dispossession and industrial development in the late modern Gàidhealtachd explicitly conceived of their work as projects of colonization. It also studies some of these projects to analyse whether the new social, cultural and political structures that they imposed correspond to different types of colony that have been delineated in a recent theoretical overview of colonialism. In addition, it examines some of the attitudes towards the indigenous population of the Gàidhealtachd by prominent racialist and racist ideologists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This examination investigates both whether these attitudes demonstrate a sense of cultural superiority that, it has been argued, is integral to colonial situations, and also whether these attitudes were accompanied by policies that advocated removal of the indigenous people from their lands and their replacement with culturally different groups.3 Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 22–48 DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0125 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

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Colonialism and the Clearances *** In recent historical accounts of the late modern Gàidhealtachd the two conceptual terms most commonly employed as ways of understanding the reorganisation of the area’s landholding patterns and concomitant dispossession of its indigenous population are ‘clearance’ and ‘improvement’. ‘Clearance’ has been described as an omnibus term which has come to refer to ‘any kind of displacement of occupiers . . . by Highland landlords’. Although 1790 to 1850 is reckoned the most intensive period of ‘clearance’, according to Eric Richards the term does not seem to have been in general use until the 1840s.4 By contrast, ‘improvement’ was in use from the mid-eighteenth century to describe systematic social and agrarian changes being implemented in the area. T.M. Devine has argued that ‘improvement’ refers to practices and principles connected to the ‘new agronomy’ of the period and has stressed that agricultural transformation and industrial development ‘were two sides of the same coin’ in Scotland.5 Although ‘improvement’ is primarily described in such terms, agrarian change – particularly tenurial rearrangements – had acknowledged social implications and therefore political (and legislative) backing was necessary for its implementation. ‘Improvement’ was also informed by ideological principles capable of rousing evangelical fervour in its adherents.6 This article seeks to disclose some conceptual limits to the utility of ‘clearance’ and ‘improvement’ for describing radical changes in the governance of land and natural resources in the late modern Gàidhealtachd, and begins to delineate a third way of understanding the tenurial, political and cultural changes that have taken place in the area during the period. Developing Allan Macinnes’ assertion that ‘the clash of perspectives between improvement and clearance was not just a Scottish issue and must be set within an imperial context’, it will examine a concept that was at the heart of the British imperial project, one that has been less examined by historians of the Gàidhealtachd but that, like ‘clearance’ and ‘improvement’, was also widely used during the nineteenth century to describe plans and projects for land use change, territorial dispossession and industrial development.7 The concept is that of ‘colonialism’ and the way of understanding is through the idea that the Gàidhealtachd can be understood historically as a site of colonization. From the outset this article emphasises a distinction between ‘colonization’ as a material practice and ‘colonialism’ as a set of ideas about colonization and a relationship between different groups within a colonial situation. Political theorist Barbara Arneil has argued that colonialism is ‘the theoretical and ideological framework by which . . . colonization is justified’.8 The idea that some parts of the early modern Gàidhealtachd were a site of colonization and colonialism is now quite well served by historiography. A clutch of analyses focusing on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – a period in which the Scottish Crown’s desire to conquer and colonize parts of the area was being explicitly articulated – have been produced in the last 23

Iain MacKinnon fifteen years or so, including significant contributions from David Armitage, Julian Goodare, Martin MacGregor, Aonghas MacCoinnich and Alison Cathcart. This body of scholarship indicates that an increasingly sophisticated narrative is developing in Scottish historiography of internal colonialism in the early modern Gàidhealtachd.9 However, the emergence of this narrative begs something of an existential question for late modern historians: if the Gàidhealtachd was an ongoing site of colonization in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then what is going on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Is it possible that colonies, colonization and colonialism have somehow simply gone away? The work of Eric Richards and James Hunter, the two contemporary historians of the Gàidhealtachd whose research has perhaps most closely examined the far-reaching changes encapsulated by the terms ‘improvement’ and ‘clearance’, suggest not. Although both employ ‘clearance’ and ‘improvement’ centrally in their work, they have also suggested – albeit largely in passing – that these changes can be understood in colonial terms.10 Recognised difficulties in conceptualising ‘colonialism’ might help explain why sustained analyses are not common. For instance, at the outset of his acclaimed theoretical overview of colonialism the German historian Jürgen Osterhammel argued that historians ‘have shied away from attempts at terminological precision of the term “colonialism” because of its myriad facets’. He added that colonial realities were ‘shaped by particular local features overseas, by the intentions and opportunities of the individual local powers, and by the broader tendencies in the international system’. In Osterhammel’s view even the most comprehensive of all world empires, the British empire, was ‘a patchwork quilt of ad hoc adaptations to particular circumstance’.11 According to David Cannadine, it was ‘created and governed in an appropriately disorganised and unsystematic way’.12 Indeed, this lack of clarity extended to the most basic matters, with J.G.A. Pocock noting that during the imperial crisis that led to the American Revolution it became clear that the British empire lacked ‘a clear concept of a colony as a subordinate political society’.13 Lacking definitional clarity even among those by whom it was being imposed, colonialism, Osterhammel concludes, ‘is thus a phenomenon of colossal vagueness’. Postcolonial scholarship agrees with this assessment, Robert Young stressing colonialism’s ‘extraordinary diversity, even within the practices of a single colonial power’ such that it ‘troubles the possibility of any general theory’.14 As this article’s analysis will draw out, the definitional issues are even more acute for the Gàidhealtachd as a site of colonialism within an imperial state. Yet, if the language of colonialism forms part of the historical record of the late modern Gàidhealtachd and is being invoked in its historiography, then it is a phenomenon with which historians must come to grips, and it becomes incumbent on us to employ some theoretical perspective on colonialism in seeking to disclose and describe its place in our recent past. This article will use Osterhammel’s work as its primary theoretical source and augment his analysis by drawing selectively on postcolonial scholarship in order to 24

Colonialism and the Clearances test whether considering the late modern Gàidhealtachd as a site of colonization and colonialism can help us to better understand, and perhaps begin to resolve, differences of interpretation found in ‘clearance’ and ‘improvement’ accounts. Other perspectives, such as political philosopher James Tully’s theory of ‘internal colonization’ in North America, the work of Barbara Arneil on liberal colonialism and ‘domestic colonies’ on both sides of the Atlantic, and the geographer Cole Harris’ nuanced account of how colonialism dispossessed native communities in coastal British Columbia, also provide useful theoretical insights into late modern processes of colonization and colonialism.15 Osterhammel’s work has been chosen in this instance as a theoretical focus because of the breadth of its discussion of colonial situations and its historically rooted approach. In his theoretical overview Osterhammel defines three aspects of the colonial situation: ‘colonies’; ‘colonization’; and ‘colonialism’. A ‘colony’ is ‘a new form of political organisation created by invasion (conquest and/or settlement colonization) but built on pre-colonial conditions’. Its rulers are ‘in sustained dependence on a geographically remote “mother country” or “imperial center”, which claims exclusive rights of possession of the colony’. He delineates three basic colony types: ‘exploitation colonies’; ‘settler colonies’; and ‘maritime enclaves’. This article will include an analysis of whether land use change and territorial dispossession in the late modern Gàidhealtachd can be understood in terms of either of the first two of these colony types namely, ‘exploitation colonies’ which involve a small number of colonists acting as a governing elite and supplying benefits to the imperial centre by exploiting the indigenous population, and ‘settler colonies’ which involve a large number of colonists with a focus more on developing the colony through the colonists and their culture at the expense of the indigenous people and their culture. Osterhammel cautioned that these types should not be too strictly applied to particular colonial contexts as colonies were often mixtures of different types ‘or moved from being one type of colony to another as circumstances changed’.16 According to Osterhammel ‘colonization’ is ‘a process of territorial acquisition’ based on ‘the expansion of a society beyond its original habitat’.17 He defines ‘colonialism’ as a form of relationship in which ‘an entire society is robbed of its historical line of development, externally manipulated and transformed according to the needs of the colonial rulers’ who believe they are working towards the ‘fulfillment of a universal mission’.18 Colonialism is a relationship of domination between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.19

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Iain MacKinnon This article’s case for the late modern Gàidhealtachd to be considered a site of colonization and colonialism is in three parts. The first part critiques Michael Hechter’s well-known argument on ‘internal colonialism’ in Scotland, Ireland and Wales during the development of modern Britain, and also the approach taken by Silke Stroh in her recent postcolonial analysis of the Gàidhealtachd. This critique leads to an argument that proposes a method for analysing ‘internal colonialism’ in the Gàidhealtachd that does not proceed by way of ‘artifical analogy’ (as Hechter’s model is said to have done). The article here advocates an approach that augments the use of theoretical models based on limited empirical data, with an attempt to recover the point of view of those whose historical activities are being theorised – in this case the promoters and managers of tenurial change and industrial development. On the basis of this argument the article then makes two distinct but related historical analyses of the Gàidhealtachd in its second and third parts. The second part of the article demonstrates that proposals and projects to encourage internal or ‘domestic colonization’ and establish colonies in the area were prominent and recurrent in Scottish and British political discourse from the middle of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. The third part of the article then examines whether attitudes towards Gaels in Scotland during the period when ‘domestic colonization’ was taking place are typical of those found towards the colonized. The analysis in the third part first examines more generally held views about the nature and character of Gaels at this time; then it analyses views expressed by prominent estate and Government administrators who were active in the Gàidhealtachd. In exploring the existence of colonialism in relation to the late modern Gàidhealtachd this article’s argument does not articulate indigenous perspectives on the historical events that it outlines, although such perspectives are essential for a fuller and more just picture of colonial relations. It concentrates only on the statements of those who came to govern the area’s land and natural resources, and on writers who may have provided ideological inspiration for the actions undertaken by those governors. This is because ideologically ‘colonialism’ is a concept developed within the political philosophies of particular European and Western societies in the modern period to describe the means and manner by which those societies sought to impose their forms of rule, and their cultural, social, political, economic and juridical norms, on other societies and their resources.20 In consequence, among those who experienced its imposition we should not expect to find, initially at least, the view they were being made subject to colonial relations. Colonized peoples encountered their colonizers from within their own conceptual and practical worldviews and it was from within those worldviews that they first attempted to make sense of the actions and attitudes of their colonizers. However, this article’s conclusion does address a native point of view, relating perspectives made by Gaels in public life on some of the contemporary consequences of the historical processes that the article

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Colonialism and the Clearances examines, and comparing those perspectives with contemporary views from the scholars of some externally colonized peoples. Internal colonialism as analogy, and as a reality Osterhammel specifically includes the study of internal colonialism in Scotland, Ireland and Wales in his suggestion that within the general concept of colonialism there might be ‘colonialism without colonies’ between ‘dominant centers’ and ‘dependent peripheries’ inside nation states or regionally integrated land empires. Drawing on Robert J. Hind’s important review article which makes a general critique of the ‘internal colonial concept’ as used by Hechter and other scholars, Osterhammel considers that the idea of colonization internal to states might ‘strain the concept of colonialism’.21 Hind’s argument is that because the ‘internal colonial concept’ is used to describe situations where ‘the colonizing and colonized sections of society live in the same country’ it necessarily ‘derives from analogies’. This comparative approach is necessary, according to Hind, because the internal colonial concept usually has to exclude traditional features of colonialism such as the assumption of geographical separation and of an entire population imposing its will on an extraterritorial society. Instead, internal colonial theses focus on a more limited range of characteristics of conventional colonialism, such as ‘political subjection, economic exploitation, cultural domination and racial exclusion’. By doing so, he suggests, they arguably impose onto a society an ‘artificial analogy’ which can be considered ‘obscurantist and misleading’. By this he means that situations of conventional ‘external’ colonialism ‘can be clearly seen as they affect external communities’. However, for areas like the Gàidhealtachd ‘there can be no similar certainty that internal colonialism took place’ because the relationship of domination is unfolding within the sovereign territory of the dominant power. He adds that this lack of certainty creates a particular problem for historians engaging with the concept for they are accustomed to require documentary proof that something has in fact taken place.22 Postcolonial accounts of the Gàidhealtachd have sought to avoid the dilemma of addressing whether the area has actually been subject to colonialism by explicitly eschewing historical or political analysis in favour of examining ‘certain discursive and ideological patterns’ found in inter- or transcultural encounters which are not necessarily limited to colonial situations. However, despite taking this approach in her important postcolonial analysis of Scottish Gaelic poetry, Silke Stroh could nevertheless conclude that there is a special emphasis in ‘Celtic Fringe postcolonialism . . . on deconstruction of traditional binarisms between (ex-)colonizer and (ex-)colonized’, and that ‘the struggle for the decolonization of the Scottish Gaelic world seems far from over’.23 If these conclusions are to make sense, they must be taken to mean that some historical process of colonization has actually happened within Scotland. Without acknowledging and coming 27

Iain MacKinnon to grips with such a process it seems meaningless to claim that a struggle can currently be taking place for ‘decolonization of the Gaelic world’. Such conclusions require of Stroh the historical or political analysis that she sought to avoid. One means of resolving her dilemma would be to avoid using terms like ‘colonize’ or ‘decolonize’ altogether, a strategy which would seem to remove the pith from the postcolonial approach. Another means is the approach taken in the present article which does not reject the comparative evaluations drawn out of theoretical frameworks such as Hechter’s and postcolonial research. Instead it seeks to augment them with a methodology rooted in trying to recover the beliefs and point of view of those people whose actions are being studied in a particular context. This latter approach follows the exhortation by Anglo-Scottish historian of political thought Quentin Skinner that the historical task should ‘be conceived as that of trying so far as possible to think as our ancestors thought and to see things their way’. In terms of understanding the Gàidhealtachd as a site of colonization, this approach seeks to recover the point of view and beliefs of those historical agents who were responsible for promoting and implementing projects of land use change and industrial development (such as the establishment of fisheries that utilised the dispossessed population) in the area. In order to do so, Skinner argues, ‘historians have no option but to begin by assuming that what people actually talk about provides us with the most reliable guide to their beliefs’.24 Accordingly, this approach does not focus on evidence from the historical record as data to be selected by the researcher to assess the merit of an internal colonial or postcolonial theory for the Gàidhealtachd. Instead, it considers the evidence as publically available statements of the views of the historical agents being examined and which can be used to disclose whether those agents themselves believed that their work constituted acts of colonization. By adopting this approach we can address the question that Hind’s critique raises in relation to internal colonialism in the late modern Gàidhealtachd: if social, political and cultural relations in the area at that time do conform to Hechter’s internal colonial model (and subsequent historical analyses appear to suggest they do25 ), then is there documentary proof to demonstrate that those who were responsible for promoting and managing radical changes in the ways that the area’s land and natural resources were being governed believed that their agenda was to colonize the area? If such ‘documentary proof ’ exists, then it appears difficult in this case to sustain Hind’s critique that internal colonialism works by way of ‘artificial analogy’ to external colonial relations. The existence of an explicit colonizing agenda would enable us to relate the actions and attitudes of those promoting and implementing the colonization of the Gàidhealtachd to more general theoretical perspectives about colonization and colonialism.26 If such evidence of colonization as policy and practice exists, and it can also be shown that cultural attitudes typical of colonial situations were being employed against those being made subject to the colonizers’ projects, then it seems reasonable to contend that the late modern Gàidhealtachd is a site of internal colonialism. 28

Colonialism and the Clearances Policies and projects to colonize the Gàidhealtachd There is some evidence that proponents and implementers of policies and projects of territorial redistribution in the first half of the eighteenth century believed that their work was for the development of colonies and colonization.27 However, it is after the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden in 1746 that explicitly expressed proposals and projects for colonization become more apparent. The estates of prominent Jacobite supporters were forfeited to the Crown to be governed by the Board for the Annexed Estates. Andrew MacKillop has described this as ‘the most ambitious and high-profile agency of government intervention in the Highlands in the second half of the eighteenth century’. Led by Andrew Fletcher, the former Lord Justice Clerk, the Board’s commissioners had been set the task of ‘civilising the inhabitants on the said estates, and other parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’. One of the means by which they set about this task was to develop what the Commission’s reports call ‘colonies’ of demobilised soldiers and sailors upon the forfeited estates. On their Perthshire holdings the colonies included those at Streilitz, Auchterarder, Borland Bogg and several at Callendar.28 MacKillop has argued that it is among the colonies of the Annexed Estates – which were equated to the colonia established by the Roman empire ‘in order to pacify local populations and act as recruiting stations for imperial defence’ – that the beginning of the crofting system of tenure can be found and that the Board’s ‘true significance’ is as a state intervention initiating policies of land tenure for settlement that foreshadowed the general move towards crofting tenure. One of the commissioners, the MP Gilbert Elliot, appears to have regarded these individual settlements as part of one larger colonial project, writing in 1755 that ‘we have opened the Commission for the forfeited estates and flatter ourselves that under our protection a loyal, well policed colony will flourish’. MacKillop concluded that internal colonization using demobilised soldiers and sailors failed in part because of poor planning and in part because the settlers were ill-prepared for their new lives as colonists.29 MacKillop’s argument that crofting tenure originated in the settler colonies of the Annexed Estates, and that military recruitment had a central role in its development, has been elaborated further by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson. He contests the idea that crofting tenure developed purely as an economic strategy and claims instead it has origins as a practical project based on an Enlightenment ideology of moral and natural improvement. In this view the introduction of the crofting system was as a means of organising processes of internal or domestic colonization to ‘improve’ society and nature. One of the most ambitious schemes along these lines was Lord Kames’ colonization project on Flanders Moss, a peat moss on his family estate near Blair Drummond, where he settled hundreds of Gaels, entrusting them with long leases and encouraging ‘hard labor’ among them to bring peat moss into cultivation from ‘waste’ land. Albritton Jonsson believes that it was Lord Kames’ experience of 29

Iain MacKinnon the crofting schemes on the Annexed Estates, of which he was a commissioner, that inspired the project but that it was not so much targeted at ex-soldiers as at ‘the moral community of Highlanders’ generally. He concluded: ‘Internal colonization created a form of moral reservation, where Gaelic virtues could survive and flourish, even in the midst of fundamental agrarian change’.30 Albritton Jonsson’s important analysis discloses the wide currency of these ideas among Scottish elites and the development of a range of practical projects of internal colonization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The forfeited estates commission’s military settlements were just one project within the wider subjection of the post-Culloden Gàidhealtachd to internal colonization. Another was the creation in the 1750s of manufacturing and educational colonies at Lochcarron and Glenmoriston. Like the military project, both of these also appear to have been unsuccessful despite the Lochcarron colony being supported by the Manufacturing Board and the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge.31 However, the idea of colonizing the Gàidhealtachd was tenacious and attractive. It was raised again in the 1780s, both for land and for sea, its advocates playing on economic fears arising from the loss of British colonies in North America. For the sea, in 1786 the writer and advocate of improvement, John Knox, proposed the erection of fishing stations, claiming that these would establish ‘a thriving, populous colony in these extreme parts of our island’ benefitting commerce and national security.32 His work helped inspire the creation of the British Fisheries Society in 1786 and their establishment of four fishing villages, of which one was at Ullapool in Wester Ross. The Ullapool development was trenchantly criticised by Sir George Mackenzie of Coul who said that the Society had been given ‘mistaken data’ which had led them to overinvest in a venture that, in his view, had turned Ullapool into ‘a nest of wickedness’. He added: ‘Thus upwards of L.20,000 have been, I may say, uselessly sunk; and this colony, which lately consisted of nearly 700 persons, has become a burden on the public’. Regardless of their views on the enterprise itself, MacKenzie and Knox were in agreement that it was a colonial enterprise. Proposals and discussion on the merits of fishing colonies in the Gàidhealtachd continued throughout the nineteenth century.33 For the land, in 1785 a Perthshire farmer, David Young, with an optimism typical of many ‘improvers’, proposed ‘that a considerable number of new colonies might be planted among ourselves, as it is evident that Great Britain may be made so as to produce ten times the quantity of every-thing it does at present’. If there were a number of little houses built upon the corner of any part of an estate, with small enclosures behind each, managed with the spade . . . they might turn out very much to the account of the proprietor, and tend much to population.

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Colonialism and the Clearances Young claimed that if his ‘plan was put in execution, the Highlands and Islands might maintain more than double the number of inhabitants they do at present’. The population of these ‘infant-colonies’, he said, would not be full-time farmers. Instead, ‘all kinds of manufacturers’ should be encouraged to settle. Such settlements could also, he argued, be created in order to bring waste ground into cultivation. His book on the subject received more than 300 subscriptions, including from the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Professor John Anderson of Glasgow University, the duke of Atholl, the earl of Breadalbane, senators of the College of Justice and many landlords and factors.34 This was another iteration of ‘domestic colonization’ for agricultural improvement. Sir George MacKenzie of Coul also poured scorn on this kind of development. He condemned several methods of wasteland cultivation, including one he had tried himself by settling ‘eight or ten crofters on a piece of waste ground’ with ‘a promise of a lease without rent and a guinea for every half acre they cultivated, on condition that they should improve at least half an acre every year’. They did not exhibit the enthusiasm he had hoped for and he was ‘obliged to dismiss them’. Of such schemes, he concluded, ‘the result in every case of this kind must be exactly the same’.35 The crofting system, that is, the attempt to bring waste-land into cultivation, by means of our superfluous population, in any of the ways just mentioned, must be condemned, even supposing that, in a certain degree, success attended it, and that the land was broken up.36 Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, one of the most prominent advocates of the principles of ‘improvement’ and the first president of the Board of Agriculture, established colonies for wasteland agriculture on his Caithness estate. In an appendix to the 1812 ‘General View of Agriculture’ in Caithness he published an essay with advice – based on his own experiences – directed towards estates ‘in the northern part of Scotland’ on how to ‘improve an extensive property’. He warned of significant challenges that had ‘rendered it impossible, in many cases, to do more, than to lay the foundation of Improvement’. So strenuous were these circumstances that the venture ‘resembles a system calculated for the establishment of a new colony, or the improvement of a great province, than a private estate’. Sinclair reported that poor climate and a lack of markets, roads and harbours all hampered his efforts, as did the need to make ‘a total alteration to the situation, habits and prejudices of the former occupiers’ of the land being improved. An initial part of his work, he wrote, had been to establish ‘a new colony of farmers, on a barren waste’ on the estate.37 Captain John Henderson, author of the Caithness report, noted that as sheep farming had increased on Sinclair’s estate he had ‘removed the tenants, who occupied the inland parts of the Langwell estate, and placed them in new colonies near the sea shore, with small lots of land, where they were employed as fishermen or day-labourers’.38 This is substantially the same policy as subsequently employed 31

Iain MacKinnon by the Sutherland Estate, which was under the control of Sir John Sinclair’s first cousin the countess of Sutherland, even down to the ‘two Scotch acres’ offered by both landlords to the tenants who had been ‘removed’. Whereas Sinclair had described the governance of an estate as being like that of a colony, James Loch, the commissioner of the Sutherland Estate, described his task in terms of the governance of ‘a small kingdom’.39 However, Eric Richards has concluded of Loch’s attitude to his work that ‘To Loch it was evidently a kind of colonization of the Highlands’. According to Richards, Loch’s predecessor as Sutherland Estate commissioner, William Young, who was in partnership with Patrick Sellar, repeatedly referred to the Sutherland Estate as ‘the new colony’.40 Sir John Sinclair had other, and bigger, colonial aspirations than wasteland reclamation, proposing to the Crown a plan for ‘The Royal Colony of Scrabster’ on common land there. The plan was to ‘erect a village for labouring people, and to divide the remainder into small farms’. The village would be of 100 houses with three acres of land attached to each – enough for ‘each settler to keep a cow’. The land would be worked by spade. There would be 250 small farms of 10 acres each and the people of the colony would also be expected to fish. Sinclair regarded his plans as part of a much greater regional project which the legislature was undertaking by its proposals to take forward the Caledonian Canal ‘and for making roads, and building bridges, in the northern counties, under the direction of Commissioners appointed to oversee the expenditure of the money’.41 ‘A foundation has thus been laid for a new system, not of foreign, but of domestic colonization, which will be found infinitely preferable to the cultivation of distant settlements’.42 Perhaps on the basis of these experiences, his exhaustive 1814 report The Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland explicitly equated ‘improvement’ with ‘colonization’. Parliament’s decision to attend to ‘the improvement of the more northern parts of the kingdom’ with roads, harbours and the Caledonian Canal, said the report, was ‘in other words. . . to colonize at home’.43 Albritton Jonsson has concluded that ‘the fashion for peatbog moss improvement seems to have reached its height during the first decade of the nineteenth century’.44 However, if anything, debate and practice on wasteland cultivation as a form of domestic colonization – and not only in the Gàidhealtachd – appears to have escalated throughout the first half of the century and was still being discussed in relation to the Gàidhealtachd in the 1880s.45 Plans for penal colonies in the Westerns Isles were being made from at least the mid-nineteenth century and were still being mooted in the second half of the twentieth.46 Moreover, the grand project that Sinclair had depicted in the Gàidhealtachd was examined and then proposed by successive British parliamentary committees on Ireland, and a programme of public works put into effect in Ireland in the 1820s, including ‘a domestic colonization of a population in excess in certain districts’.47 32

Colonialism and the Clearances It is clear that the language of colonization was widely expressed by Government officials and agricultural improvers in the course of describing their plans and projects in the Gàidhealtachd. These words and actions demonstrate that industrial development and land tenure change in the area was being widely conceived and implemented as a project of colonization. In relation to Hind’s critique of the ‘internal colonial concept’, we do not need to look back at the evidence of promoters and practitioners of land tenure and industrial development in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Gàidhealtachd and interpret them as if they were lobbying for, creating and implementing colonization in the area. No ‘artificial analogy’ is required. They understood their work to be projects of colonization within a project of colonization proceeding with the support of the British imperial state. This article’s introduction also set the question as to whether land use changes and territorial dispossession in the late modern Gàidhealtachd can be understood in terms of the ‘exploitation’ or ‘settlement’ colony types delineated by Osterhammel. Where indigenous and non-indigenous landlords brought in permanently resident overseers and other employees from elsewhere to run their affairs they may be thought of as creating what Osterhammel calls ‘settlement colonies’ on their estates in the Gàidhealtachd. Where landlords employed temporarily resident Lowland administrators to utilise the remaining indigenous population for economic ends they can be seen as creating ‘exploitation colonies’. The two forms might sit together on the one estate. For instance, to the degree that an improving landlord like the countess of Sutherland or Sir John Sinclair sought to expel the indigenous population from inland straths and replace them there with Lowland farmers they can be understood to have created ‘settlement colonies’ in those straths; to the degree that they wanted to move the cleared local populations to new areas within their estate for the reclamation of ‘waste’ ground, or to the coast in order to engage them in kelping or fishing, they may be thought of as creating ‘exploitation colonies’.48 Osterhammel observed that the logic of colonial policies in a territory might change in relation to circumstances local, national or international – the renewed availability of barilla in Britain after the Napoleonic Wars might be thought of as an example relevant to the Gàidhealtachd – and the particular type of colony required by those controlling the situation might therefore change in relation to these circumstances. Colonial ideology in the modern Gàidhealtachd It is clear that colonization existed as a policy and practice in the late modern Gàidhealtachd, albeit that policies and practices were subject to change. Such changes within colonies rest on what Osterhammel calls the constant that underpins variation: ‘the unchanging complex of rule, exploitation and cultural conflict in ethnically heterogeneous political structures that had been created by influence from without’. In his view at the heart of the conflict was a set 33

Iain MacKinnon of beliefs and attitudes among those in charge that they possessed different and superior cultural traits to those whose lives they were ruling and whose lands and resources they were exploiting.49 For these changes applied to the land were not simply for economic exploitation; they were also deliberate attempts at culture change through the introductions of a group of people with one set of cultural assumptions, affiliations and habits to exercise power over and to change the way of living of another group of people who thought and acted differently. Such campaigns of cultural transformation were buttressed by ideological formations which regarded the colonized population as inferior, thus justifying the necessity of rule by the colonizers. Postcolonial scholarship has emphasised that in colonial situations where the subject people were of a different race or a minority indigenous people existed, ‘the ideology of race was . . . a crucial part of the construction and naturalization of an unequal form of intercultural relations’.50 Several studies have examined the development of a racial ideology towards Gaels in late modern Scotland and one important work, Krisztina Fenyö’s, has linked this ideology to their removal from their lands. Colin Kidd’s analyses of racialised discourse in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland distinguish between ‘racialism’ and ‘racism’. For Kidd, ‘racialism’ is the belief that biologically or ethnically salient differences exist between groups of people to the degree that these groups can be construed as different ‘races’. ‘Racism’, in his view, is prejudice about the relative superiority or inferiority of these groups that builds on the belief in racial difference.51 Kidd believes that racialised understandings of human difference within Scotland can be traced to the late eighteenth century and the work of Lord Kames – who extensively practiced internal colonization on his own estates in order to regenerate agriculture and ‘the moral community of Highlanders’.52 Partially in response to the Ossianic controversy, Kames ‘depicted sentimental Celts as the founders of civilized, commercial Great Britain’ and as the source of his aspirations for ‘eighteenth century Britain’s national character’.53 Shortly thereafter, John Pinkerton’s History of Scotland proposed a starkly contrasting argument to Kames’, but also based on a racial division between ‘Highlander’ and ‘Lowlander’ which extended from the ‘Celtic’ and ‘Teutonic’ past. If racism is defined in Kidd’s terms – as prejudice based on a belief in ethnic or biological group characteristics – then Pinkerton was a racist.54 Of Scottish Gaels Pinkerton wrote: But the Highlanders . . . had been so contaminated with a Celtic mixture in Ireland, that . . . in laziness, filth, and every species of savageness, they have been always hardly distinguishable from the savages of Ireland. In all ages of our history they are marked as the savages of Scotland.55 Following a reference to the early seventeenth-century colonisation of Lewis, Pinkerton proposes a policy for dealing with Gaels which is similar to the injunction to ‘colonize at home’ made in Sir John Sinclair’s Agricultural Report a few years later. Pinkerton wrote: ‘In vain would we excite industry among savages; 34

Colonialism and the Clearances the point is to colonize the country afresh’.56 He is reiterating this policy from earlier in his inquiry where he adds to the centuries old trope among Lowland writers of describing Gaels as animals: Had all these Celtic cattle emigrated five centuries ago, how happy had it been for the country! All we can do now is plant colonies among them; and by this, and encouraging their emigration, try to get rid of the breed.57 Attitudes towards ‘race’ changed in the course of the nineteenth century. Early in the century many believed that ‘racial’ characteristics were malleable. However, influenced by ideas in the natural science of biology, an alternative view developed later in the century that populations, or races, were ‘identifiable on the basis of inherent, invariable characteristics’.58 One of the foremost theorists of this idea was the anatomist Robert Knox. He outlined his views in the The Races of Men where he wrote that the ‘possible conversion of one race into another I hold to be a statement contradicted by all history’.59 Knox, a Lowland Scot, described himself as a ‘Saxon’ and throughout the book he positioned the ‘Celt’ as a foil for Saxon progress: To me the Caledonian Celt of Scotland appears a race as distinct from the Lowland Saxon of the same country, as any two races can possibly be: as negro from American; Hottentot from Caffre; Esquimaux from Saxon.60 From his studies he believed he had uncovered the characteristics of the Celtic race: . . . idleness, indolence, slavery; a mental slavery, the most dreadful of all human conditions. See him cling to the banks of rivers, fearing to plunge into the forest; without self-reliance; without self-confidence . . . I appeal to the Saxon men of all countries whether I am right or not in my estimate of the Celtic character. Furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a hatred for order and patient industry; no accumulative habits; restless, treacherous, uncertain.61 Knox was not modest about the results of his work, claiming that ‘the character of the Celt is now fully understood’. Having established to his satisfaction the Celtic character he turned his thoughts to the future of Britain’s contemporary Celts. He argued that learned men were debating whether their future was one of assimilation or extinction. Knox’s own preference was for ‘the quiet and gradual extinction of the Celtic race . . . As a Saxon, I abhor all dynasties, monarchies and bayonet governments, but this latter seems to be the only one suitable for the Celtic man’.62 For Knox, the question was not whether but ‘how to dispose of them’? His answer: ‘The race should be forced from the soil’ and their lands sold ‘to Saxon men’. It is a powerful measure. It has succeeded seemingly against some of the dark races of men, whom it has brought to the verge of destruction. Caffre and 35

Iain MacKinnon Hottentot, Tasmanian and American: why not against a fair race – the Celtic natives of Ireland, Wales, and Caledonia, for they must be classed together? They are one; the same fate, whatever it be, awaits all.63 Krisztina Fenyö’s investigation of Lowland perceptions of the Gàidhealtachd in the 1840s and 1850s argues that the rapid expansion of newspapers in the mid-nineteenth century made them a powerful force in helping to shape public opinion. Fenyö argues that by the middle of the century Scottish newspapers were helping to spread the idea that irreconcilable differences existed between ‘Highlanders’ and ‘Lowlanders’. She believes that the ideas promulgated by Knox and others had been disseminated widely enough that by 1851, when the McNeill Report into the potato famine in the Highlands was published, a spate of virulent newspaper reports and editorials appeared proclaiming the ‘ethnic inferiority’ of the Celt who needed to be ‘improved out’ of the Highlands and Islands. These articles, she claims, amounted to a theory of ‘race decay’. Fenyö writes: ‘Practice soon followed theory. Extensive emigration schemes and unprecedentedly brutal evictions ensued, becoming the predominant features until the mid 1850s.’64 The notion of Celtic inferiority was given the stamp of approval by Charles Darwin in the 1870s. In The Descent of Man Darwin characterised the Celt as ‘reckless, degraded and often vicious’ and approvingly quoted William Rathbone Greg, whose work inspired the eugenics movement in the UK: Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts – and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of the Saxons that remained.65 Although this opinion does not prescribe what should be done with Celts who people a land, it makes clear that if given leave to remain they would generate a degraded society compared with that of the Saxons. Cumulatively, the foregoing analysis discloses that Gaels in Scotland, in the guise of their perceived ‘Celtic’ identity, were subject to a general degrading racialised discourse during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and that this discourse contained arguments advocating their removal and replacement on their lands. This conclusion raises more particular questions as to whether those who were administering land and natural resources in the area at that time also held race-based explanations of human differences, and what connection these views might have had with the policies they enacted. Most of the ideologists represented in the first part of this analysis of cultural attitudes were expressing their views based on little or no experience of conditions in the Gàidhealtachd. However, the perspectives of those analysed in this second part – the policy administrators James Loch, Patrick Sellar and Sir Charles Trevelyan – were based on significant experience on the ground in the area or of practical engagement in the area’s politics. Osterhammel has argued that 36

Colonialism and the Clearances a key principle of colonialist ideology on the ground was the notion of cultural superiority which was engrained in the lay psychology of colonial expatriates. This psychology was applied on an everyday basis and based on ‘a series of characterological generalizations: the “natives” were said to be lazy, shiftless, cruel, playful, naïve, dissolute, duplicitous, incapable of abstract thought, impulsive etc’. Their assumed cultural superiority, he contends, meant that the rulers of modern European colonies generally believed that they had ‘two moral duties: to bring the blessings of Western civilization to [local] inhabitants . . . and to activate neglected resources in backward countries for the general benefit of the world economy’. In this view, colonized peoples needed the colonizers’ support ‘economically, since work ethics and basic economic skills would have to be instilled in the populace, and culturally, since Africans and Asians would be incapable of freeing themselves of their usual bad habits, “superstitious” ideas, and misguided moral behaviour’.66 James Loch’s justification for his work in Sutherland bears striking resemblance. He wrote that his duties were also two-fold: . . . it was, in the first place, to render this mountainous district contributory, as far as it was possible, to the general wealth of the country . . . and, in the second place, to convert the inhabitants of those districts to the habits of regular and continued industry.67 The second duty was hampered because Gaels, in Loch’s view, were ‘not an industrious race’ and, when not engaging in illicit distilling and other illegal pursuits, spent their time ‘in indolence and sloth’. Moreover, he believed that the people’s Gaelic language presented a barrier ‘to the improvement and civilization of the district, wherever it may prevail’. They were also inured to living in ‘filth’. Such was his view of their condition that he concluded: ‘No country of Europe at any period of its history, ever presented more formidable obstacles to the improvement of a people’ – and he made clear that he was not referring to obstacles of geography and climate but to obstacles of psychology and habit.68 However, Loch’s view was apparently that ‘race’ was malleable rather than fixed and so, despite the formidable obstacles that Gaels’ racial characteristics presented to him, he reckoned that it would only take a few years before ‘the character of this whole population will be completely changed’ such that the ‘children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers’. Loch’s intention here seems similar to that of Sir John Sinclair who had argued for the need to make ‘a total alteration to the situation, habits and prejudices’ of the people subject to his removal policies. Therefore, in parallel to the previously mentioned similarity in stated policies of land redistribution on the Sutherland Estate and Sinclair’s estate, there also appears to be a similarity in stated intended outcomes – the transformation of a people. The idea that improvement was as much, in Loch’s words, ‘the improvement of a people’ as the improvement of land and agriculture was common to internal and external colonization projects of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Writing about the dispossession 37

Iain MacKinnon of indigenous people on the west coast of Canada in that century, Cole Harris has observed that a ‘discourse that treated colonial land as waste awaiting development and its inhabitants as backward and lazy, was exceedingly serviceable’ because it enabled ‘the improvement of a people’s habits and land uses to become a cultural imperative’.69 Osterhammel argues that the belief that colonizers were bringing the blessings of Western civilisation to the colonized sometimes developed into a doctrine of trusteeship or guardianship of the ‘“responsibility” of the higher status minority . . . toward the underdeveloped majority . . . Colonial rule was glorified as the gift and act of grace of civilization, and was respected as humanitarian intervention’. At other points colonial ideology developed such that it became ‘stylized grandiosely as the fulfillment of a universal mission: as a contribution to a divine plan for the salvation of the pagans, as a secular mandate to “civilize” the “barbarians” or “savages”’.70 Such distinctly colonial attitudes may be discerned in the writings of Patrick Sellar. In 1816 he described the Gaelic language as ‘barbarous jargon of the times when Europe was possessed by savages’. The Sutherland people’s continued use of Gaelic made them in ‘relation to the enlightened nations of Europe in a position not very different from that betwixt the American colonists and the Aborigines of that Country’. The cultures of both were, in his view, inherently inferior and required civilised intervention.71 Eric Richards believes that Sellar’s understanding of his work in Sutherland attained the level of a mysticism: Sellar invoked the inexorable forces of ‘Improvement’ for this great Enlightenment Project, all for the furtherance of human civilization. It was a gospel, the logic of which had sanctioned and ordained the clearances, and Sellar merely articulated its truth and beauty. It required the destruction of the last vestiges of the old feudal world, the liquidation of the old society.72 For Sellar, then, the dispossession of Gaelic Scotland was ‘the fulfillment of a universal mission’; ‘a contribution to a divine plan’; a mandate to ‘civilize’ the ‘savages’. Sir Charles Trevelyan, one of the key figures in the government’s famine relief efforts in the mid-nineteenth century subsequently led the Highlands and Islands Emigration Society. His proposed ‘final settlement’ for the area was to transport some 30–40,000 of its people to Australia. Krisztina Fenyö believes that this plan had ‘a clearly racist motivation’. In place of the Gaels Trevelyan proposed to introduce ‘orderly, moral, industrious and frugal’ Germans who would be, he wrote, ‘less foreign to us than the Irish or Scotch Celt’ and assimilate more readily with ‘our body politic’.73 T. M. Devine has characterised the Emigration Society that Trevelyan led as a ‘quasi-governmental organisation carrying out a substantial programme of emigration which the government of the day was unwilling to undertake officially and directly because of constraints of both ideology and cost’.74 Devine has also argued that, from today’s perspective, Trevelyan’s approach to the 38

Colonialism and the Clearances Gàidhealtachd ‘might be described as a strategy of ethnic cleansing’.75 It appears that, for Sir Charles Trevelyan, James Loch and Patrick Sellar, racialist and racist ideologies were integral to their worldviews and were utilised by them to justify policies and practices of internal colonization in the Gàidhealtachd.76 *** This article has demonstrated that promoters and managers of projects involving land use change, territorial dispossession and industrial development in the late modern Gàidhealtachd conceived of their work as internal or ‘domestic colonization’. It has also shown that the territorial and social relations established by those projects are consistent with the characteristics of ‘exploitation’ and ‘settlement’ colonies delineated by Osterhammel in his overview of colony types. Finally, it has disclosed that attitudes of cultural superiority typical of colonial situations were being expressed by prominent racialist and racist ideologues towards the Gàidhealtachd’s indigenous population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that these attitudes were also displayed by land administrators on the ground as they implemented policies to remove the native people from their lands, often replacing them with culturally different groups. There is little reason to doubt that those who prepared and carried out these radical changes to land arrangements in the late modern Gàidhealtachd genuinely believed that their work would improve the lives of a benighted people and integrate them into a better society. However, neither ‘clearance’ – which simply refers to the displacement of people from their lands – nor ‘improvement’ – if the term is considered primarily as principles and practices of a ‘new agronomy’ – are conceptually sufficient to apprehend the nature and the consequences of this process of integration. Even when considered in its wider ideological sense, a historiography of ‘improvement’ cannot help but privilege the perspectives of those who considered themselves the bearers of that term’s values. The meaning that inheres in the term itself – the strength of the ideas and beliefs it has generated and their power to transform history – may predispose Scottish historians to be dazzled by the Enlightenment project of which ‘improvement’ became part, and to be blind to its many shadows. Relatedly, we may become predisposed to imagine that policies and projects for governing land and natural resources unfolding in the late modern Gàidhealtachd were primarily part of a process of social integration, thus eliding the fact that, when considered within their racist and imperial contexts, these were policies and projects that colonized, marginalised and expelled an indigenous people from lands which constituted their home and a great part of the meaning of their lives. Holding this ‘improvement’ predisposition we may not fully apprehend the human cost of the fact that these policies and projects were also founded on the belief that the meaning of those people’s lives was, itself, unimproved and required, in Sinclair’s words, ‘a total alteration to the[ir] situation, habits and prejudices’. Disclosing such a predisposition may help us come to see that the internal colonization of 39

Iain MacKinnon the Gàidhealtachd was not, primarily, a process of integration but, instead, was a major contribution to a historical process of social and cultural disintegration. According to the ethnographer John MacInnes, this disintegration has left Scottish Gaels today living in cultural and social ‘detritus’.77 The same conclusion has been expressed by the poet Iain Crichton Smith, who in his bitter, trenchant and incisive essay ‘Real people in a real place’, written in 1982, denounced the historical ‘interior colonization’ and growing materialism that he believed had left Gaels in a cultural milieu increasingly ‘empty and without substance’. I recall with a sense of injustice my own fragmented life, the choices I had to make when I didn’t realise I was making them, the losses I endured before I well knew I was enduring them, the contradictions I was involved in before I knew they existed . . . my own life has been a snake pit of contradictions, because of an accident of geography and a hostile history. Invoking and reworking a question asked by bards at the time of the late 19th century land struggle – ‘Shall Gaelic die?’ – Crichton Smith answers with another question: ‘Shall Gaelic die! What that means is: shall we die?’ He placed education in the centre of this snake pit, and emphasised its role in creating among Gaels ‘a deep and subtle feeling that English must be superior to Gaelic’. The many confusions engendered by this feeling meant that for a Gael ‘he [sic] is in fact, and must be, the divided man in the very depths of his consciousness’.78 Such views resonate with perspectives on colonization now being made by writers and scholars of colonized peoples. From the perspective of colonial Kenya, the G˜ık˜uy˜u novelist and scholar Ng˜ug˜ı Wa Thiong’o has argued that economic and political control ‘can never be complete without mental control’ and that colonialism’s ‘most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world’. This control was achieved, he writes, through the colonial child’s immersion in the imperial education system and its cultural norms which ‘resulted in a dissociation of sensibility of that child from his [sic] natural and social environment, what we might call colonial alienation’.79 Exposing the role of education and other modes of colonial power in engendering alienation from the ground of one’s own traditional modes of being, has been a central objective of indigenous researchers, according to the Maori scholar and indigenous researcher, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in her path-breaking book Decolonizing Methodologies. These researchers try ‘to understand the complex ways in which people were brought within the imperial system’ and analyse ‘how we were colonized . . . what that has meant for our immediate past and what it means for our present and future’. The fundamental objective of such work is not academic but instead begins with ‘a very powerful need to give testimony to and restore a spirit, to bring back into existence a world fragmented and dying’. For Tuhiwai Smith the purpose of indigenous scholarship is to restore the ontological space in which the ground of indigenous peoples’ own different 40

Colonialism and the Clearances modes of being can be maintained. She writes that ‘we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity’, to ‘retrieve what we were and remake ourselves’. In this agenda, ‘coming to know the past has been part of the critical pedagogy of decolonization’. Revisiting ‘site by site, our history under Western eyes’ in order to transform ‘our colonized views of our own history (as written by the West)’ is necessary, argues Tuhiwai Smith, because the impact of that history ‘is still being felt’.80 Crichton Smith would surely have agreed. From the perspectives articulated by indigenous scholars, the emerging historiography disclosing the Scottish Gàidhealtachd as a site of internal colonization over many centuries – a historiography of which this article forms a part – may also be understood as a contribution to the decolonization of the Gaels of Scotland. Such contributions are being made not only in order to retrieve what we were and recover ourselves now, but also, in so doing, to support the opening of creative spaces in which recovering Gaels can develop a sense of our own authentic humanity. These are spaces in which we can take up the work of restoring and reworking traditional modes of being and of agency; of re-imagining and re-making a future, by way of our own lights. Notes 1. I am grateful to Ionad Eachdraidh aig Oilthigh na Gàidhealtachd agus nan Eilean (The Centre for History at the University of the Highlands and Islands), for organising ‘Land and People in Northern Scotland – the Strathnaver Conference’ which was held in Am Blàran Odhar (Bettyhill) in September 2014. The paper I presented there has become this article and attending allowed me to receive useful comments and constructive criticism, both at the conference itself and following. I am also grateful to Comann-rannsachaidh air Eachdraidh nan Gàidheal ann an Alba (The Discussion Group on the History of the Gaels in Scotland) at Glasgow University, for the opportunity to have an early draft of this paper discussed at one of its meetings. I would particularly like to thank Dr Aonghas MacCoinnich and Dr Martin MacGregor whose immensely useful (and challenging) commentaries on a later draft of the paper caused me to radically rework the piece. I would also like to thank the two reviewers on behalf of Northern Scotland as well as the editor of this special edition, Dr. Elizabeth Ritchie. Their comments have also considerably strengthened content and structure. Dr Andrew Wiseman also offered some very useful suggestions to a late draft. Any remaining mistakes are my responsibility. 2. Aside from instances in which the term ‘Highlands and Islands’ has been specifically used in works cited, the term ‘Gàidhealtachd’ is used in preference to ‘Highlands and Islands’ throughout this article. This reflects the work’s focus on the experiences of the Gaels of the Highlands and Islands area in the modern period. However, there seems to be no reason why a similar analysis could not be attempted for the area’s people of Nordic descent. Additionally, in the wider British context such analyses may have interpretative traction beyond the Highlands and Islands of Scotland; Barbara Arneil’s work, for instance, suggests forms of internal colonization have been widespread in the late modern period. Barbara Arneil, ‘Liberal colonialism, domestic colonies and citizenship’, History of Political Thought 33 (3) (2012), 491–523.

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Iain MacKinnon 3. Robert J. Hind, ‘The Internal Colonial Concept’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (3) (1984), 543–568, here 553. 4. Eric Richards, The Highland Clearances. People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (Edinburgh, 2000), 4, 6, 7. 5. T. M. Devine, Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700–1900 (Edinburgh, 2006), 1, 7. 6. Eric Richards. History of the Highland Clearances, Vol. 1: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions, 1746–1886 (London, 1982); Robert Hay, How an Island Lost its People: Improvement, Clearance and Resettlement on Lismore 1830–1914 (Lochs, 2013), 14; Sir John Sinclair, General Report of the Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland drawn up for the consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1814) vii, viii; Andrew MacKillop, More Fruitful than the Soil: Army, Empire and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815 (East Linton, 2000), 80–2; Eric Richards, Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances: Homicide, Eviction and the Price of Progress (Edinburgh, 1999), 285, 286; Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance – Constructing the Myth of the Scottish Highlands (Basingstoke, 1989), 3. 7. Allan Macinnes, ‘Commercial landlordism and clearance in the Scottish Highlands: the case of Arichonan’, in J. Pan-Montojo, and F. Pedersen (eds), Communities in European History: Representations, Jurisdictions, Conflicts (Pisa, 2007), 47–64, here 47. 8. Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Princeton, 2005), 4, 15; Arneil, ‘Liberal colonialism’, 491, 492. 9. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000); Julian Goodare, The Government of Scotland 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004); Martin MacGregor, ‘The Statutes of Iona – text and context’, Innes Review 57 (2) (2006), 111–81; Aonghas MacCoinnich, ‘Siol Torcail and their lordship in the sixteenth century’, in Crossing the Minch – Exploring the Links between Skye and the Outer Hebrides (Port of Ness, 2008), 7–32; Alison Cathcart, ‘The Statutes of Iona: the archipelagic context’, Journal of British Studies 49 (1) (2009), 4–27; Martin MacGregor, ‘Civilising Gaelic Scotland: The Scottish Isles and the Stewart empire’, in Éamonn Ó Ciardha and Micheál Ó Siochrú (eds), The Plantation of Ulster: Ideology and Practice (Manchester, 2012) 34–54; Aonghas MacCoinnich, Native and Stranger. Plantation and Civility in the North Atlantic World. The Case of the Northern Hebrides, 1570–1637 (Leiden, 2015). R. A. MacDonald has suggested that the process of ‘internal colonialism’ is also present in relation to the fourteenth-century Gàidhealtachd. R. A. McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles. Scotland’s Western Seaboard c.1000–c.1336 (East Linton, 1997), 139. 10. James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow. Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands,(Edinburgh, 1995), 28, 144; James Hunter, Rights-based Land Reform in Scotland: Making the case in the light of international experience – a discussion paper for Community Land Scotland (Unpublished, 2014), 13; Eric Richards, The Leviathan of Wealth – the Sutherland Fortune in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1973), 285; Eric Richards, ‘Scotland and the uses of the Atlantic empire’, in Bernard Bailyn and Philip.D. Morgan (eds), Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 67–114, here 92–95, 107–111; Richards, Highland Clearances, 79. The third chapter of Richards’ book on Patrick Sellar and the Sutherland Estate is entitled ‘Colonising Sutherland and the Dazzling Plans of 1809’, a reference to the view of the soon-to-be estate commissioner William Young in 1809 that Sutherland was ‘the new colony’ (see also paragraph at n.40, this article). Richards, Patrick Sellar, 59. Other recent historiography on landholding in the modern Gàidhealtachd has tended to take the land risings of the late nineteenth century as a

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Colonialism and the Clearances starting point. The emphasis of major work by Ewen Cameron, Andrew Newby and Annie Tindley looks forward to the consequences of the risings in the twentieth century, rather than back to the structural changes that helped to provoke them. Ewen Cameron, Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880–1925 (East Linton, 1996); Andrew G. Newby, Ireland, Radicalism and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1870–1912 (Edinburgh, 2006); Annie Tindley, The Sutherland Estate, 1850–1920: Aristocratic Decline, Estate Management and Land Reform (Edinburgh, 2010). 11. Osterhammel, Colonialism, 3, 4. 12. David Cannadine, ‘The empire strikes back’, Past and Present, 147 (1) (1995), 180–94, here 183. 13. J. G .A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands. Essays in British History (Cambridge, 2005), 155. 14. Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism. A Historical Introduction (Oxford, 2001), 17. 15. James Tully, ‘The struggles of indigenous peoples of and for freedom’, in Public Philosophy in a New Key. Volume I: Democracy and Civic Freedom (Cambridge, 2008), 36–59; Arneil, ‘Liberal colonialism’; Cole Harris, ‘How did colonialism dispossess? Comments from an edge of empire’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94 (1) (2004), 165–82. Arneil’s analysis suggests that domestic colonies are a development of the nineteenth century. The present article suggests her analysis can be drawn back at least a century further, and affirms her important conclusion that ‘liberal colonialism’ is a phenomenon that must be understood as being central to the constitution of imperial states, as well as to their empires. Arneil, ‘Liberal colonialism’, 522, 523. In particular, and in light of this article’s later discussion of Michael Hechter’s thesis of internal colonialism in Britain’s Celtic fringe, Tully’s theory of ‘internal colonization’ is of interest as it does not treat the ‘internal’ aspect of the colonial process as an ‘artificial analogy’ of external colonization – a criticism levelled at many internal colonial analyses. However, Tully’s theory is based on colonization in North America and covers the whole colonial process there from the moment of ‘first contact’ until the present day. Although deeply insightful, this makes the scope of his theory too large to fit easily with the more restricted period covered by this article. It may, however, have the potential to help disclose the existence of broadly colonial processes and attitudes towards Gaels in Scotland as far back as the eleventh century. I am grateful to Pamela Spalding of Victoria University in Canada for introducing me to Cole Harris’ work. 16. Osterhammel, Colonialism, x, xi, 10–12, 32. 17. Ibid., 4. 18. Ibid., 15, 16. 19. Ibid., 16, 17. 20. Young, Postcolonialism, 17, 26, 27; Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), Postcolonial Studies – The Key Concepts (Abingdon, 2013), 54. 21. Osterhammel’s argument is a little unclear at this point as he describes this form of colonialism first as ‘internal colonialism’ before then describing it as ‘informal colonialism’ without explaining why he has changed the term. Osterhammel, Colonialism, 17. 22. Hind, ‘Internal Colonial Concept’, 552, 553, 555. See also James Hunter, ‘Internal Colonialism Review’, Scottish Historical Review 56(1) (1977), 104. 23. Silke Stroh, Uneasy Subjects: Postcolonialism and Scottish Gaelic Poetry (Amsterdam, 2011), 14, 15, 22, 328, 333. 24. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics Volume 1: Regarding Method (Cambridge, 2002), 47, 51. 25. Several historians of the Gàidhealtachd have developed an ‘internal colonial’ analysis. Allan Macinnes (1988) argued that the cumulative result of tenurial changes was to entrench the Gàidhealtachd as a net exporter of manpower and raw materials such

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Iain MacKinnon that it ‘became an internal colony rather than a beneficiary of empire’. Eric Richards argued that the Gàidhealtachd was ‘essentially semicolonial within the internal British world’ and, moreover, that it became in the eighteenth century ‘an internal colony that served as a demographic and military reservoir for service in the external colonies’ of the British imperial system. Andrew MacKillop proposed that late eighteenth century military recruitment – manpower as a commodity – can be considered the ‘market niche’ of the Gàidhealtachd’s underdeveloped economy and that the area can in this sense be considered an internal colony. Macinnes (in 1996) has since moved away from his initial view, claiming that the case for internal colonialism is only ‘superficial’ as ‘indigenous landlords’ were ‘the principal instruments of economic and social change’ – a point also raised by MacKillop. Macinnes is surely right to emphasise the principal role of indigenous leaders as instruments of internal colonialism, a process whose existence in the seventeenth century Martin MacGregor has noted. However, given that the co-option of local elites is widely recognised as a common feature of colonial situations, it is not clear why Macinnes believes the occurrence of this phenomenon in the Gàidhealtachd negates his original position. Silke Stroh and Robert Young are among the scholars who have commented on native cooperation with imperialism. MacKillop expresses a further doubt about the Gàidhealtachd’s internal colony status. He argues that Gaels’ active role in serving the empire can be seen as an inversion of internal colonization. However, applying the native cooperation observation to, for instance, the deployment of Gurkha regiments in India and elsewhere during the British empire appears to alleviate this doubt. Allan Macinnes, ‘Scottish Gaeldom: the first phase of clearance’, in T. M. Devine and Rosalind Mitchison (eds), People and Society in Scotland Volume 1, 1760–1830 (Edinburgh, 1988), 70–90, at 85; Allan Macinnes, Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603–1788 (East Linton, 1996), 223, 224; Richards, ‘Uses of the Atlantic Empire’, 95, 107; MacKillop, More Fruitful, 240, 241. Stroh, Uneasy Subjects, 28, 29, 330; Young, Postcolonialism, 74. See also Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies, 48, 73, 74. 26. It would also support postcolonial scholars’ use of the language of ‘colonization’ and ‘decolonization’ in their ideological and discursive analyses of power relations and cultural attitudes in the late modern Gàidhealtachd. 27. Martin Martin’s proposal, first published in 1695, to establish a ‘fishing colony’ on Skye and his extended, and in places perhaps imaginative, description of the exploitable resources of the Western Isles may be indicative of the influence on him of his connections with the London-based Royal Society which was pioneering new methods and enterprises of scientific enquiry. Eric Cregeen’s seminal analysis of tenurial change on the Argyll Estates in the early eighteenth century suggests that following their ‘conquest and annexation’ of the territories of the Macleans of Duart in Morvern, Mull and Tiree, the Campbells entered these areas as ‘colonizers’ in a way similar to the MacKenzies on Lewis a century or so earlier. Martin Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland Circa 1695 (Edinburgh, 1999), 200–8, here 3, 202, 204. Eric Cregeen, ‘The tacksmen and their successors: a study of tenurial reorganisation in Mull, Morvern and Tiree in the early eighteenth century’, Scottish Studies 13 (2) (1969), 93–144 and reprinted in Margaret Bennett (ed.), Recollections of an Argyll-shire Drover and other West Highland Chronicles (Ochtertyre, 2013). For further information on the Campbell annexation and its support from the Scottish Crown, see also Macinnes, Clanship, 46, 134–7. 28. Commissioners to the Annexed Estates, Present State of Husbandry in Scotland: Extracted from the reports made to the Commissioners to the Annexed Estates and published by their authority,

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Colonialism and the Clearances Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1778), 17, 62, 64, 141, 150. See also A. H. Miller (ed.), A Selection of Scottish Forfeited Estate Papers (Edinburgh, 1909), 237, 262; MacKillop, More Fruitful, 77. 29. MacKillop, More Fruitful, 82, 90–4, 100, 242, 243. 30. Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier: The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism (New Haven, CT, 2013), 3, 31–4. 31. A useful account of the development of these colonies is given in M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action (Cambridge, 1938), 201–8. 32. John Knox, A Discourse on the Expediency of Establishing Fishing Stations or Small Towns in the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebride Islands (London, 1786), 12. 33. G. Mackenzie, A General View of the Agriculture of the Counties of Ross and Cromarty (London, 1810), 262–5. The experiment at Ullapool was not the end of proposals for ‘fishing colonies’. George Mackenzie himself published a letter supporting a different kind of fishing colony, to be led by Dutch fishermen, in Sutherland; further representations on the issue led a Parliamentary Committee, in their consideration of a harbour at Wick in Caithness, to propose that ‘We might even establish there a colony of Dutch fishermen, skilled in the Herring fishery’. The 1845 Statistical Account claimed there had been several failed attempts to establish ‘fishing colonies’ on Harris and in the 1880s a Skye delegate to the Napier Commission discussed the existence of a ‘fishing colony’ in the area of Glendale. Mackenzie, General View Ross and Cromarty, 306; Parliamentary Papers [PP] 1806, Report from Committee on the Funds of the Forfeited Estates in Scotland, 16; The New Statistical Account of Scotland Vol XIV Inverness-Ross and Cromarty (Edinburgh, 1845), 157; Evidence taken by Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Vol.1 (London, 1884), 436. 34. David Young, National Improvements Upon Agriculture in 27 Essays (Edinburgh, 1785), 217, 231, 233, 242, 336, 343. 35. Mackenzie, General View Ross and Cromarty, 300, 301. 36. Ibid., 301. 37. Sir John Sinclair, ‘Accounts of the improvements carried on in the County of Caithness for the years 1801, 1802 and 1803’, Appendix no. 1 in Capt. John Henderson, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Caithness: with Observations on the Means of its Improvement (London, 1815), 19, 74, 75. 38. Henderson, General View, 208; Sinclair, ‘Accounts of the improvements’, 59. 39. James Loch, An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquess of Stafford in the Counties of Stafford and Salop and on the Estate of Sutherland (London, 1820), 110. 40. Richards, Highland Clearances, 217; Eric Richards, ‘The prospect of economic growth in Sutherland at the time of the clearances 1809 to 1813’, Scottish Historical Review 49 (2) (1970), 154–70, here 164. 41. Sinclair, ‘Accounts of the Improvements’, 25, 30–2. 42. Ibid., 25. 43. Sinclair, General Report, 120. 44. Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, 243. 45. PP 1831, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to consider of The Poor Laws, 271–6; Sir Robert Wilton Horton, Lectures on Statistics and Political Economy (London, 1832), 5–8, 15–18; Thomas Chalmers, On Political Economy. In Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society (Glasgow, 1832), 556, 557 and passim; Robert Owen, Development of the Principle and Plans on which to Establish Self-Supporting Home Colonies (London, 1841); Duncan Bowie, The Radical and Socialist

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Iain MacKinnon Tradition in British Planning. From Puritan Colonies to Garden Cities (London, 2017) 48, 49; ‘Emigration and home colonization’, in The Journal of Agriculture and Transactions of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1843), 41–7; Robert Somers, Letters from the Highlands, or, The Famine of 1847 (London, 1848), 110–16, 150, 151; The Morning News, 8 May 1884, p.5; Annie Tindley and Eric Richards, ‘Turmoil among the crofters: Evander McIver and the “Highland Question” 1873–1903’, Agricultural History Review 60 (2) (2012), 206. 46. Andrew Wiseman, ‘Islands Penal Colonies’, Scottish Islands Explorer 18 (2) (Mar./Apr., 2017). 47. PP 1830, Report of the Select Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland, 40; PP 1830, Third Report of Evidence from the Select Committee on the State of the Poor in Ireland, 500, 653. 48. Although he does not use colony types in his description, in substance the assessment here follows Eric Richards’ assessment of the estate reorganisation plans of the countess of Sutherland both before and after the arrival of William Young and Patrick Sellar. Richards, Patrick Sellar, 39, 55. 49. Osterhammel, Colonialism, 26, 108, 109. 50. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies, 54, 55. 51. Colin Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits of nineteenth century Scottish nationhood’, The Historical Journal 46 (4) (2003), 873–92, here 877; Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge, 2006), 2f. 52. Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits’, 878. 53. Juliet Shields, Sentimental Literature and Anglo Scottish Identity 1745–1820 (Cambridge, 2010), 39. Arguably, in a broader sense the racialisation of Gaels in Scotland can be traced back into the medieval period. See Martin MacGregor, ‘Gaelic barbarity and Scottish identity in the later middle ages’, in Dauvit Broun and Martin MacGregor (eds), Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, ‘The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander’?: Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (Glasgow, 2007), 7–48. For Kames and wasteland cultivation, see reference at n.30, this article. 54. In earlier work Colin Kidd described Pinkerton as holding a ‘racist ideology’. However, in subsequent work Kidd consistently appears to distance himself from the term ‘racist’ when describing the race-based prejudices held by Pinkerton and Robert Knox towards Gaels, choosing instead to label these as ‘racialist’. In his article ‘Race, Empire and the limits of Scottish Nationhood’ Kidd only uses the word ‘racist’ to describe the attitudes of what he calls ‘Scottish imperialists’ when their race-based prejudice was being applied to situations that we might now call ‘external colonial’ relations. Colin Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism. Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 2004 [1999]), 204; Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits’, 879, 881, 882; Colin Kidd, ‘Ethnicity in the British Atlantic World 1688–1830’, in Kathleen Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History. Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire 1660–1840 (Cambridge, 2004), 260–81, here n.13; Kidd, Forging of the Races, 110, 111. 55. John Pinkerton, An Inquiry into the History of Scotland Preceding the Reign of Malcolm III or the Year 1056 Including the Authentic History of that Period, 2 vols (London, 1794), ii, 139. 56. Ibid., 140. The difference between them is that Sinclair believed in colonization as a means of improving the ‘situation, habits and prejudices’ of the people being colonized (see paragraph at n.37); for Pinkerton colonization was simply a means to dispose of them. 57. Pinkerton, An Inquiry, i, 341. 58. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford, 1993), 64; Kidd, ‘Race, empire and the limits’, 877, 878.

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Colonialism and the Clearances 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Robert Knox, The Races of Men. A Fragment, (Philadelphia, PA, 1850), 22. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 21, 27. Ibid., 27, 44, 49. Ibid., 60, 253. Krisztina Fenyö, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance. Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands and the Clearances during the Famine Years 1845–1855 (East Linton, 2000), 10, 32, 85, 86. For criticism of Fenyö’s work, see the review by Ewen Cameron in The Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 21 (1) (2001), 77–9. 65. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (Princeton, NJ, 1981 [1871]), 174. 66. Osterhammel, Colonialism, 109, 110. 67. Loch, Improvements, 73. 68. Ibid., 44, 45, 51, 53, 60. 69. Ibid., 133; Harris, ‘How did colonialism dispossess?’, 174. For the similar policies of Sutherland Estate and Sir John Sinclair, see paragraph at n.39; for Sir John Sinclair’s intention to transform the people, see paragraph at n.37. 70. Osterhammel, Colonialism, 16, 109; See also Jürgen Osterhammel, Europe, the “West” and the Civilizing Mission. The 2005 Annual Lecture of the German Historical Institute of London (London, 2006). 71. R. J. Adam (ed.), Papers on Sutherland Estate Management, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1972), 175, 176. 72. Richards, Patrick Sellar, 285, 286. 73. Fenyö, Contempt, 86. 74. T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1988), 251. 75. T. M. Devine, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora (London, 2011), 119. For discussion of ethnic cleansing in the Gàidhealtachd, see also Fenyö, Contempt, 90–2. 76. The situation is more complicated than the limited analysis presented here. The three administrators examined in this article are non-Gaels. However, in the nineteenth century many of those who were controlling land tenure change and industrial development in the area were Gaels, a situation consistent with imperialism’s co-option of native elites (see n.25) Using the ideas of cognitive polyphasia (the ability to successfully hold two contradictory ideas at once) and cognitive dissonance (the emergence of an awareness of the contradiction) from social psychology, I have elsewhere investigated the late nineteenthcentury Royal Commissions on land in the Gàidhealtachd as a crucible in which the attitudes and actions of some of the native elites responsible for land tenure change could be tested and questioned. The analysis there supports the view of the nineteenth-century land reformer Alexander MacKenzie on one of the native elite widely accused of oppressing the people – Donald MacDonald of Tormore, a farmer and factor [estate administrator] on Skye. Shortly after MacDonald’s depradations had been given a full public airing at a sitting of the Napier Commission, MacKenzie wrote: ‘Tormore, the factor, and Tormore, the man, are evidently two widely different persons. Indeed this is the case with most of his class.’ Aya Ikegame’s study of colonial Mysore in India has emphasised the alienation and ‘split identities’ that can result when native elites are educated into the employment of the imperial system. In the context of colonial Kenya, the G˜ık˜uy˜u novelist and scholar Ng˜ug˜ı Wa Thiong’o has called this process ‘colonization of the mind’. The analysis based on the Royal Commissions suggests that factors who were primarily ‘practical farmers’, such as

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Iain MacKinnon ‘Tormore’, may have been more likely to experience dissonance than factors who were also professional lawyers, such as Alexander MacDonald of Treaslane, when both types were questioned on the difference between, on the one hand, their general sentiments towards other Gaels, and, on the other, their practices towards them as factor. Iain MacKinnon, ‘“Eachdraidh nar cuimhne” – “History in our memories”: an analysis of the idea that the Highlands and Islands of Scotland can be understood as a site of colonisation’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Ulster, 2011), 402–16, here 414; Aya Ikegame, Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to the Present (Oxford, 2013), 54, 55; Ng˜ug˜ı Wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (London, 1986). 77. John MacInnes, Dùthchas nan Gàidheal. Selected Essays of John MacInnes edited by Michael Newton (Edinburgh, 2006), passim, here 266. 78. Iain Crichton Smith, ‘Real people in a real place’, in Towards the Human (Edinburgh, 1986), 13–70, here 18, 37, 38, 42, 51, 68, 70. 79. Wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind, 16, 17. 80. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples (Dunedin, 1999), 4, 23, 24, 28, 34. For Tuhiwai Smith’s critique of Western ideas about ‘authenticity’ see, 73, 74.

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‘QUITE DESTITUTE AND . . . VERY DESIROUS OF GOING TO NORTH AMERICA’: THE ROOTS AND REPERCUSSIONS OF EMIGRATION FROM SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS

MARJORY HARPER

In early July 1773 the streets of Thurso were crowded, as the town’s population was swelled by 280 would-be emigrants from Caithness and Sutherland who gathered in the expectation of imminent embarkation for North Carolina. In late August they were still there. The ship, Bachelor of Leith, on which they were booked, had been delayed on her return journey from America with a cargo of rice. The emigrants’ food supply, already depleted by that unexpected delay, was further eroded during the eighteen days it took to load the ship. When they eventually set sail, far too late in the season, they immediately ran into equinoctial gales in the Pentland Firth, which forced them first into Stromness in Orkney and then into Walls on Shetland. A second attempt to sail, after repairs, saw the ship driven onto rocks. By that time, eleven passengers had died and the rest were mostly destitute, having used up all their meagre supplies. When the Leithbased ship owner ordered the captain to leave the passengers at Thurso before bringing the ship back to her home port for repair, most refused, knowing they were unlikely either to see the vessel again or to have their fares refunded. All but twenty-eight came down to Leith and Edinburgh, where some settled, a few booked passages on other ships, and others returned to the Highlands. It was a fiasco of the first order.1 The Bachelor debacle was not the only misfortune to befall emigrants from the northern Highlands. In the same year, 1773, the Nancy sailed from Meikle Ferry in the Dornoch Firth with 250 emigrants for New York, but lost eightyone passengers, including fifty children, before it reached its destination.2 In 1806, following the first clearance of the Strathnaver and Lairg districts of the Sutherland estate by two Northumbrian sheep farmers, Messrs Atkinson and Marshall of Alnwick, about seventy-seven families were evicted from the upper part of the strath. With no provision for their future having been made, either in terms of land to farm or a village in which to settle, many chose to emigrate, but the Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 49–67 DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0126 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

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Marjory Harper ship sank off Newfoundland with all 140 passengers on board.3 Seven years later, Thomas Douglas, the fifth earl of Selkirk, was present in Stromness to witness the embarkation on the Prince of Wales of 100 emigrants from Sutherland for the colony he had recently established at Red River. Selected from 700 applicants who saw no future in their native Highlands, many were victims of the infamous Kildonan clearances. In mid-Atlantic, they had to contend with an outbreak of typhus, which led to the panic-stricken captain landing them, not at York Factory, as expected, but 150 miles away at Fort Churchill in the hostile environment of Hudson’s Bay. By the time they reached Red River, more than a year had elapsed since the party had left Scotland.4 Why did individuals and families put themselves through the ordeal of a transatlantic voyage which, even at the best of times, was always a major test of endurance? How was emigration perceived, by those who sponsored and opposed it, as well as by those who undertook it? Highland emigration, not least from the northernmost counties, continued to be painted in sombre hues throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was commonly portrayed as a bedfellow and consequence of clearance and eviction, and a manifestation of the pessimistic belief that the region had only a past and not a future. Through the written and oral testimony of participants, sponsors, activists and observers, as well as through the very different lens of fictional writings, this study offers an overview of the causes and consequences of the outflow from the northern Highlands, particularly to British North America, from the time of the Bachelor’s abortive voyage in 1773-4 until the mid-twentieth century. It adjudges whether emigrants were invariably hapless and helpless victims in the decision-making process, or whether they had agency, ambition and agendas of their own. It considers the nature and impact of propaganda generated by proponents and opponents of emigration alike, and debates the roots and repercussions of the return movement that was an integral, but less scrutinised, part of the whole phenomenon. Of course, any such evaluation is only meaningful if it is undertaken within the wider context. We need to consider how the outflow from Scotland’s most northerly mainland counties fits into the bigger statistical canvas of perhaps 100,000 Scottish emigrants in the eighteenth century, and about two million in each of the two succeeding centuries. The Canadian experience, which lies at the core of the analysis, has to be compared with settlement or sojourning in other locations, within Scotland as well as overseas. The study falls into three sections, each of which follows a chronological pattern. It begins by examining the practical mechanisms of recruitment and sponsorship through which emigration was promoted and implemented, along with the attitudes that underpinned the provision of those facilities. It then reflects on the perceptions of those who opposed emigration before turning, finally, to the insights offered by the emigrants’ own testimony. Integral to each section are three overarching questions. These are: the extent to which there are unique elements to the exodus 50

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness from the north of Scotland; whether that emigration was characterised more by continuity or change; and whether the verb ‘to emigrate’ should be used in the passive or active sense. Persuaders and procedures The unfortunate passengers on the Bachelor would not have ended up in Thurso in July 1773 if they had not been recruited by James Hogg, a tacksman who had moved from East Lothian to Caithness in 1765, and who liaised with James Inglis, the ship owner in Leith.5 In the eighteenth century the recruitment of Highland emigrants was often in the hands of tacksmen, who were ideal brokers or intermediaries. They usually knew personally the individuals whom they were recruiting from estates from which they were all being displaced in various ways; their objective was generally to lead those people in reconstituting traditional ways of life in the New World; and they liaised with ship owners or agents in ports like Leith or Greenock to provide the transatlantic transport. Such bulk community recruitment, on an intermittent basis, distinguished Highland emigration from the more atomised and targeted movement, often of indentured servants, from the Lowlands. Highland emigration to North America burst onto public consciousness in the second half of the eighteenth century. Mobility did not emerge out of a complete vacuum, for Highland mercenaries (galloglas) had played a significant part in medieval and early modern military campaigns in Ireland. Seasonal – and permanent – migration from the Highlands to the Lowlands was a prominent part of Scotland’s demographic fabric. The latter was perhaps most notable at New Lanark, where ‘a great proportion’ of the workforce for David Dale’s cotton mill came from Caithness, Inverness and Argyll, their origins being commemorated in the street name, Caithness Row, and on gravestones in the little hilltop cemetery.6 By the time Dale set up his mill in 1786, significant numbers of Scots had begun to take advantage of opportunities in the North American colonies created by the parliamentary union almost eighty years earlier, although statistics of overseas movement are notoriously elusive, not least because no agency on either side of the Atlantic systematically recorded departures or arrivals. The exception was an eighteen-month period from 1773 to 1775, when the government’s concern about national security led it to institute an enquiry into the extent of transatlantic emigration, and to the compilation of a heavily annotated Register of Emigrants. Evidence – albeit patchy – from a variety of sources7 suggests that around 80 per cent of Scotland’s 75,000 emigrants who left between 1700 and 1780 were Lowlanders, but the balance changed radically towards the end of the century, when over 66 per cent of emigrant Scots – around 10,000 individuals – came from the Highlands. Within a wider context, Ireland experienced the heaviest numerical exodus in the eighteenth century, followed by Scotland, and then England.8 51

Marjory Harper By the later 1810s, when emigration began to take off again after the dislocation caused by the American, French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the Highland component of Scottish emigration had increased, and the pattern of destinations had changed. Notably, following the loss of the American colonies, the spotlight shifted from North Carolina, which had been the Highlanders’ favoured destination, to Upper Canada and Nova Scotia. Recruitment mechanisms had also changed. Gone were the tacksmen-agents, and in their place came recruiters whose involvement was driven primarily by the trade in timber, imported from the Maritimes and the St Lawrence to ports right around Britain.9 Donald Logan from Rogart, a timber merchant who had settled in Nova Scotia in 1803, saw an opportunity to harness his commercial interests to ongoing socio-economic dislocation in his native Sutherland. In 1818, after orchestrating the emigration of about 120 fellow Highlanders, who, he said, had been induced to emigrate because they had been ‘put out of their lands and otherwise rendered uncomfortable’, he petitioned the government for funding to enable him to continue the work.10 At that time Westminster was being bombarded with petitions for state-aided emigration from all quarters, not just from the Highlands, but there was persistent pressure from the north. In the same year, 1818, we find among the petitions a similar plea from Donald Sinclair of Dunbeath, who had previously recruited emigrants on behalf of Lord Selkirk and later sent them out on his own account. He asked the government to assist the emigration of several thousand families in the north, who had been removed and their possessions turned into sheep walks. They were, he said, ‘quite destitute and . . . very desirous of going to North America’.11 Sinclair’s comments indicate a shift since the late eighteenth century in the balance of volition and coercion that shaped patterns of Highland emigration. His reference to destitution was corroborated and amplified by an unnamed tourist in Sutherland in 1819. Coming on my way from Brora to Port Gorver [sic] in Sutherland, I was much shocked with the appearance of late fires in every cottage on the road. Every roof was stripped in the township of Kintredual. This is part of the immense property of the Countess of Sutherland, now Marchioness of Stafford, and had just been newly leased to a Mr Reid, formerly one of Sir John Sinclair’s shepherds, for a sheep farm; so, in order to give him entire possession, 300 cottages were burnt, and at least 3000 poor creatures turned out of doors to make room for as many sheep. A Mr Gordon and a Mr Mackay, farmers in the neighbourhood, humanely came forward, and offered them all settlements on their farms. This same thing occurred a few years back at a place called Kildonan. The Earl of Selkirk happened then to be in that part of the country, and transported the outcasts all to his colony at Red river. This is more barbarous than any thing I ever heard of in Ireland or any where else.12

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Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness With some minor exceptions, government aid was not forthcoming. What was provided in that era of major recession, however, was funding from landlords, who – having previously opposed emigration tooth and nail – were becoming convinced that assisted passages were the only alternative to tenant starvation, as well as proprietorial bankruptcy. According to Adam Hope, a Scots-born merchant and politician who emigrated to Upper Canada in 1834, the duke of Sutherland was to be praised for his generosity in shipping out tenants. Hope was a firm advocate of landlord-subsidised emigration as a remedy for land congestion in the Highlands, though he was sceptical about the extent of emigrant poverty. Writing to his brother George in East Lothian in 1847, at the height of the potato famine in Ireland and the Highlands, he contrasted the tidal wave of sick, destitute Irish refugees with the arrival of 287 healthy Sutherland emigrants who had been given a free passage on the Panama, a vessel which had been chartered by the duke. They had settled among fellow Sutherlanders in the township of Zorra, where, he predicted, they would be a valuable asset to the area.13 Adam Hope’s optimism was in stark contrast to criticism in the Upper Canadian press of the subsequent arrival of 400 Sutherlanders, many ‘in destitute circumstances’ and including ‘two lunatics stark mad – who had not a single relative among their fellow-passengers’.14 Hope’s silence on the displacement of indigenous peoples also typified the ‘cultural amnesia’ of settler society. While sending home ‘Indian’ bracelets for his mother and ‘Indian’ moccasins for his sister in 1835, he was oblivious to the expropriation of Mohawk lands in the Grand River Valley for incoming colonists.15 It is particularly ironic that Highlanders, ostensibly dispossessed to make way for sheep, were actively engaged in dispossessing indigenous peoples on the other side of the Atlantic as well as – more notoriously – in Australia.16 Until the 1830s landlords who wanted to ship tenants to British North America were most likely to use the services of William Allan, who virtually monopolised recruitment from the Highlands. He was a Leith-based shipping agent who operated through a network of sub-agents – innkeepers, merchants, and postmasters – men who sold the tickets and organised steamers to take emigrants to the regional embarkation ports of Cromarty, Thurso and Lochinver. Allan was succeeded by John Sutherland and Duncan MacLennan, who also operated through sub-agents, and had good contacts in the main timber ports. Their recruitment skills, combined with widespread estate clearance policies, made it worthwhile for the owners of timber ships in Leith and Aberdeen to call at Cromarty, Scrabster and Lochinver on their outward journeys to a range of ports: particularly Quebec and Pictou, but also Sydney, Cape Breton; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; and New York. The northern counties were, according to the Inverness Journal in 1842, ‘peculiarly indebted’ to John Sutherland for laying on vessels locally, thus saving emigrants the expense of getting down to Greenock, and it claimed he had sent out nearly 2,000 individuals within a two-year period.17

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Marjory Harper John Sutherland, who was based in Wick, staked his claim to trustworthiness on the grounds that he had actually lived in Sydney, Nova Scotia, for twenty years, and accompanied some of his emigrant parties across the Atlantic. He was a good self-publicist, who emphasised that not only did he bring ships to the people rather than people to the ports, but also brokered farming and employment opportunities in the ‘Lower Provinces’.18 His own pen was probably behind a lengthy ‘good news’ feature in the John O’Groat Journal in June 1849, which reported the imminent departure of a ship, the Prince Albert, from Scrabster, bound for Quebec. Readers were assured of comfortable accommodation on a wellequipped and provisioned vessel, whose passengers were, on the eve of departure, allegedly universally happy, content, and sure to succeed.19 In the same year, 1849, Sutherland was presented with a silver snuff box, the inscription on which bore a reference to his role as a government emigration agent. That made him responsible for supervising the Passenger Acts which from 1827 to 1855 supposedly regulated conditions on emigrant ships, but in practice were of very limited effect. Indeed, perhaps all was not as it seemed even on Sutherland’s vessels, for letters to the Inverness Advertiser on 11 and 18 September 1849 and 26 February 1850 complained about inadequate water, food and fuel, and cramped accommodation on the Prince Albert. These deficiencies were, according to one emigrant, far short of their statutory rights, and were ‘severely felt by the passengers’, who charged Sutherland with having ‘acted very improperly in putting them to sea in such a state’.20 The allegation was hotly refuted by the agent in the paper’s next issue, a defence which he reiterated six months later, after another damning letter had resurrected complaints about ‘bad usage’ of passengers on the Prince Albert, and warned that season’s would-be emigrants to avoid the vessel which Sutherland was then preparing to send to North America.21 The Inverness Advertiser was not particularly sympathetic towards Sutherland either, arguing that it was the newspaper’s ‘bounden duty’ to publicise ‘authenticated complaints’, and suggesting that Sutherland’s assurances were disingenuous. ‘Shabby shipowners can never be controlled by paper regulations of the Government, or the flying peep of their officials’, was the barbed editorial comment inserted in response to the agent’s letter.22 Following the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 the Canadian federal government tried to promote settlement by sending its own resident recruitment agents to Britain, Ireland, a few parts of continental Europe, and the United States. Initially the whole of Scotland was overseen by one agent, based in Glasgow; in 1907 responsibility for the north of Scotland was devolved to an Aberdeen-based agency; then in 1923, in response to increasing demand from the Highlands and Islands, a third agent was appointed, with headquarters in Inverness. Like their predecessors in the shipping business, these professional recruiters operated through a network of amateur sub-agents who arranged their public lectures in a range of locations, and usually made the actual bookings. 54

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness By the 1860s, of course, steam had replaced sail, embarkations were centralised on the major ports of Greenock and Liverpool, and emigration from the Highlands was a less distinctive part of a national outflow that was rooted more and more in the central belt and embraced a range of destinations, dominated by the USA. Since the highly competitive environment also saw sustained antipodean activity, the agents regularly (but fruitlessly) urged their employers in Ottawa to adopt a measure of state-funded assistance. Their frustration was articulated in 1874 by Angus Nicholson, Canada’s special agent in the Highlands, when he complained that ‘the New Zealand and Australian authorities are particularly alert, the streets of every town and village being always well ornamented with their bills and placards offering free passages and other inducements to emigrants’. Moreover, he continued, ‘nearly all the newspapers being subsidised by means of their advertisements, are doing their full share in the same direction’.23 Fifty years later, the federal government’s parsimony was still at the root of the frustration of many Canadian recruiters in the field, including Anne MacDonald, one of the few female agents, who ran the Highland agency out of an office in the centre of Inverness. Following a visit to a family of would-be emigrants on a croft near Bilbster in Caithness, she complained that while she had been able to supply the husband with pamphlets, she could not give his anxious wife anything more than verbal assurance because her office had not been supplied with any relevant literature.24 It is unlikely that the cost-cutting Canadian Immigration Department in Ottawa acceded to MacDonald’s request for a supply of women’s literature. Disputation and denunciation Recruitment agents clearly peddled a positive message: their objective was to generate passengers for their ships, or settlers for the land that they owned or the employer whom they represented. But the funding challenges faced by Canada’s federal agents were a minor internal irritation compared to the more fundamental external denunciation of agency activity that came from a range of vested interests. While host lands complained about being saddled with the dregs of a redundant population, donor countries and communities bewailed the spiriting away of the cream of the crop. Antagonism against recruiters was evident back in the eighteenth century, when they were vilified as traitors, who threatened the security and stability of the nation. As already hinted, the story of the Bachelor, like that of many other emigrant embarkations at that time, became well known primarily because landlords and the government were so worried about the rumoured extent of emigration from the Highlands – much of it allegedly stirred up by land agents – that two official enquiries were launched to try to quantify it. The second of those enquiries, commissioned by the Treasury, required customs officers at all ports in England and Scotland to submit details about each individual embarking on every emigrant ship that had left from their port in 1774 and 1775. The total 55

Marjory Harper of 9,868 passengers identified by that enquiry, and the evidence collected for the Register of Emigrants, so alarmed the government that in 1775 it imposed a ban on transatlantic emigration for the duration of the American War of Independence.25 The government’s main concern was national security, not least because the departure of Highland emigrants in particular meant a loss of potential soldiers from an area which since the mid-eighteenth century had begun to establish itself as a key recruitment nursery for the military. The landlords’ preoccupation, which pre-dated the American war and persisted for three decades after the loss of the thirteen colonies, was that emigration was threatening the implementation of estate development policies, as well as removing considerable sums of money from the Highlands. The early stages of clearance involved the internal relocation of tenants, not their complete expulsion or expatriation, and since landlords needed a substantial workforce in order to carry out their integrated ‘improvement’ policies, they opposed emigration vehemently. Some tenants were quick to see that they could use the estates’ opposition to emigration as a bargaining tool to secure favourable leases. As early as 1763, Alexander Mackenzie of Ardoch, Ledbeg, factor to the seventeenth earl of Sutherland, wrote to John Mackenzie of Delvine, one of the earl’s main financial advisers and managers, about the newly acquired estate of Assynt. He had received disturbing letters from America, probably from ex-soldiers, who had just been discharged at the end of the Seven Years’ War. While these natives of Assynt hoped to secure tacks on the estate, they were determined to do so on their own terms by threatening that, if their demands were not met, they would opt instead to take up lands in the colonies directly from the Crown as part of their payment for military service. As Alexander Mackenzie wrote: Since my last to you from Dunrobin I had letters from some young men in America natives of Assynt proposing to get tacks on this estate, what they offer is, to add five per cent yearly to the present rent till it comes to be a fourth part more than it is now, for example, that a tack of £20 comes to £25. And when it comes to that height that they have leases for 40 or 50 years thereafter, they have brothers and other friends in the country to enter into these possessions, till they can appear themselves. How far these proposals shall please the Earl you can acquaint.26 By the early nineteenth century, as we have seen, crisis management had replaced grand economic designs on many Highland estates, and this in turn significantly reshaped – indeed, totally reversed – the attitudes of proprietors and factors to population loss and retention. Assisted emigration became a key tool in tackling the problem, and was a strategy favoured in limited measure by the duke of Sutherland’s advisers, as long as the estate did not have to fund it and the emigrants were superintended by agents whom they trusted. In 1817 factor Francis Suther wrote to James Loch, who was in overall charge of estate policy, to commend Allan and warn against a potentially fraudulent agent. 56

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness I hope the government plans of assisting emigration will have some effect with Allan of Leith in inducing him to endeavour to pick up a cargo or two of the people in the Estate, unless it is him or some such person who can command money to come forward with the deposit required the plan will come to nothing . . . There is a person at present by the name of Fraser . . . I heard yesterday had gone to Strathnaver to endeavour to induce the people to go to America with him. This Fraser is from America and has come to this country for the sole purpose of taking out people.27 Thomas Dudgeon, a farmer from Ross-shire, definitely did not have the confidence of the Sutherland estate management. Along with two associates, Messrs Gibson and Thomson, who were, respectively, a teacher at Tain Academy and the innkeeper at Meikle Ferry, Dudgeon sought to raise public subscriptions in 1819 through the formation of an organisation called the Sutherland and Transatlantic Friendly Association. He was anathema to the Sutherlands because his attacks in The Scotsman on James Loch and on Loch’s protégé, Francis Suther, turned an unwelcome public spotlight on the estate clearances.28 His interest in emigration was not inspired, according to Suther, by any concern for the emigrants, but simply in order ‘to satisfy an old grudge he has to the family’.29 In July 1819 Suther wrote scathingly in his letter book about a meeting at Meikle Ferry to which Dudgeon had enticed, from as far away at Caithness, over 1,000 people, who were then duped into giving him money without any clear idea why.30 The Friendly Association was suspected of having covert links with urban radicals in the south of Scotland, and therefore being a front for encouraging rebellion in the north. It was dissolved after only six months by magistrates sympathetic to the Sutherlands.31 Throughout the nineteenth century the main indictment of Highland emigration – and the agents who promoted it – came not from estate factors but from the growing body of press and public opinion that saw it as a morally reprehensible consequence of landlord greed, exploitation and clearance. Donald McLeod, who witnessed the clearance of the township of Rossal in Strathnaver in 1814, initially vented his anger against the Sutherland clearances in twenty-one letters published in the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle in the 1840s. After emigrating to Woodstock, Upper Canada, he wrote Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland to counteract Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories, which she had written from the perspective of Dunrobin Castle when she was a guest of the Countess.32 In 1883 McLeod’s Gloomy Memories were reprinted by Alexander MacKenzie in his immensely popular History of the Highland Clearances, a book in which he reinforced the theme of unwilling exile, blended with retributive justice, as exiled Highlanders exchanged domestic adversity for overseas achievement.33 In the same decade, the Scottish Highlander newspaper was, not surprisingly, a platform for a lot of anti-emigration sentiment, including a letter from a Rossshire emigrant, published in 1887, which warned his fellow countrymen against 57

Marjory Harper coming to western Canada. He wrote: ‘You will recall the Gaelic books which were distributed over the Highlands three years ago in order to recommend Manitoba and the North-West Territory? I say that if those books had been published in Hell they could not have been more full of lies than they were; because they were designed to deceive the population.’34 The theme of unjust exile continued well into the twentieth century, though by that time it displayed more of an economic and political emphasis which embraced the whole nation, not just the Highlands. Nationalist commentators were particularly vocal. From Sutherland, the Reverend Archibald Scott of Helmsdale began his letter to the Scots Independent in 1927 by attacking the government’s failure to preserve the ‘vitality and virility’ of the Scottish people by obstructing the enlargement of holdings, and preferring sportsmen and sheep farmers to crofters and fishermen. Emigration was, in his opinion, ‘a token of national stupidity’, and emigrants who were lured by images of waving prairie wheat fields and sun-kissed orchards were more likely to encounter drought, pests, failed harvests, unemployment and bankruptcy. The ‘Paradise’ that was peddled in advertisements was, he said, ‘for the middlemen who exploit his labour, and for the agencies that order transport and implements, and for the banks into whose hands he falls sooner or later’.35 Scott’s denunciation of agents was reinforced three years later by a warning letter from Canada, printed in the John O’Groat Journal. In that era of international depression, agents were, the anonymous writer alleged, knowingly making fraudulent promises about better prospects on farms, whereas the reality was either unemployment or ‘very hard work, long hours and little pay’. His warning and recommendation were stark: ‘The fact is the immigration agents are telling people about a country they know nothing about from actual experience. So my advice is: stay in the Old Country if you have a job at all.’36 Emigrant testimony: expectations and experiences We turn, finally, to the emigrants’ own insights into their expectations and experiences, for as the Helmsdale minister, Archibald Scott, observed, ‘The emigrated Highlander is a good correspondent’.37 Personal testimony, written and oral, is necessarily anecdotal and uncontextualised. Handled with care, however, it can illuminate further our understanding of why, in the face of two centuries of denunciations of emigration, so many people persistently left the Highlands. Archibald Scott’s adjectival use of the term ‘emigrated’ also reminds us of the need to interrogate the traditional perception that the Highlander was indeed ‘emigrated’ in the passive sense, and did not write his or her own agenda. Testimony given to customs officials by several passengers on the ill-fated Bachelor in 1773 indicates clearly that individual and family agency, as well as socio-economic pressure, played a part in decision-making. Sixty-year-old William Gordon, a tenant farmer on the lands of William Baillie of Rosehall 58

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness in the parish of Clyne, explained succinctly the blend of dislocation and incentive that led him to leave with his extended family. Having two sons already settled in Carolina, who wrote him encouraging him to come there, and finding the rents of lands raised so much . . . he was induced to emigrate for the greater benefit of his children being himself an old man and lame so that it was indifferent to him in what country he died. . . . His circumstances were greatly reduced not only by the rise of rents but by the loss of cattle, particularly in the severe winter 1771. . . . The lands on which he lived have often changed masters, and . . . the rents have been raised on every change.38 Similarly, William McKay from Farr (aged thirty), confronted by low cattle prices, failed crops, and a high cost of living, ‘was encouraged to emigrate by the accounts received from his countrymen who had gone to America before him, assuring him that he might procure a comfortable subsistence in that country’.39 Seventyfive-year-old Hector McDonald from Rogart had ‘suffered much by the death of cattle, and still more by oppressive services exacted by the factor’. At the same time ‘he was assured by some of his children already in America that his family might subsist more comfortably there’, and had therefore made up his mind to emigrate with three sons and two grandchildren.40 The female perspective offered by Elizabeth McDonald (aged twenty-nine) was very similar. An unmarried domestic servant in Farr, she was leaving because ‘several of her friends having gone to Carolina before her, had assured her that she would get much better service and greater encouragement in Carolina than in her own country’.41 That testimony is typical of the Bachelor’s passengers, although we have to beware of a formulaic element in their responses, most of which seem to conform to the same template of expulsion twinned with attraction. The two most striking and recurring themes in the testimony are the dislocating effects of the commercialisation of estates in the northern Highlands, and the prospect of betterment held out by family members or acquaintances who were already settled in North Carolina. Both those general themes are maintained in emigrant testimony throughout the nineteenth century. The significance of precedent, and chain migration, is equally evident when the spotlight shifted north. We have already seen how in 1818 Donald Logan from Rogart brought fellow Highlanders out to Nova Scotia where sixteen years earlier he had settled in Pictou County.42 Studies by Alan MacNeil and Rosemary Ommer have also demonstrated the importance of family links for, respectively, Highlanders settling in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia prior to 1815, and secondary Highland migrants who moved from Cape Breton to western Newfoundland.43 Further west the township of Zorra in Upper Canada was first established in 1820 by Sutherland emigrants, Angus and William Mackay, who then persuaded large numbers of their compatriots to join them in the 1830s and 1840s.44 Some of those who arrived in 1830 reportedly brought significant 59

Marjory Harper amounts of ‘metallic currency’,45 but by the 1840s poverty had become the driving force. That was probably the case with Hugh Mackay, of Badnabay, Lairg, who in 1847 received assistance from the second duke of Sutherland to emigrate to Zorra. Just after he arrived, he wrote, in slightly garbled tones, to commend the settlement to his brother back in Sutherland. ‘[B]elieve me John the Rea Country is nothing at all to this place[.] It is a fine country and I never saw any place to call a nice place until I came here. A man lives here when he gets no land paid much better than any Gentleman in the old country.’46 The key difference between the 1770s and the mid-nineteenth century was the deterioration of conditions in the Highlands. The passengers on the Bachelor had chosen to emigrate in order to escape unacceptable social changes which had negative economic implications for the future, and they did so in the teeth of landlord opposition. The tacksmen aimed to regain the status they had lost in the reconfiguration of Highland society. The tenants whom they recruited similarly wanted to retain, at a lower level, elements of a way of life that was being eroded. And the offer of colonial land seemed to provide that opportunity: grants were offered initially to ex-soldiers for their military service, and the facility was later extended to civilians by land speculators, land companies, and the Crown. In the nineteenth century – as has been demonstrated – that element of choice was eroded by poverty, famine and clearance. Even in 1819 Donald Logan petitioned the government on the grounds that, of the displaced people whom he had assisted, ‘many were unable to pay the half of their passage and some not able to pay almost anything at all after settling their debts’. He informed Lord Bathurst that ‘several hundred of the minor tenants who understood no other line of business than farming and whose farms the proprietors have considered more lucrative to lay under sheep are removed to either waste ground or other allotments so exceedingly unsuitable as to render it alike the interest and the desire of those unhappy people to seek shelter in some more propitious quarter of the world’.47 By the middle of the century the major waves of clearance and emigration were over. Retrospective evaluations in a wealth of documentation – not least newspaper editorials and the reports of select committees – highlighted the challenges of transplanting and preserving the Highlanders’ identities. Bitter memories were rekindled with particular passion during the skirmishes of the 1880s, when land reformers and protagonists of the Gaelic literary revival campaigned for the ‘Highland problem’ to be addressed. At the same time crofter witnesses to the Napier Commission drew heavily on oral tradition to construct a picture of landlord betrayal, eviction and enforced exile over a century and more.48 Exilic lament and retributive justice are also recurring themes in Gaelic poetry and in novels concerned with Highland emigration such as George Macdonald’s What’s Mine’s Mine or Ralph Connor’s The Man from Glengarry.49 Musically, a similar message was conveyed through the symbolism of the bagpipe invoked in Margaret Laurence’s novel, The Diviners, where Piper Gunn strove to put heart 60

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness into the disconsolate emigrants from Kildonan as they embarked on the Prince of Wales. Then Piper Gunn spoke to the people. Dolts and draggards and daft loons and gutless as gutted herring you are, he calls out in his voice like the voice of the wind from the north isles. Why do you sit on these rocks, weeping? says he. For there is a ship coming, says he, on the wings of the morning, and I have heard tell of it, and we must gather our pots and kettles and our shawls and our young ones, and go with it into a new world across the waters . . . Then Piper Gunn changed his music, and he played the battle music there on the rocks . . . Then what happened? What happened then, to all of them people there homeless on the rocks? They rose and followed! Yes, they rose, then, and they followed, for Piper Gunn’s music could put the heart into them and they would have followed him all the way to hell or to heaven with the sound of the pipes in their ears.50 Fiction, of course, provides a very different lens through which to view the history of Scotland and its diaspora, and Margaret Laurence’s flashback novel is a particularly complex example of the genre. Piper Gunn is a fiction within a fiction, created by the character Christie Logan, to give his foster-daughter a sense of identity and self-esteem. As ‘one of the North Logans’, Christie’s own name commemorated his Highland origins, but while as a child Morag was inspired by the romantic Highland past he portrayed, as an adult she was alienated and sceptical. It was only when visiting the Highlands that she came to accept ‘the myths are my reality’, and was enabled to integrate her constructed Scottish ancestry into a wider identity that also addressed her Métis background. The forbears of her lover, Jules Tonnerre, were allied to Louis Riel in the same romantic fashion as Morag’s Highland ancestors, allowing the novel to explore relations between settler and Métis society in Manitoba.51 From the same northern side of the Moray Firth as Morag Gunn’s putative ancestors, one of Neil Gunn’s characters in The Grey Coast portrayed Canada in the 1920s as a place where failures went. Maggie, reflecting on the inter-war depression in the fishing industry, lamented: No fishing, no croft. There remained the slums of Glasgow, or the remote world of Canada. And to Canada they all went. If you had a trade at your finger-ends you might do well; otherwise you took your chance, with a hand ever ready to turn to anything. The young fisher fellows would be the worst off of all . . . None of those who had gone out in the last six years had yet managed back to see the old folk. That was Canada.52 When we turn from poetry, literature and oral tradition to the personal testimony of real emigrants, we are more likely to find in their letters bold statements of hope and well-being to temper expressions of regret and nostalgia. Alex Douglas emigrated from Watten in Caithness to the vicinity of Kingston in Upper Canada, in 1840.53 He clearly over-egged the qualities of the country in 61

Marjory Harper his determination to contrast the benefits of British North America with the ills of Scotland. The ‘noble St Lawrence’, he told readers of the John O’Groat Journal, ‘yields to no river in the world in beauty and usefulness’ and passed through a country with a ‘delightful appearance’. In Montreal, ‘a very handsome town’, where provisions of all kinds were very cheap, he had met ‘with the greatest civility every where’ and expressed himself ‘quite pleased with the people’. Opting not to take up the ‘excellent offers of land’ made to him there, he proceeded to Kingston, where he settled, his only regret being that he had not taken the step twenty years earlier. He concluded with this ringing endorsement: Many of the good folks in Scotland form most erroneous opinions regarding this country, which is anything but one teeming with savages and wild beasts. The people are fully as civilised, as with you, and the country is not pestered with beggars. Theft is unknown; and in the country, locks on their keeping places are very rare. To finish, I may add, we live better here than any man in Caithness, be his rank what it may. While Douglas’s paean of praise clearly demonstrates the need for considerable caution in analysing emigrant correspondence, we should not dismiss the usefulness of letters and memoirs. Those that were written for private family consumption rather than for circulation are often more measured and realistic than their published counterparts, despite the temptation to present a positive story to those back home. In 1928 Mary Campbell emigrated from Caithness to Olds, Alberta, with her husband and two children. They went under the 3,000 Families Scheme, one of the shared funding ventures that had been introduced under the Empire Settlement Act of 1922.54 They were warmly welcomed by Scottish neighbours, the Anglican Church and various voluntary organisations, and the Land Settlement Board supported them well with both practical advice and Christmas gifts. A year later, Mary was hopeful about the family’s prospects, but also realistic, when she wrote: ‘we know that we have much more learning and living to do before we can truly say that yes, it has been worthwhile’.55 The wanderlust and adventurous spirit that propelled many emigrants overseas were sometimes harnessed to precedent, specific job opportunities, and a sense of familiarity with the host land because there were already so many compatriots there. They were traits found across the world, for while British North America was the north Highlanders’ favourite destination, it did not have a monopoly on the region’s emigrants. Testimony from the antipodes was just as varied as the North American letters. Dr William Sutherland wrote to his sisters in 1852 from Portland, Victoria, complaining that gold fever was a curse rather than a blessing, because of the disruption it had brought to the labour market, as everyone, not least shepherds, had fled to the mines in the hope of making a fortune. Servants were as rare as the elusive gold dust. ‘We have only one little girl to whom we give £14 per annum whom you in Thurso would hardly give house room to’, he complained.56 62

Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness Shepherding was the main employment that drew significant numbers of Scots out to Patagonia in the early twentieth century, not least from Caithness.57 Seven of the children of William Bain, a fisherman from Lybster, went to the Santa Cruz region, where William, Donald, Angus and George owned three estancias. From the same area, letters written back to Caithness by Robert and Donald Nicolson speak of the hardships and hazards of sheep farming on the pampa. The Nicolsons also demonstrate the strong links that emigrants often maintained with their homeland, through remittances, questions about the crofting and fishing economy, visits home and – in some cases – permanent return. On 3 September 1913 Robert wrote to an unnamed brother in Scotland, that ‘Angus Bain might be home this year after shearing. I was thinking of coming myself, but I am not sure yet . . . Write soon and tell me how you are getting on in your croft and if Father is doing anything at the fishing.’58 Back in North America, but on the other side of the border, sheep farming was also the main reason for a steady exodus of men from Assynt to Montana in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sandy MacLeod of Ullapool recalled in an interview in 2009 that his father was one of the last in a line of sheep-herders from Coigach who had been going to that state since the 1890s. ‘I think this was probably due to the word of mouth, and people writing letters home or actually sending money so that a brother or whoever could get passage out there’, Sandy speculated.59 According to his father, the workforce on some ranches was 50 per cent Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and 50 per cent Native Americans. When the ‘Celtic cowboys’ returned to Sutherland, as many did, their silver dollars were allegedly accepted as currency for many years in the pubs of Achiltibuie.60 Sojourning – rather than permanent settlement – was always an integral part of the tapestry of migration, and involved women as well as men. In 1926 Minnie Anne Fraser from Halladale left her position in service with the bank manager at Dornoch to try her luck in Detroit, along with a friend from Embo. ‘I suppose just because I wanted to wander’, she replied when her daughter asked how she had become interested in America. She came back for a visit in 1932 armed with an American accent and a ticket to return. But it was not to be, for three brothers had died in 1927, followed by her father in 1930, and her mother told her that ‘home is where you are to be’.61 Conclusion Personal testimony – written or oral – does not simply provide anecdotal padding: it can be a useful tool in the task of evaluating two centuries of emigration from Caithness and Sutherland. Firstly, it demonstrates, from the participants’ own perspective, that these northern counties maintained longstanding, vibrant and multifaceted links with the Atlantic world, as well as further afield, making the area much less isolated than it is often depicted. It therefore helps us to answer one of the overarching questions posed at the beginning of this study, for, 63

Marjory Harper notwithstanding the changes in processes and procedures resulting from economic and political conditions or technological developments, emigration remained a persistent part of the warp and weft of life in the northern Highlands throughout the two centuries under scrutiny. Moreover, the range of testimony adduced – from letters and literature, as well as oral recollection – demonstrates that emigrants could be both passive victims and active agents of their own destiny, an interweaving of influences which is also encapsulated in the opening title. Yet, even when Highlanders emigrated of their own volition, the legacy of clearance and expulsion cast a persistently negative shadow over their decisions, which coloured their own interpretations, as well as historiographical and literary perspectives, throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Finally, we need to root the exodus from Caithness and Sutherland back within the wider context of Highland, Scottish, and European emigration, and avoid making any claims for exceptionalism. The outflow from the northern counties, important though it was to donor and host communities alike, was simply part of a much bigger jigsaw of complex intercontinental mobility that was shaped by the same generic influences of persuasion and pessimism that have been examined in other contexts.62 Notes 1. For discussion of the abortive voyage of the Bachelor, see Ian Adams and Meredyth Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope. Scottish Emigration to North America, 1603–1803 (Edinburgh, 1993), 100–6; Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West. Emigration from Britain to America on the Eve of the Revolution (London, 1986), 499–544; David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607–1785 (Athens, GA, 2004), 158. For passenger details, see Viola Root Cameron (ed.), Emigrants from Scotland to America 1774–1775: copied from a loose bundle of Treasury papers in the Public Record Office, London, England (Baltimore, MD, 1965, originally published London, 1930). 2. Scots Magazine, XXXV (December 1773), 667; Adams and Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope, 106–7. See also Thelma W. Foote, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City, 1624–1783 (New York and Oxford, 2003), 61–3. 3. Eric Richards, The Leviathan of Wealth: The Sutherland Fortune in the Industrial Revolution (Abingdon, 2007, originally published 1963), 170. 4. James Hunter, Set Adrift upon the World. The Sutherland Clearances (Edinburgh, 2015), Chapter 2. 5. Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 507–10. 6. The Statistical Account of Scotland, 1791–99, vol. 15 (Lanark), 40. http://stat-acc-scot. edina.ac.uk/sas/sas.asp/?account=1&accountrec=008759&action=publicdisplay&county= Lanark&monospace=&naecache=46&navbar=&nohighlight=&pagesize=&parish=Lanark &session-id=0e1182ffe9d36335da4823aeded8e266&transcript=&twoup=#pageimage [date accessed 13 November 2015]. 7. These include the Statistical Account, the Scots Magazine, contemporary Scottish newspapers, and the United States census of 1790. 8. T. M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire (London, 2003), 140; Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 25–6.

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Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness 9. The timber trade in the Maritimes is discussed in Lucille H. Campey, ‘The regional characteristics of Scottish emigration to British North America, 1784 to 1854’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Aberdeen, 1997) and mentioned in a number of publications arising from that dissertation. 10. The National Archives [hereafter TNA], CO 384/3, 4 November 1818, Donald Logan to Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. 11. Ibid., 20 November 1818, Donald Sinclair to Lord Bathurst. 12. ‘Extract from the letter of a tourist’, Edinburgh Annual Register, vol. 12, July 1819, 333. 13. National Records of Scotland [hereafter NRS], RH1/2/612/8, Adam Hope, London, Upper Canada, to George Hope, Fenton Barns, Haddington, Scotland, 12 August 1847. See also Douglas McCalla, ‘Hope, Adam’, in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hope_adam_11E.html [date accessed 15 November 2015]. See also below, 54–60. 14. ‘Arrival of Emigrants’, Hamilton Spectator and Journal of Commerce, 8 July 1848, quoted in Alexander Ross, ‘Loch Laxford to the Zorras: a Sutherland emigration to Upper Canada’, Scottish Tradition 18 (1993), 28–40. The quotation is on page 28. http://www.irss.uoguelph.ca/article/view/710 [date accessed 31 March 2016]. 15. Letters of Adam Hope, 1834–1845, vol. LXVIII, edited by Adam Crerar (Toronto, 2007), xxii-xxiii. 16. Don Watson, Caledonia Australis: Scottish Highlanders on the Frontier of Australia (Sydney, 1984); Donald H. Akenson, ‘The great European migration and indigenous populations’, in Graeme Morton and David M. Wilson (eds), Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples (Toronto, 2013), 22–48; Brad Patterson, Tom Brookng and Jim McAloon, Unpacking the Kists. The Scots in New Zealand (Montreal and Dunedin, 2013), 276–9. 17. Inverness Journal, 1 July 1842. 18. See, for example, John O’Groat Journal, 22 January 1841. 19. John O’Groat Journal, 15 June 1849. 20. Inverness Advertiser, 11 September 1849, 5. 21. Ibid., 26 February 1850, 6; 5 March 1850, 7. 22. Ibid., 5 March 1850, 7. 23. Canadian Sessional Papers, Session 1875, vol. 8, no. 40, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, appendix 28, Report of Angus Nicholson. 24. Library and Archives Canada [hereafter LAC], RG76, Vol. 248, file 179046, part 1, undated memorandum from Anne MacDonald to the Department of Immigration and Colonization, October or November 1924. 25. Bailyn, Voyagers to the West, 54, 57–66. 26. National Library of Scotland [hereafter NLS], MS 1319, f. 412, Mackenzie of Delvine papers, Alexander Mackenzie of Ardoch to John Mackenzie of Delvine, 8 February 1763. See also Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition (Montreal and London, 1991), 87–95. 27. NLS, extracts from the letter book of Francis Suther, SP Dept 313/1468, 79–81, Suther to James Loch, 24 December 1817. 28. See, for instance, The Scotsman, 10 July 1819 (p. 223, col. 2); 24 July 1819 (p. 240, col. 1); 25 December 1819 (p. 415, col. 2). 29. NLS, extracts from the letter book of Francis Suther, SP Dept 313/1468, 339–49, Suther to James Stuart, WS, Edinburgh, 21 July 1819. 30. Ibid., Suther to Loch, 24 July 1819. 31. Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances, vol. 1 (London, 1982), 332–3; 336–7; 340–1. For a broader treatment of radicalism in emigration societies, see Michael E. Vance,

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Marjory Harper ‘The politics of emigration: Scotland and assisted emigration to Upper Canada, 1815–26’ in T. M. Devine (ed.), Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society (Edinburgh, 1992), 37–60. 32. Donald McLeod, Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland: versus Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories in (England) a foreign land, or, a faithful picture of the extirpation of the Celtic race from the Highlands of Scotland (Toronto, 1857); originally published as History of the Destitution in Sutherlandshire: being a series of letters published in the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle (Edinburgh, 1841); Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (London, 1854). 33. Alexander MacKenzie, The History of the Highland Clearances (Inverness, 1883). 34. Scottish Highlander, 17 February 1887. 35. Scots Independent, I: 4, February 1927, 3–5. 36. John O’Groat Journal, 3 August 1930. 37. Scots Independent, I: 4, February 1927, 3–5. 38. ‘Report of the examination of the emigrants from the counties of Caithness and Sutherland on board the ship Bachelor of Leith bound to Wilmington in North Carolina’, in Cameron, Emigrants from Scotland to America, 6. 39. Ibid., 7. 40. Ibid., 12. 41. Ibid., 10. 42. D. Campbell and R. A. MacLean, Beyond the Atlantic Roar: A Study of the Nova Scotia Scots (Toronto, 1974), 46; James S. Martell, Immigration to and Emigration from Nova Scotia, 1815–1838 (Halifax, 1942), 9. 43. Alan R. MacNeil, ‘Scottish settlement in colonial Nova Scotia: a case study of St Andrew’s Township’, Scottish Tradition 19 (1994), http://www.irss.uoguelph.ca/article/ view/602/1076 [date accessed 31 March 2016]; Rosemary E. Ommer, ‘Highland Scots migration to Southwestern Newfoundland: a study of kinship’ in John J. Mannion (ed.), The Peopling of Newfoundland: Essays in Historical Geography (Toronto, 1986), 212–33. 44. Rev. W. A. MacKay, Pioneer Life in Zorra (Toronto, 1899). 45. Inverness Journal, 6 November 1830. 46. NLS, 313/2737, Hugh Mackay, Zorra, Canada, late of Badnabay, Sutherland, to John Mackay, 12 August 1847. 47. TNA, CO 384/3, 4 November 1818, Donald Logan to Lord Bathurst. 48. The land wars have been well scrutinised in scholarship. See, inter alia, Alexander D. Cameron, Go Listen to the Crofters: The Napier Commission and Crofting a Century Ago (Stornoway, 1986); James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2010, originally published 1976). 49. George Macdonald, What’s Mine’s Mine (London, 1886); Ralph Connor, The Man from Glengarry. A Tale of Western Canada (London, 1901). 50. Margaret Laurence, The Diviners (London, 1974), 41–2. 51. These issues are explored in much greater depth in Colin Nicholson, ‘“There and not there”: aspects of Scotland in Laurence’s writing’, in Colin Nicholson (ed.), Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence (Basingstoke, 1990), 162–76; Sandra CarolanBrozy and Susanne Hagemann, ‘“There is such a place” – is there? Scotland in Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners’, in Susanne Hagemann (ed.), Studies in Scottish Fiction: 1945 to the Present (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), 145–58. The most thorough treatment of Scottish influences on Canadian literature is Elizabeth Waterston, Rapt in Plaid: Canadian Literature and the Scottish Tradition (Toronto, 2001). 52. Neil Gunn, The Grey Coast ( Edinburgh, 1931), 237. 53. John O’Groat Journal, 19 February 1841.

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Emigration from Sutherland and Caithness 54. This was Canada’s flagship programme under the scheme. It was introduced in 1925 to colonise lands that the government had originally purchased for soldier settlement, but which had been abandoned or never taken up. Families with £25 for immediate use could receive advances of up to £300 from the British government to buy stock and equipment, while Canada supplied the farms. By the time it ended in 1929 it had brought in 3,346 families. Marjory Harper, Emigration from Scotland between the Wars: Opportunity or Exile? (Manchester, 1998), 21ff. 55. Mary Campbell, In Yesterday’s Footsteps (np, 1986), 75. 56. NRS, GD139/455/2, Sutherland of Forse Muniments, Dr William Sutherland, Portland, Victoria, to his sisters, 11 April 1852. 57. Harper, Emigration from Scotland between the Wars, 92–4. 58. Robert Nicolson, Rio Deseado, to unnamed brother, 3 September 1913, http://patbrit.org/eng/events/rr1912nicolson.htm [date accessed 13 November 2015]. 59. Sandy ‘Boots’ MacLeod, interviewed by Marjory Harper, Ullapool, 27 March 2009. 60. Tom Bryan, ‘Tracking the Rocky Mountain men of Coigach’, West Highland Free Press, 28 January 1994. See also Rob Gibson, Highland Cowboys (Edinburgh, 2003). 61. Sandra Train, interviewed by Marjory Harper, Dalhalvaig, Halladale, 5 November 2010. 62. For the wider context see, inter alia, Eric Richards, Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (London and New York, 2004); Nicholas P. Canny (ed.), Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1994); Leslie P. Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington, IN, 2003); Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire (Oxford, 2010).

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‘THE CLACH’: ALEXANDER MACKENZIE AND THE LAND QUESTION IN THE LATE-NINETEENTH CENTURY HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS1

BEN THOMAS

This article explores the evolution of Highland land reform in the years leading up to the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886, through an examination of the role played by the reformer Alexander Mackenzie. Owing to the paucity of archival sources left by individuals involved in the Crofters’ War, few studies have focused on the contributions made by specific personalities.2 This has limited our understanding of how personal experiences shaped someone’s engagement with the land question later in the century. But, by using Mackenzie’s output as a writer and journalist, this article will show that his early experiences of living and working on the land are vital to understanding his political outlook later in the century. Coming from a crofting background, and having experienced clearance as a young boy, Mackenzie possessed a less romantic view of crofting life than many of his fellow land reformers. His political approach to the Crofters’ War subsequently focused upon building popular consensus to secure the reforms he felt most necessary to benefit the Highland people: security of tenure and fair rents. This approach characterised not only his writing, but also his work with the Gaelic Society of Inverness, and his testimony before the Napier Commission of 1883. However, Mackenzie’s moderate and pragmatic approach to the land question put him at odds with his radical reformist counterparts, with John Murdoch and Angus Sutherland critical of Mackenzie for not addressing the fundamental problem of land ownership in Victorian Scotland. These disagreements would ultimately prove fatal to Mackenzie’s goal of a united Highland society pursuing an independent political line. However, Mackenzie’s writings and political activism did much to popularise the plight of the crofters at the end of the nineteenth century, and helped to lay the foundations for the reforms he believed most necessary to improve the lives of the Highland people. Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 68–86 DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0127 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

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Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question Mackenzie’s early life and its influence on his politics Alexander Mackenzie was born on a croft in the village of Gairloch, in Ross-Shire, on Christmas Day 1838.3 This aspect of his early life is vital to understanding his position on the land question later in the century, because his experience of the hardships and poverty inherent in crofting life left him with a lasting scepticism about the value of the whole crofting system. As a young boy Mackenzie also experienced clearance and removal, as his family were evicted from their croft when he was only one year old and resettled elsewhere on the Gairloch estate.4 This formed part of a programme of estate improvements begun by Sir Francis Mackenzie, and completed by his uncle, Dr John Mackenzie, following Sir Francis’ death in 1843.5 Intra-estate movement proved an enduring feature of Alexander’s early life, and his family were resettled twice more before he turned nine. The last and final move took them six miles down the coast, to North Erradale, and onto a croft of five acres.6 These first-hand experiences of eviction and removal would leave a lasting legacy with Mackenzie, giving particular force to his later writings on the clearances. As was the rule for many crofting families the Mackenzies struggled to make ends meet, and the young Alexander grew up in an impoverished household. And as the eldest of seven children, he was required to work on the croft from a young age, and also as a forester on the Gairloch estate.7 According to Mackenzie himself: I had to work in this way for years, so that I was never able to get a whole year, at one time, in school, but had to be satisfied with the winter months, and a few weeks in summer, after the crops were laid down and the peats cut, in the beginning of June.8 Such a life was not uncommon for a child growing up in the Highlands in the years after the famine, and classrooms were emptied around harvest time as children were called upon to aid their parents. In order to supplement the income from the family croft many older Highlanders also left their communities for a few months each year, in order to work in seasonal industries such as fishing or agriculture.9 Such was the volume of this migration that the population of Wick grew by around 10,000 each season, as men and women flooded into the town from across the Highlands and beyond.10 Making such temporary moves allowed Highlanders to retain a link to the crofting community, with most returning home to their crofts during the winter months.11 Alexander Mackenzie typifies this trend, as he left Gairloch before he was seventeen and took on a variety of seasonal jobs. In all, his early life saw him work as a ploughman in eastern Inverness-shire, on the boats at Wick, and later as a construction worker on the railways.12 During most off-seasons he returned to Gairloch to help out on the family croft.13 69

Ben Thomas Movement was therefore an enduring part of Mackenzie’s early life, and his experiences were almost archetypical of those of many young Highlanders at this time. His range of movement was not limited to northern Scotland either. In 1861 he moved south to Ipswich to work in the ‘Scotch drapery trade’, and was successful enough that he was running his own business within three years.14 Mackenzie’s time in England proved fruitful, and he was eventually able to sell his venture for £900. He used this money to move back to the Highlands in 1869, starting a new drapery business at Clachnacuddin House in Inverness, and becoming known forever after by the nickname ‘Clach’.15 Financial success was not the only legacy left by Mackenzie’s time in Ipswich. Whilst in England he took pains to make the most of opportunities previously denied by his migratory lifestyle in the Highlands and, enthused by the selfhelp philosophy of Samuel Smiles, sought to redress his lack of formal education by attending Ipswich Working Man’s College.16 He would afterwards become a local news correspondent for the London Scotsman: an opportunity that laid the foundation for his later career as a writer and journalist. Writing would bring Mackenzie fame and success in the Highlands, but his time in Ipswich was perhaps the most transformative of his life. Arriving as an impoverished crofters’ son, he left the town as a successful member of the middle class. This period therefore marks a clear turning point for Mackenzie: between his previously typical Highland adolescence, and his more atypical rise in social status. Indeed, despite his later denunciation of the hardships of crofting life and the ‘improving’ ethos of Highland landlords, Mackenzie’s life can actually be seen as a successful product of the wider trends impacting upon nineteenth-century Highland life. Without the ‘push’ factor driving him to seek career opportunities abroad, it is unlikely that Mackenzie would have experienced the successes that he did. He was certainly able to exploit the chance for education offered by life in a provincial English town, something many young people were denied in the Highlands at the time. However, such stories of social mobility were rare in Highland life at this time, and Mackenzie’s crofting background therefore marked him apart within the middle-class world of Highland civil society later in the century. Although Angus Sutherland and John Mackay had also been born on crofts, for instance, neither possessed Mackenzie’s intimate acquaintance with the seasonal migration patterns most crofters were forced to undergo. Sutherland was able to remain at school rather than having to work to supplement the family income, only leaving Helmsdale – at the age of twenty – to enrol at Edinburgh Training College, whilst Mackay left the family croft in Rogart at the age of thirteen to pursue an apprenticeship.17 The typicality of Mackenzie’s earlier experiences, coupled with his relatively unique background amongst the Highland middle class, allowed him to position himself during the Crofters’ War as the land reformer most able to speak on behalf of the crofting community. As we shall see, by straddling the social and linguistic 70

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question boundaries separating the Gaelic-speaking crofters from the British middle class, Mackenzie was able to widen the popular appeal of land reform in the key years of the land agitation. However, his personal experiences of the drudgeries of crofting life also left him with a lingering scepticism about the value of the whole crofting system. He certainly did not share his contemporaries’ veneration of the morally regenerative nature of rural Highland life. His approach to the land question in its early years subsequently focused upon securing the most obtainable and pressing reforms. This goal would put Mackenzie at odds with some of his fellow reformers, who looked with particular scorn on his desire to find a solution to Highland problems that would be acceptable to both tenants and landlords.

The development of the Land Question and Mackenzie’s political evolution Mackenzie’s early years in Inverness bear testament to his initially moderate position on the ‘crofter question’. And whilst his political philosophy would evolve as circumstances changed, his activity within civil society at this time also highlights his life-long goal of bringing all sides of Highland society together to pursue reforms to benefit the whole region. Mackenzie was certainly quick to become involved in regional cultural and political life, and he was an influential figure in the Celtic revival movement that swept the Highlands in the 1870s. In 1871 he was amongst the founding members of the Gaelic Society of Inverness (GSI) and, drawing upon his time as a journalist in Ipswich, he founded the Celtic Magazine in 1875. Mackenzie’s involvement with the GSI and the Celtic Magazine proved both a product of, and contributor towards, an increased sense of confidence and assertiveness within Highland civil society at this time, and one that led many to engage with the politics of the land question.18 As editor, Mackenzie used the Celtic Magazine as both a vehicle for the study of the history of Gaelic Scotland, and as a platform through which to discuss issues affecting contemporary Highland life.19 He also contributed a number of important genealogical serials for the Magazine, later published as popular clan history books.20 Whilst focus is here given to Mackenzie’s political writings, the importance of these clan histories should not be ignored. Not only did their success help to make Mackenzie’s name as a writer, but the money they brought in throughout his life allowed him to run his political publishing ventures at a loss. Indeed, for someone who would later become a vocal critic of Highland proprietors, the irony was not lost on Mackenzie that his political activism was largely funded by the histories he sold to this very same elite.21 However, these literary connections to landed wealth also allowed Mackenzie’s critics to portray him as an ambitious man whose land reform aspirations were only skin-deep, and as someone who was content to cosy up to landlords if it helped his personal advancement.22 71

Ben Thomas The Celtic Magazine ‘attracted as contributors and readers most of the men to whom the Celtic revival in the Highlands is due’, and many of these same individuals would go on to become influential in the land reform movement.23 In Mackenzie’s case, his early writing reflects both his initial political moderatism and his gradual evolution as a political thinker. And as the potentially divisive politics of the land question came to dominate the Highland region in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Mackenzie had to grapple with ways of reconciling his – increasingly strident – political views with the need to maintain his readership. The approach he developed in these early years was one that remained largely unchanged throughout the rest of his life. Upon its inception, Mackenzie informed the Magazine’s readers that it would be ‘devoted to the Literature, History, Antiquities, Traditions, Folk-lore, and the Social and Material Interests of the Celt at Home and Abroad’. Mackenzie also stated his desire for the paper to be both non-political and non-partisan, and his early political moderatism can be seen in his assertion that ‘we believe that, under the wiser and more enlightened management now developing itself, there is room enough in the Highlands for more Men, more Land under cultivation, more Sheep and more Shepherds, without any diminution of Sport in Grouse or Deer.’24 In stark contrast to his later opposition to deer forests, Mackenzie also went on to claim that ‘we cannot resist the glaring facts which, staring us in the face, conclusively prove that the enormous progress made in the Highlands during the last half century, and now rapidly going on, is mainly due to our Highland sports’.25 Such sentiments indicate Mackenzie’s unwillingness to tread too heavily on landlord toes whilst the Celtic Magazine was in its infancy, and also his desire to build an inclusive venture that would appeal to all sections of Highland society. However, such conciliatory tones towards the interests of the Highland elite stood in marked contrast to the approach of many of Mackenzie’s more radical reformist contemporaries, and it is not hard to see why they often proved sceptical of Mackenzie’s activist credentials in the early years of the Crofters’ War.26 Throughout Mackenzie’s editorship of the Celtic Magazine he published opinion-pieces on contemporary Highland issues written by all side of the political spectrum. This might suggest that Mackenzie ignored his own founding principle not to make the Magazine a political organ, but his understanding of a ‘non-political’ periodical was simply one that did not act as the mouthpiece for any particular political party. This is an important distinction to understand, because it formed a guiding principle throughout Mackenzie’s activism as a land reformer. He would never lose the conviction that Highland politics should be kept free of party influence, and instead sought to build regional opinion into a united front that could force greater concessions from the British state.27 This attitude would shape Mackenzie’s stance not only towards the articles he printed in the Celtic Magazine, but also towards the work of the GSI and other Highland cultural societies, and the activities of the numerous land reform organisations he was involved with throughout his life. 72

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question It would be impossible to do full justice to Mackenzie’s editorship of the Celtic Magazine here, but one article written by Mackenzie himself is worth highlighting because it marks his awakening as a thinker on the land question. This piece was written in 1877, and entitled ‘The Poetry and the Prose of a Highland Croft’. This was Mackenzie’s reaction against the idealisation of rural Highland life often to be found in the Celtic revival movement, and his article drew upon his experiences of crofting life to reveal the grinding hardship and poverty that lay at its core.28 He dwelt in particular on the ‘actual misery endured by the great majority’, and on the ‘wretched and amphibious existence’ crofters were forced to endure in order to survive.29 In all, Mackenzie professed a deep scepticism about the potential of crofting to solve the problems facing the Highland people, explaining that: The whole scene and its surroundings are beautifully poetic, and highly imaginative – poetry of the highest order, and, we regret to say, nothing but poetry – all imagination – a sham – a delusion . . . the actual prose – the stern experience of those who know the real state of things, the actual poverty and hardships of a crofter – is wretched in the extreme.30 Ruling out emigration as a solution to Highland problems, Mackenzie argued that the only answer to Highland land hunger lay in reclaiming waste land to add to pre-existing crofts. However, he recognised that such a scheme would require government help. In order to encourage state intervention, Mackenzie highlighted the advantages that would be reaped, stating that ‘there can be no question as to what is best for the nation – to have a hardy, loyal, and brave race living on the produce of the soil, ready to defend their country whenever occasion calls upon them to do their duty’.31 Furthermore, should the government not heed this warning, the British Empire would set itself on a downward spiral – ‘like all other powerful empires of the past, which at a certain stage permitted folly and luxury to undermine them’ – and would be doing so at a time when Highlander emigrants were building up new and successful Britains overseas.32 This appeal to imperial patriotism represents one way in which Mackenzie sought to build unity between the land reform cause and the rest of the British nation. By playing upon the popular image of the Highland soldier as the Empire’s finest and most loyal servant, he could give a powerful emotional appeal for the value of legislation designed to keep Highlanders on their native land. And by utilising the patriotic discourse of the day, Mackenzie was able to take the crofters’ cries for land reform beyond the Highlands, and straight to middle- and upperclass British society, using language and ideas designed specifically to resonate with contemporary British norms.33 Not everyone was impressed by such arguments though. Writing in The Highlander, John Murdoch described ‘Poetry and Prose’ as ‘mischievous’ and ‘injurious to the poor crofters on whose behalf it is no doubt published’. Murdoch was to prove a staunch defender of the crofting system, arguing in this editorial that ‘[whilst] we readily admit that there are many crofts too small . . . instead of 73

Ben Thomas doing away with the crofter system, we would go in for enlarging the small and improving the inferior’. Unlike Mackenzie’s description of fishing as ‘the most wretched of all’ forms of labour, Murdoch also saw the work associated with crofting life as healthy and morally regenerative.34 Murdoch’s more idealistic position on the crofter question was mirrored in John Mackay’s response to ‘Poetry and Prose’, published in the Highlander the following month. Here, Mackay castigated Mackenzie for his implication that crofters would be better off abandoning their native land. Looking back at his early experiences of crofting life in Rogart, Mackay claimed that ‘there was peace there, there was contentment, there was happiness, there was paternal, maternal, and filial affection there, which you would find no where’.35 Upset by the way in which he felt both Murdoch and Mackay had misrepresented his article, Mackenzie wrote to the Highlander the following week, explaining that his aim in introducing the themes of emigration and empire was merely to reveal how the fighting value of the Highland soldier had been forgotten by the political elite. Indeed, Mackenzie was not uncritical of the way that the Highlands had been treated by the British state over the years, arguing that ‘even Mr Mackay will find it hard to prove that the Highlanders themselves derived any special benefit as a people from being slaughtered by thousands, fighting to make illustrious the history of a nation that now despises him’.36 Emigration and empire would remain controversial issues in the Highlands and Islands throughout the late nineteenth century, as it was believed that Highland proprietors and government officials were advocating emigration as a solution to Highland problems in order to distract from the need for land reform at home.37 Mackenzie’s own views about emigration changed as his politics developed. Having written positively about emigration following a trip to Canada in 1879–80, he came to be highly critical of the idea that it provided a solution to Highland problems. Despite returning to the Highlands full of praise for life in the colonies, Mackenzie’s trip to Canada also proved a major turning point. His trip led him to investigate the circumstances leading so many Highlanders to leave the region in years gone by, and this research would lead to the publication of his greatest contribution to the early land reform cause: a history of the Highland clearances. Mackenzie’s trip to Canada was one born largely of curiosity. Having heard so much about life in the colonies – and having corresponded with many Highland emigrants there as editor of the Celtic Magazine – he decided to undertake a tour of North America in the winter of 1879 to investigate the situation himself. His visit was supported by grants from Dominion officials and, as part of a Canadian charm-offensive towards British journalists, Mackenzie was also given special meetings with the Viceroy; the Canadian premier John A. MacDonald; and another Alexander Mackenzie, the Liberal ex-premier.38 Mackenzie reported his exploits each month in the Celtic Magazine, and also contributed a series of letters on ‘Highlanders in Canada’ to the Aberdeen Free Press. 74

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question Mackenzie was particularly struck by the unfavourable contrast he found between the hardships of life at home in the Highlands and the lives of apparent ease and plenty being led by the Highland emigrants he met. In his first report in the Celtic Magazine, he felt he could not: conscientiously advocate that my brother Highlanders should continue to remain at home in a servile and, often, in a starving position, on grounds of mere sentiment and love of their native soil, when such a country is open to receive them.39 In a similar vein, Mackenzie also criticised the British government for treating the people of the Highlands as ‘less worthy of special encouragement . . . than a horde of Russian Mennonites and Icelanders, who would as soon fight for the Queen . . . as they would for a man on the moon’.40 Once again, Mackenzie was using patriotic language to make a case for giving special treatment to the Highland people. And once more, not everyone was impressed with Mackenzie’s stance, with John Murdoch particularly critical of Mackenzie’s fawning and adulatory interviews with the political elite. Highlighting Mackenzie’s meeting with the Viceroy in particular – at this time the Marquis of Lorne, a member of the virulently anti-land reform House of Argyll – Murdoch claimed Mackenzie’s report would do nothing to help the crofters at home, merely serving to further the agenda of ‘those who reign with pomp and folly in their castles’.41 Whilst Mackenzie’s appeals to imperial patriotism are symptomatic of his desire to make the position of the Highland people resonate with British society more widely, they also served to separate him from those who blamed the crofters’ plight on the actions and antipathy of that very same state and empire. For all Mackenzie’s positivity about life in Canada, however, his trip also opened his eyes to the circumstances that had led so many Highlanders to cross the Atlantic. After visiting a graveyard in Toronto full of memorials to men and women from the Highlands and Islands, he felt moved to reflect on the ‘harsh cruelty or callous indifference on the part of the Highland Chiefs, who must be held principally responsible for the expatriation of their noble countrymen’. He went on to express his ‘hatred and contempt for the memory of the authors of Highland evictions and other less glaring and offensive, but equally cruel forms of expatriation and transportation of a past generation’.42 After returning home, Mackenzie’s new-found interest in the clearances led him to write a series of articles on ‘Highland Evictions’ for the Free Press. Written in lurid prose, these detailed how ‘every conceivable method, short of the musket and the sword, were used to drive the natives from the land they loved’.43 Similarly emotive accounts of the clearances and their aftermath – most notably Donald MacLeod’s Gloomy Memories and Robert Somers’ Letters from the Highlands – had already done much to popularise the worst aspects of eviction and removal.44 As with the popular impact of these previous works, the real force behind Mackenzie’s new pieces came from their resonance with contemporary events. 75

Ben Thomas Now, it was the actions of a new proprietor on the Ross-Shire estate of Leckmelm that caught the popular imagination. This estate had been purchased in 1880 by the Aberdeen paper-mill owner Alexander Pirie, and towards the end of the year Pirie attempted to remove the crofters from his newly acquired land.45 These actions caused a public outcry, but even Pirie’s strongest critics – Mackenzie amongst them – were forced to concede that he was operating perfectly legally.46 Leckmelm thus served to highlight the tenurial insecurity facing most crofters, and convinced many people that changes to the land laws were urgently needed. Capitalising on this new-found mood, in early 1881 Mackenzie published his articles for the Free Press as a pamphlet on the Highland Clearances. Newspapers across the country were quick to review this new contribution to the burgeoning debate over the land laws, with the Daily Mail, London Advertiser, and the Freeman’s Journal all welcoming it as an important reminder that contemporary events were merely the latest in a long line of Highland evictions.47 Mackenzie would later expand his pamphlet to include both his own account of contemporary removals and a reprint of Donald MacLeod’s Gloomy Memories, publishing the repackaged work in 1882 as The History of the Highland Clearances. Mackenzie himself claimed to have sold over 1,400 copies of the revised work within three months of publication, and the reviews it garnered from across the country indicate that it was widely read.48 The biggest contribution of Mackenzie’s History was that it helped to bring the crofters’ plight to the attention of new sections of British society and, along with events at Leckmelm, helped move public opinion in favour of land reform. The book also made an impact on Highland civil society, some of which can be glimpsed through proceedings of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. Mackenzie was a founding member of the GSI, and amongst the goals of the new organisation were ‘the vindication of the rights and character of the Gaelic people . . . and the furtherance of their interests’.49 As early as 1877 this objective brought the Society to consider the recent history of the Highland region, and the precarious nature of contemporary crofting life. That evening Colin Chisholm read a paper entitled ‘The Clearances of the Highland Glens’, and afterwards the Society agreed unanimously to petition Parliament for the establishment of a commission of inquiry into crofting grievances.50 As the land question gained prominence, however, some members became unhappy about the way in which the GSI’s activities were becoming politicised. This mirrors the way in which the polarising nature of the land question drove fractures into Highland society more widely at this time. In particular, a number of prominent landowners were involved with the GSI in its early years, including Cameron of Lochiel, Cluny MacPherson, and Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Gairloch. These men preferred the Society to focus on promoting and supporting Gaelic language and culture, something they thought all members could agree to, regardless of politics. Arguing against them were members such as Colin Chisholm, who wished the Society to interpret their founding aims as 76

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question being intrinsically political. As a leading figure within the Society, Mackenzie was active in choosing which path it would take, and whether or not these two goals were mutually exclusive. His experience in trying to build bridges between the two camps is again typical of his approach to the land question in later years. A good example of the tensions caused by the land question comes from 1881. In June that year, Colin Chisholm once more raised a pro-crofter motion before GSI members: this time that the Society purchase 100 copies of Mackenzie’s new pamphlet on the clearances, and distribute them at its next assembly. After heated debate the motion was changed, to one calling for the GSI to distribute the pamphlets amongst members of Parliament, before the pro-crofter MP Charles Fraser-Mackintosh addressed the Commons on the state of the crofters in July. However, Charles Mackay – a lawyer and Conservative party agent for northern Scotland – forced the change of this motion from a definite action to a mere recommendation, and a week later it was dropped at a meeting convened specifically to address it.51 Despite his growing involvement in the crofters’ struggle for land reform, Mackenzie proved circumspect about involving the GSI in causes that could tip over into party politics. Instead, he sided with the land-owning sections of the Society, and argued that the Society should confine itself to supporting Highland culture. Thus, whilst he actively supported the Society when it lobbied Parliament on behalf of Gaelic language issues, he also proved influential in the withdrawal of the GSI from the Federation of Celtic Societies (FCS) in 1881. The FCS had been formed in Glasgow in 1878, as a way of uniting the country’s various Celtic societies. Mackenzie represented the GSI at the Federation’s inaugural meeting, but made it clear that he ‘did not believe in this Federation taking up extreme questions of party politics or ecclesiastical questions of any kind’.52 This approach would put him at odds with John Murdoch and Angus Sutherland, who wanted the FCS to take a more active role in the campaign to reform the land laws.53 The FCS’s move towards this latter position would see the GSI withdraw their representative in 1881, with Mackenzie critical of the increasing politicisation of the Federation, and its unwillingness to move its meetings beyond Glasgow.54 Whilst he did not believe the discussion of political issues should be banned by the GSI – recognising that the growing number of popular protests in the region made such questions impossible to ignore – as late as 1885 he was still cautioning the Society not to commit itself to giving anything but the most general support for the crofters’ cause.55 As with Mackenzie’s handling of political issues in the first edition of the Celtic Magazine, his approach towards the GSI’s political activism once again reflects a pragmatic appreciation of the context within which the Society operated. After all – and unlike its associational counterparts in urban Scotland – the GSI relied heavily on members of the landed elite for both funding and members. Mackenzie was certainly aware that a potentially irrevocable split could occur if the increasingly partisan atmosphere of the land question was allowed to 77

Ben Thomas complicate its work on behalf of the Highland people.56 Such an issue was less pressing for the GSI’s Glasgow-based counterparts, who drew most of their impetus from amongst middle- and working-class Highlanders based in the Central Belt. With popular protests expanding rapidly across the Highlands and Islands in the early 1880s, it was not long before organisations dealing specifically with the land question were formed in the region. Events at Leckmelm provided the main catalyst, and Mackenzie was again in the vanguard. Thus, when a Highland Land Law Reform Association (HLLRA) was formed in Inverness in March 1882, it was Mackenzie who headed it. This organisation was staffed with members of the local middle class, and acted as a forerunner to HLLRA branches in London, Edinburgh, and Sutherland. The new Association declared its ambition: By constitutional means, and irrespective of party politics, to effect such changes in the Land Laws as shall prevent the waste of large tracts of productive lands in the North, shall provide security of tenure, [and] increased protection to the tillers of the soil.57 The foundation of such a reformist movement by members of the local middle class is good evidence that sections of Highland society were beginning to take a more active and assertive role in regional political life by the early 1880s.58 However, the politicisation of regional life did not come without a cost, and Mackenzie felt it necessary to find ways of maintaining unity. In the Celtic Magazine, he tried to do so by providing a platform for all sides of the argument to express their views. With the GSI, it meant a step back from political issues to concentrate on promoting Gaelic culture and language. Yet if Mackenzie was a largely successful mediator in these early years, his ambitions would be placed under greater strain as the land question came to dominate Highland life after 1883. The Crofters’ War and the fractures within the Land Reform movement 1883 marked a significant milestone in efforts to achieve Highland land reform: the announcement of a Parliamentary inquiry into crofting conditions by the Gladstone Government. The Napier Commission – named after its chair, Lord Napier and Ettrick – toured the Highlands and Islands throughout 1883, taking evidence both from landlords, factors, and local notables, and from the crofters and cottars themselves. This was the first time this latter group were able to state their grievances in their own words to both the British government and the general public.59 Mackenzie is regarded as the first proponent of such an inquiry, suggesting it in 1877, and lobbying Charles Fraser-Mackintosh to raise the matter in Parliament.60 Mackenzie certainly possessed more than a passing interest in the proceedings 78

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question of the commission. Alive to the need for the crofters and cottars to come forward and state their case, he toured the Highlands and Islands in advance of the commissioners to encourage the people to speak out about their insecure position on the land. His work was funded by friends sympathetic to the crofters’ plight, but Mackenzie insisted to the commissioners that ‘I went entirely free from any control of, or responsibility to, any association in the world’.61 However, his actions, along with those undertaken independently by John Murdoch, were widely seen by critics as an attempt stir up agitation and put words into crofters’ mouths.62 Mackenzie himself gave evidence to the commissioners when they visited Inverness, and he was also requested by the people of Gairloch to give evidence on their behalf. Whilst he declined this latter offer – preferring the crofters to speak in their own words – Mackenzie did discuss his experiences of crofting life in Gairloch with the commissioners, highlighting incidents that had occurred during Sir Kenneth Mackenzie’s minority that he felt the Gairloch crofters had been too scared to raise themselves.63 Given that Sir Kenneth was one of the commissioners, this introduced an intriguing aspect to Mackenzie’s evidence. Whilst Sir Kenneth had absented himself when his tenants had given evidence in Poolewe, he was able to remain during Mackenzie’s testimony in Inverness, and proved more than willing to challenge Mackenzie’s portrayal of the hardships brought about by estate improvements.64 Mackenzie’s evidence before the Napier Commission highlights the way in which his approach to the land question had evolved since ‘Poetry and Prose’ was written in 1877. In his opening statement, Mackenzie told the commissioners that: The first thing that strikes any intelligent observer . . . is, that the fertile portions of the land . . . are now generally included in the sheep farms, and occasionally in deer forests, while the people are congested on rocky promontories and scattered in patches on the sea-shore. Describing sporting estates as a ‘luxury’, Mackenzie claimed that landlords systematically hoarded local resources, and thereby gave their crofters ‘no encouragement or incentive to live’, and no incentive to improve their miserable lots of land.65 The solution Mackenzie proposed was to break down large deer forests and sheep farms, and to give the land acquired to crofters and cottars on a permanent tenure, at a valuation set by an independent arbiter.66 This was a more interventionist line than Mackenzie had taken in ‘Poetry and Prose’, although he also argued that dispossessed landlords should be fully compensated for their loss. Such a conciliatory approach to the interests of the Highland elite can be put down to Mackenzie’s desire to find a solution to Highland problems that would be agreeable to all parties. For this reason he also directed much of his ire towards sheep farms rather than deer forests, telling the commissioners that ‘I should be very sorry to see all sport abolished. I have, perhaps, too much clannish feeling 79

Ben Thomas towards the old chiefs to allow me to desire to see them done out of their sport altogether.’67 Mackenzie’s reformist proposals to the Napier Commission were therefore relatively modest – aiming to secure the ‘3 Fs’ of fixity of tenure, fair rents, and compensation for improvements – rather than making fundamental changes to the way in which land was owned or taxed. This typifies Mackenzie’s pragmatic approach towards obtaining the crofters’ most pressing need – security of tenure – a cause he felt might suffer if linked to unobtainable or unrealistic demands. Indeed, Mackenzie recognised the difficulty in securing even this. In order to impress the commissioners with the case for change, he once again played upon the idea of the Highland soldier as the Empire’s staunchest defender, and downplayed any associations between the Highland crofters and radical Irish land reformers. First, Mackenzie contrasted the historical willingness of Highland men to enlist in the Army with the low numbers then in the ranks, claiming that the crofters’ response to contemporary recruiting appeals was one of ‘let them send their sheep and deer to fight instead’.68 He also informed the commissioners that Highlanders now preferred to emigrate to the USA rather than to the colonies, implying that neglect by the British state had caused a previously loyal and patriotic section of the population to turn their backs on their monarch and empire. Hinting at the consequences if Highland problems were allowed to persist, Mackenzie told the commissioners that: I feel and believe that if no steps are taken almost immediately, you will have a social revolution in the Highlands. I have heard expressions made use of by the people that I would not like to state publicly – a determination expressed in the event of remedies not being forthcoming.69 Yet Mackenzie was unwilling to push too far the idea that Highlanders had become disloyal and unruly subjects, and took particular pains to disassociate the crofters from any connections to events or people in Ireland. Mackenzie actually possessed a great deal of sympathy for the plight of Irish smallholders, and his approach towards Highland politics drew much of its inspiration from the actions of Irish MPs. In late 1884, for instance, he toured western Ireland to assess the results of the Irish Land Act, reporting this visit in the Celtic Magazine. In these articles he expressed his sympathy for Irish tenants who had been rack-rented over the years, and also for the waves of eviction and famine the Irish people had been forced to endure. After visiting the birth-place of Michael Davitt, Mackenzie also expressed his admiration for a kindred-spirit who had experienced eviction when a young boy, and had devoted his life to the cause of land reform as a result.70 Mackenzie would later describe Irish MPs as the ‘best friends of the Highlanders’, praising them for their ‘excellent Irish example’ of unity in pursuit of their goals, and also for the moral and political support they gave to the crofters. Such support was the main reason that Mackenzie supported Irish Home Rule in 1886.71 80

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question However, Mackenzie’s trip to Ireland, along with his evidence to the Napier Commission, also highlights his desire to keep Highland politics free and independent of any outside influences. This approach was to prove a constant theme, and in 1880 he castigated John Murdoch for his links with Clan na Gael, the American wing of the revolutionary Fenian movement. Mackenzie believed they tarnished the legitimate and peaceful claims of the Highland crofters, stating that ‘all rational Highlanders, entirely disapproved of his [Murdoch’s] ParnellDillon crusade in America last year.’72 In reflecting upon the ‘Death of the Highlander’ in 1882, Mackenzie also laid the blame for the paper’s demise squarely on Murdoch’s links to Irish radicals, claiming that ‘at one time it [the Highlander] had a large and influential circulation, and it was well advertised; but latterly it became more Irish than Highland’.73 The Irish land agitation proved a divisive issue in Highland society, and whilst many people were sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Gaels, many also feared that the violence and disorder that accompanied the Irish land war would spread to Scotland. By placing distance between the two countries, Mackenzie hoped to make the crofters’ plight appeal to British public opinion, and particularly to the mores of middle-class society. Indeed, in disassociating the Highlands from Ireland, and by playing up the Highlander’s reputation for imperial loyalty, Mackenzie was able to portray support for land reform as an act of imperial patriotism. For instance, in 1884 he told readers of the Celtic Magazine that, even before the Irish Land Act, the Irish people had been ‘better off in every respect than the Highland peasantry’. Going on to contrast ‘the feeling of security’ and the ‘active industrial spirit’ now found in Ireland with conditions in the Highlands, Mackenzie expressed his puzzlement as to ‘how it is that the Irish tenants are not satisfied with what they have already secured, and how it is that they do not show the most unbounded gratitude to the Government that has conferred such undoubted benefits upon them’.74 The implication of Mackenzie’s argument was clear: for all the attention devoted by the British Government to Ireland, the Highland crofters were more deserving of special attention, and would show greater appreciation of any reforms enacted on their behalf. By endeavouring to keep Highland land reform free of associations with perceived Irish disloyalty, Mackenzie hoped to portray the crofters and cottars as loyal and patriotic subjects, who had only been forced into protest by the actions of selfish landlords. He thus emphasised to the Napier Commission that he had tried to prevent the crofters resorting to violent protest on the basis of ‘Irish influence’, explaining that: . . . we had to keep it back . . . I and others of my friends who take an interest in the question. We found people who were forcing on public meetings and a regular propaganda throughout the Highlands in connection with this question, and we had to put our foot down pretty firmly to keep the people from the south from coming here, and carrying on an agitation.75 81

Ben Thomas Mackenzie’s desire to portray Highland politics as unique, and his insistence that it be kept free of ‘outside’ influence, stands in marked contrast to Angus Sutherland and John Murdoch, who actively worked to link the Highland land reform cause to the struggles of other communities across Britain and Ireland.76 The Napier Commission produced its report in 1884, but it pleased almost nobody. Not only did the commissioners disagree amongst themselves as to the solutions necessary to solve Highland problems, but for reformers of all shades Napier’s recommendations did not go far enough. Mackenzie produced his own analysis in the Celtic Magazine and, whilst praising the commissioners for the sympathetic manner of their inquiry, he expressed his disappointment that they only proposed granting security of tenure as part of a package of wider reforms. He also criticised the commissioners for their failure to propose reforms to deal with existing deer forests, for the restrictive terms and conditions they proposed for ‘improving’ leases, and for the report’s overall recommendation that emigration form part of the wider solution.77 As a framework for guiding policy, the flaws in Napier’s report ensured that it had little impact. When the Gladstone Government eventually came to draw up a crofters’ bill in 1885, it was modelled less on Napier’s recommendations and more on the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881.78 As a result of his disappointment about the measures proposed by Napier, Mackenzie became increasingly involved in the politics of land reform, becoming an active member of HLLRA and, in July 1885, founding a newspaper to continue his political activism: the Scottish Highlander. As a result the Celtic Magazine became almost entirely antiquarian in focus, and Mackenzie stepped down as editor in October 1886. The Magazine was eventually incorporated into the Scottish Highlander in 1888, as a bespoke section dealing with Gaelic culture and history. The years between the Napier Commission Report and the passing of the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886 were ones in which Mackenzie consolidated his growing identity as a land reformer. However, he also found himself increasingly disillusioned with Highland proprietors, for what he saw as their collective desire to obstruct needed legislative changes at every opportunity. He was especially critical of a landlord conference held in Inverness in March 1885, claiming that those involved were ‘living in a fool’s paradise’, and were proposing ‘worthless’ remedies with little relevance to contemporary problems.79 The 1886 Act provided the principal articles that Mackenzie had lobbied for – notably the ‘3 Fs’ of fair rent, fixity of tenure, and compensation for improvements. However, the lack of compulsory purchase powers in the bill, coupled with the minimal provisions it made to alleviate the plight of Highland cottars, left him feeling that further reforms were necessary.80 Whilst the years after 1886 would see Mackenzie largely reconcile with John Murdoch and Angus Sutherland – as the old guard of reformers put aside past disagreements to lobby for further state intervention – what unity was left in the wider land reform lobby would be wrecked on the rocks of the Home Rule Crisis.81 Mackenzie became 82

Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question increasingly critical of crofters who, having secured concessions for themselves in 1886, failed to help alleviate the plight of the cottars. He castigated them in 1891, for instance, for abandoning the people of Lewis ‘to the embraces of Mr Alexander Morrison, the primrose dames, and the paid agents of the LiberalUnionist Association’.82 Conclusion Alexander Mackenzie has been seen as something of an ambiguous figure within the land reform movement. Often described as a lackey to Charles FraserMackintosh, or as a less ideologically sophisticated reformer than John Murdoch, Mackenzie was instead a hard-headed pragmatist, who aimed to secure the most immediate and obtainable reforms by building popular consensus in favour of change. This approach stemmed from Mackenzie’s distinct conception of how Highland politics should be organised: upon independent lines, free from party influence, with regional society working as one to secure the greatest possible return from central government. This mirrored, as he saw it, the reasons behind the success of Irish MPs in the Commons, although he always sought to downplay any connections between the Highlands and Ireland to avoid alienating wider British society. However, not only did Mackenzie’s growing interest in land reform serve to alienate him from the Highland elite, but his moderate goals also put him at odds with his radical contemporaries in the early years of the Crofters’ War. Reformers such as John Murdoch and Angus Sutherland looked upon Mackenzie’s conciliatory approach to the interests of the landed classes with scepticism, and frequently criticised his politics for not being advanced enough. Such tensions bedevilled the wider land reform movement, and Mackenzie’s lingering hopes for an independent Highland party would finally be crushed when the land league split in 1893. Whilst the idea of an independent Highland party would occasionally be revived in the region – notably by Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish in 1935 – the 1886 Act had dealt a damning blow to further attempts to build region-wide unity on the basis of the land question.83 Mackenzie’s failure to convince his fellow reformers of the need for unity should not detract from his influence during the Crofters’ War. By popularising the crofters’ plight in the History of the Highland Clearances, Mackenzie not only brought the issue of Highland land reform to the attention of the wider British public, but also helped to create a groundswell of opinion in favour of legislation. Coupled with his years of activism on behalf of the HLLRA, and the support he offered to the crofters in the pages of the Celtic Magazine and Scottish Highlander, his work did much to keep Highland issues squarely on the political agenda. 83

Ben Thomas Notes 1. The author would like to thank Dr Annie Tindley and Professor Eric Richards for their comments and advice on an early version of this paper, and also the two anonymous reviewers and the editor, Dr Elizabeth Ritchie, for their helpful and constructive feedback during the review process. 2. The major exceptions are: Ewen A. Cameron, The Life and Times of Fraser Mackintosh, Crofter MP (Aberdeen, 2000); James Hunter, For the People’s Cause: From the Writings of John Murdoch (Edinburgh, 1986). 3. Unfortunately, nothing of Mackenzie’s private correspondence survives, meaning that details of his life and career must be drawn from his (thankfully voluminous) output as a writer. 4. Scottish Highlander, 27 January 1898. 5. J. B. Caird, ‘The making of the Gairloch crofting landscape’, in John R. Baldwin (ed.), Peoples and Settlement in North-West Ross (Edinburgh, 1994), 142-3; Neil MacGillivray, ‘Dr John Mackenzie (1803-86): Proponent of scientific agriculture and opponent of Highland emigration’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 33 (1) (2013), 93; Christina Byam Shaw, Pigeon Holes of Memory: The Life and Times of Dr John Mackenzie (London, 1988), 226. 6. Alexander Mackenzie, evidence to Napier Commission. See Parliamentary Papers [PP], Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (hereafter ‘Napier Commission Evidence’), C. 3980 (1884), p. 2682, q. 41060. 7. Northern Chronicle, 26 January 1898, and Scottish Highlander, 28 September 1893. 8. ‘Napier Commission Evidence’, p. 2684, q. 41060. 9. T. M. Devine, ‘Highland migration to lowland Scotland, 1760–1860’, Scottish Historical Review [SHR] 62 (1983), 148-9. 10. Malcolm Gray, The Highland Economy 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957), 161. 11. Charles W. J. Withers, ‘Highland-Lowland migration and the making of the crofting community, 1755–1891, Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 103, No. 2, 80. 12. Northern Chronicle, 26 January 1898, and Scottish Highlander, 28 September 1893. 13. ‘Napier Commission Evidence’, p. 2683, q. 41060. 14. Scottish Highlander, 28 September 1893. 15. Northern Chronicle, 26 January 1898. 16. Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances, Vol. 2: Emigration, Protest, Reasons (London, 1985), 79. 17. For Sutherland see Highland News, 11 June 1889. For Mackay see Highlander, 20 October 1877. 18. Northern Chronicle, 26 January 1898. 19. For a discussion of the Magazine in its wider context see Ian B. Stewart, ‘Of Crofters, Celts and Claymores: The Celtic Magazine and the Highland cultural nationalist movement, 1875–88’, Historical Research 88 (May 2015), 1-26. 20. See, for instance, Alexander Mackenzie, History of the MacDonalds and Lords of the Isles: With Genealogies of the Principal Families of the Name (Inverness, 1881). 21. PP, Report from the Select Committee on Colonisation; together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of evidence, and appendix, C. 354 (1890), evidence of Alexander Mackenzie, p. 305, q. 4913; Celtic Magazine, cxii (1885), 198. 22. See, for instance, Northern Chronicle, 14 November 1883; Highlander, 3 November 1880. 23. Ewen A. Cameron, ‘Embracing the past’, in Dauvit Broun, R. J. Finlay and Michael Lynch (eds), Image and Identity: The Making and Re-Making of Scotland through the Ages (Edinburgh,

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Alexander Mackenzie and the Land Question 1998), 209; John Shaw, ‘Land, people and nation: Historicist voices in the Highland land campaign, c. 1850–1883’, in Eugenio F. Biagini (ed.), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996), 320. 24. Celtic Magazine, i (1875), 1. 25. Ibid., 2. 26. Andrew G. Newby, Ireland, Radicalism, and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1870–1912 (Edinburgh, 2007), 90. 27. See, for instance, Scottish Highlander, 17 July 1885, 1 October 1896. 28. Ewen Cameron, ‘Protest and politics: Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands in the 1880s’, in Dauvit Broun and Martin MacGregor (eds), Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, ‘The Great Ill-will of the Lowlander?: Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (Glasgow, 2009), 220. 29. Celtic Magazine, xxiv (1877), 454-5. 30. Ibid., 449. 31. Ibid., 456. 32. Ibid., 457. 33. For further discussion of this theme, see Andrew Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics c.1880–1932 (Harlow, 2000), 13. 34. Highlander, 29 September 1877. 35. Ibid., 20 October 1877. 36. Ibid., 27 October 1877. Italics in original. 37. Wayne Norton, ‘Malcolm McNeill and the emigrationist alternative to Highland Land Reform, 1886–1893’, SHR 70 (1991), 16-30. See also Ben Thomas, ‘Cultures of Empire in the Scottish Highlands, c.1876-1902’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Aberdeen, 2015). 38. John D. Wood, ‘Transatlantic land reform: America and the Crofters’ Revolt 1878–1888’, SHR 63 (1984), 82-3. 39. ‘The Editor in Canada’, Celtic Magazine, xlix (1979), 20. 40. Ibid, lvi (1880), 308. 41. Wood, ‘Transatlantic land reform’, 84, n.2. 42. Celtic Magazine, liv (1880), 243. 43. Reprinted in the Invernessian, 29 January 1881. 44. Donald MacLeod, Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland: Versus Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Sunny Memories in (England) a Foreign Land: Or a Faithful Picture of the Extirpation of the Celtic Race from the Highlands of Scotland (Toronto, 1857); Robert Somers, Letters from the Highlands, or, The Famine of 1847 (London, 1848). 45. Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 95. . 46. Alexander Mackenzie, The History of the Highland Clearances: Containing a Reprint of Donald MacLeod’s ‘Gloomy Memories of the Highlands’, Isle of Skye in 1882, and a Verbatim Report of Trial of the Braes Crofters (Inverness, 1883), 158; Invernessian, 27 November 1880. 47. Reviews reprinted in Celtic Magazine, lxvii (1881), 326-8. 48. Invernessian, August 1881. For a less positive response see Scotsman, 3 September 1883. 49. ‘Constitution’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness [TGSI] i (1871-2), v. 50. Colin Chisholm, ‘The clearance of the Highland glens’, TGSI vi (1876-7), 188. 51. ‘Minutes of the Gaelic Society of Inverness’, 16 June 1881, Gaelic Society of Inverness Minutes 1881-5, held in Inverness Library. 52. Celtic Magazine, xxxix (1879), 117. 53. Newby, Ireland, 54.

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Ben Thomas 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Celtic Magazine, lxiii (1881), 103. Celtic Magazine, cxii (1885), 197. Ibid., 198. Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 109. Cameron, ‘Embracing the past’, 209. James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, 2nd. edn (Edinburgh, 2010), 16. Scottish Highlander, 28 September 1893; Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 109; ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2697, q. 41103; Celtic Magazine, vol. 9 (1884), 359. 61. ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2710, q. 41248. 62. Ewen A. Cameron, Land for the People?: The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c.1880–1925 (Edinburgh, 2009), 21; Celtic Magazine, xcvi (1883), 580. 63. ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2682, q. 41058. 64. Unfortunately, due to space constraints this article cannot address this aspect of Mackenzie’s evidence in the depth it deserves. 65. ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2700, q. 41147. 66. Ibid., p. 2692, q. 41063. 67. ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2699, q. 41128. 68. Ibid., p. 2713, q. 41279. 69. Ibid., p. 2701, q. 41150. 70. Celtic Magazine, cix (1884), 23. 71. Scottish Highlander, 22 November 1888, 29 July 1886. 72. Invernessian, 30 October, 1880. 73. Celtic Magazine, lxxviii (1882), 295. 74. Celtic Magazine, cix (1884), 21, cx (1884), 61. 75. ‘Napier Commission evidence’, p. 2701, q. 41152. 76. Newby, Ireland, 66. 77. See Celtic Magazine, civ and cvi (1884). 78. Cameron, Land for the People?, 36. 79. Celtic Magazine, cxiii (1885), 228. 80. Celtic Magazine, cxvii (1885), 399; Scottish Highlander, 17 July 1885. 81. James Hunter, ‘The politics of Highland Land Reform, 1873–1895’, SHR 53 (1974), 57. 82. Scottish Highlander, 8 January 1891. 83. Ewen A. Cameron and Annie Tindley (eds), Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871–1945 (Edinburgh, 2015), 195.

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REVIEW ESSAY: THE SCOTS ABROAD: RECENT APPROACHES TO MIGRATION, DIASPORA AND IDENTITY

D. A. J. MACPHERSON

The Scottish Diaspora. By Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson and Graeme Morton. Pp. vi, 272. ISBN: 9780748648924 (pbk). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. £25.00. Back to Caledonia: Scottish Homecomings from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. Edited by Mario Varricchio. Pp. xvii, 292. ISBN: 9781906566449 (pbk). Edinburgh: John Donald, 2012. £25.00. Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600–2000. Edited by Marjory Harper. Pp. xi, 276. ISBN: 9780719070716 (pbk). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. £16.00. At all events Highlanders, both before and after the ancestors of the present Canadian Prime Minister arrived in Canada almost 150 years ago, have played a tremendously important part in the making of Canada, and it was therefore a real pleasure for Highlanders still in their Highland homeland to observe the deep personal interest which Mr Diefenbaker took in the countryside which his forbears left so long ago. But it is not surprising that with the Canadian Premier “the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,” for pride in their Highland ancestry is also taken by several of Britain’s leading statesmen. . . 1 In the winter of 1958, the Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, visited his supposed ‘ancestral home’ – Kildonan in Sutherland. While the Prime Ministerial motorcade which wound its way up the Strath of Kildonan to the church where his forebears were buried struck a curious sight (and not just for the sheep), Diefenbaker’s return to this particular part of the Highlands had a serious Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 87–95 DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0128 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

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D. A. J. MacPherson purpose. Having a Scottish (and Highland) identity was important to Diefenbaker. His presumed relatives (the Bannermans) had been part of the third group of Red River settlers sponsored by Lord Selkirk to leave Kildonan in late summer 1813. In returning to Scotland, Diefenbaker was not just engaging in an early, statesman-ly bit of ‘roots tourism’. Diefenbaker’s visit to the Highlands was all about reconnecting with his family origins and doing so in the context of a self-consciously imperial trip around the Commonwealth in which Diefenbaker affirmed his commitment to a vision of Canada securely framed by the British Empire.2 And for those in Scotland whom Diefenbaker visited, as the above Inverness Courier editorial pointed out, this trip was important, both at the time and in the remembrance of Diefenbaker in the collective memory of Sutherland.3 Diefenbaker’s return to the Highlands, then, illustrates a number of the key themes which emerge from the three books reviewed here: return migration, ‘roots tourism’, and a multiplicity of diasporic connections, actions and identities all feature prominently. The lively academic debate represented by these books illustrates the rude good health of Scottish migration and diaspora studies. As T. M. Devine points out in his foreword to the volume edited by Mario Varricchio, Scotland provides a ‘fascinating historical laboratory’ (p. xv) for the study of migration and these three books demonstrate an increasing willingness of scholars to test the broader assumptions of migration and diaspora studies in a globalized Scottish setting. As such, given the books under review and other recent publications, academic studies of the Scots abroad may be said to be maturing nicely and, at least in some instances, demonstrating a capacity for sharpening the cutting edge of the broader field of migration and diaspora studies. Certainly, there has been a pleasing theoretical ‘turn’ (not least of which in Bueltmann, Hinson and Morton’s book) where historians have embraced (and helped refine) the concept of diaspora, although, as we shall see, there remains a pressing need for scholars of the Scots abroad to examine their subjects from more thoroughgoing gendered and comparative perspectives. Return migration has emerged as an exciting sub-field of migration and diaspora fields since the turn of the millennium. Two of the books under review here – the Harper and Varricchio edited volumes – take return migration as their main focus, while Bueltmann, Hinson and Morton’s book incorporates returning Scots as one of their key themes of the Scottish diaspora. Marjory Harper’s pioneering edited collection was first published in 2005, emerging from an earlier conference organized by the University of Aberdeen’s then Research Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. Now reprinted in a welcome paperback edition, the edited collection is (and the conference was) far more geographically and ethnically diverse than this, though, offering a range of experiences of return migration. Published in Manchester University Press’ ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series, Harper’s volume brings together historians and the one anthropologist in a set of chapters which explore a variety of different migrant groups from the early modern period to the present day. While this collection is not 88

The Scots Abroad specifically about Scotland, the experience of returning Scots is central to four of the twelve contributions, from seventeenth-century sojourners to modern day ‘roots tourists.’ This academic Scottish focus helpfully reflects Scotland’s overrepresentation in the processes of migration, empire-formation and return, and indicates how the Scottish example can prove such a useful tool for examining broader trends in diaspora studies. The book is organized into four parts, providing an initial overview of return, before moving on to motives, mechanisms and the impact of return migration. This thematic structure is well-considered, providing a conceptual coherence somewhat lacking in Varricchio’s later, more chronological, volume. Marjory Harper’s excellent introduction, having established the paucity of scholarly treatments of return, outlines some of the overarching themes explored by contributors: the longevity of return migration as a phenomenon of human mobility; geographical variations in rates of return; and how the process of return shapes the identities of both migrants and the communities to which they come back. The main introduction is then further complemented by editorial introductions for each section, dealing with each chapter in more detail and teasing out some of the thematic interconnections between contributors. Part I establishes many themes which then run through most of this volume. It begins with a chapter by Mark Wyman, one of the pioneering scholars of return migration. Wyman proposes an ‘analytical model of return migration’ (p. 9) in which he examines the return of migrants from the US back to Europe, exploring the variety of reasons for return, the characteristics of return migrants and the impact of return on migrants’ old homes. Patrick Fitzgerald’s chapter focuses on pre-famine return migration to Ireland from the seventeenth century onwards. While Fitzgerald’s emphasis on the longstanding nature of Irish return migration is important, his key finding is that, regardless of the absence of detailed statistics from this period, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that ‘the reversal of emigration’ has always been a key part of ‘migrant mentality and behaviour’ (p. 47). Part II turns our attention more precisely to migrants’ motives for return. It begins with Steve Murdoch’s analysis of second-generation Scots’ homecomings from Scandinavia, using detailed individual case studies of the likes of James Sinclair of Sinklarsholm in Denmark to tease out reasons for return, from plain curiosity to a desire to see the ‘homeland’ of their parents. Eric Richards’ contribution shifts the book’s focus into the modern period, examining the return strategies of migrants heading back ‘home’ to the British Isles from Australia. Richards explores the ‘endless modulations among the emigrant strategies’ (p. 100), but concludes that economic success in Australia was the single most important reason shaping the return migrant’s decision. Australia is also the focus of Alistair Thomson’s chapter, which examines oral history evidence and uses a life history approach to tease out the complexities of return to Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. The final chapter in this section once more focuses on Scotland, in Paul Basu’s analysis of the phenomenon of 89

D. A. J. MacPherson ‘roots tourism’ in the contemporary Scottish Highlands. In the most theoretically engaged of all the contributions, Basu picks up on some of the themes from Murdoch’s work on seventeenth-century return and Richards’ argument that the idea of home was a ‘fabrication in the mind of every migrant’ (p. 100). Basu examines how ‘roots tourists’ use the experience of returning to the Highlands to create certain narratives of exile and dispossession, which are then represented in personal testimony. He concludes that these ‘homecomings for homeless minds’ misidentify the Highland Clearances as the ‘foundational trauma’ (p. 147) for Scottish migrants, enabling them to claim a ‘victim’ status which then forms a key part of their diasporic identity. Part III moves on to exploring how migrants actually managed to return home. Bruce Elliott provides a typically detailed analysis of how one family from Antrim – the Woodsides – managed to finance return to Ireland. Elliott argues that personal correspondence functioned as a ‘transnational network of family’ (p. 177) which was vital in orchestrating the return of various Woodsides. A more institutional approach is taken by the last two contributors to this section, in chapters by Kathleen Burke on the Canada Club in Britain and Marilyn Barber on the Fellowship of the Maple Leaf. Formed in 1810, the elite Canada Club functioned as an important way in which migrants could preserve transatlantic connections and continue to invest time and resources in all things Canadian. The Fellowship of the Maple Leaf was a Church of England missionary society dedicated to ‘keeping Canada British and Christian’ (p. 199) and Barber details how returned migrants kept the organisation going in Britain from its inception in 1917 until the 1960s. Individuals such as Monica Storrs developed a keen sense of dual identity, belonging to both Canada and Britain, and functioning, in Barber’s analysis, as ‘living links of empire’ (p. 212). The book concludes with a strong section on the impact which return migrants from Europe and the East Indies had on the communities in Scotland to which they returned during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alexia Grosjean engages in a micro-study of the Aberdeenshire parish of Belhelvie, arguing that successful migrants who came back from the Baltic and from India used their sojourning gains to invest heavily in the local area. Andrew Mackillop’s chapter provides a fine conclusion to this volume, using his analysis of Hector Munro of Novar to establish how return migration perpetuates the emigration cycle. Mackillop’s account of Munro’s returns from India in the 1760s and 1780s demonstrates how the Highlands were just as plugged in to (and reliant upon) the imperial economies of the West and East Indies as the more commonly investigated Scottish sojourners of Glasgow. Munro used the vast profits from his time in India to engage in political and charitable activities in his native north east Scotland, in order ‘to generate a potent and acceptable image of the successful nabob’ (p. 215). But the most significant impact of Munro’s imperial profiteering, both economically and culturally, came in the programme of estate improvements carried out in Novar. As well as funding the drainage and field-system rationalisation on his estate, Munro used his East 90

The Scots Abroad Indian wealth to build a number of impressive monuments, such as that on Cnoc Fyrish, which still continue to inscribe imperial connections on the Highland landscape. While Munro was adept at using his extensive patronage network to nourish continuing migration streams of the local gentry to the outposts of empire, Mackillop concludes by arguing that the improvements funded by Munro’s East India adventures were instrumental in ‘the process of Highland depopulation and emigration’ (p. 252). Paradoxically, by returning home from India and ‘improving’ his estate through such measures as the introduction of sheep farming, Munro was creating the conditions in which many of his tenants felt compelled to become migrants themselves, heading west to North America. Mario Varricchio’s more recent edited collection is testimony both to progress in the field and to the extensive research that remains to be done on return migration to Scotland. This volume is the first book to focus exclusively on Scottish return migration and, like Harper’s edited collection, arose from a symposium, at the University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies in 2010. While Varricchio has brought together an impressive array of contributors from a wider range of disciplines, Back to Caledonia is fundamentally less coherent as an overall collection, lacking the thematic tautness of Harper’s book. Varricchio arranges the book chronologically, beginning with Steve Murdoch’s analysis of seventeenth-century Dutch testaments and the repatriation of capital to Scotland and ending with David McCrone and Frank Bechofer’s chapter on twenty-first-century return migrants. In his editor’s introduction, Varricchio sets out the book’s principal aim – to function as a foundation for future research and, specifically, to inspire monographs on return migration. One of the book’s strengths is the geographical spread of these return migrants, demonstrating the global reach of the Scottish diaspora. So, having begun with Steve Murdoch’s analysis of how Scots sent money and property back home from Rotterdam (including, importantly, from many ‘ordinary Scots’ (p. 46) and repatriating more capital than their English counterparts), the book’s chapters take us on something of an early modern European tour of Scottish return migration. Siobhan Talbott examines the organisation of the Scottish mercantile community in France and the ongoing connections with Scotland which persisted even after return migration. Kathrin Zickermann’s chapter examines northwest Germany, where she provides a detailed account of why merchants such as Robert Hog wished to return to Scotland. Zickermann makes an important argument about the lack of an organised Scottish community in settlements such as Bremen and how this led to the closer integration of Scots with the ‘host’ community and, in turn, affected decisions about return. After a strong opening, Varrichio’s book then loses a little momentum. George McGilvary’s chapter on returning Scottish nabobs describes how fortunes earned in the East Indies were then remitted to Scotland. This, however, is a fairly standard narrative of patronage, commercial opportunities, opium, remittance and the reception of nabobs in England and Scotland which lacks 91

D. A. J. MacPherson the sophistication of Mackillop’s analysis in Harper’s book (which is mysteriously not referred to by McGilvary). Graeme Morton’s contribution is a useful study of two returning Scottish politicians – James Grant and Theodore Napier – and provides an important diaspora perspective on the evolution of nationalism in Scotland. Cairns Craig shifts the book’s focus onto an important and neglected aspect of return migration – how spiritual and philosophical ideas, as well as people, could ‘come home’ to Scotland. Craig examines the return migration of philosophers and preachers, arguing that there was a distinctively Scottish diaspora community which, in turn, fuelled the transmission of ‘ideas through Scottish-based institutions across the world, and their eventual repatriation to the homeland’ (p. 147). Tanja Bueltmann provides a sophisticated analysis of such sources as digitised newspapers in her chapter on the ‘roots of roots-tourism’ (p. 150) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing largely on return movement from New Zealand, Bueltmann argues that people came back to Scotland for tourism, education and business and that this was often organised by Scottish diaspora associations such as St Andrews and Caledonian Societies. Coming back to Scotland, then, was an important part of retaining and maintaining diasporic connections to migrants’ ‘homeland.’ Celeste Ray’s chapter moves the book firmly into the twentieth century and the examination of recent and contemporary return migration. Picking up on Bueltmann’s argument that, for returning Scottish migrants, landscape has a ‘memory-bearing function, even if the memories were constructed rather than real’ (p. 160), Ray explores the ‘ancestral clanscapes’ constructed in both the US and Scotland. Events such as the Grandfather Mountain Scottish Highland games in North Carolina create ‘a wee bit of the Scottish Highlands in America’, ‘intensifying one’s own sense of identity, and a means for seeking intersubjectivity with one’s real or presumed ancestors’ (p. 178). The editor’s own contribution uses Valerie Miner’s 2001 family memoir The Low Road as an example of creative return to a Scottish home. However, Varricchio ignores much recent scholarship in basing his analysis on a misunderstanding of Highlandism as purely the product of Lowland invention and sets up a problematic false hierarchy between academic research and popular myth-making that does little to help us understand how Scottish diasporic identities are constructed. David Hesse’s chapter builds on Ray’s analysis of clan homecomings in his examination of ‘affinity Scots’ – those who claim a Scottish identity without they or their ancestors having been born in Scotland. Hesse argues that ‘affinity Scots’ such as the Dutch pipers he interviewed during the 2009 Homecoming are essential in making the ‘Scottish dreamscape. . . [come]. . . alive’ (p. 234). Despite outlining a problematic teleology of the development of Highlandism (from Ossian to Braveheart via Harry Lauder) Hesse deftly analyses the 2009 Homecoming events as Highland-ised versions of Scottish culture. The final two chapters use social survey data and interview material to explore the shifting identities of return migrants to Scotland. Michael Rosie argues that birthplace is key to a Scottish identity, although leaving and then 92

The Scots Abroad returning from England may heighten a sense of Britishness. David McCrone and Frank Bechofer conclude the book with interview testimonies which confirm Rosie’s findings about return migrants and British identities. For McCrone and Bechofer, return migrants (and their changed sense of identities) are ‘doubly interesting’ (p. 262) for the way in which they attempt to reconcile a Scottish identity based on a country that no longer exists, enabling ‘us to see ourselves as we have become’ (p. 279). The final book under review, Bueltmann, Hinson and Morton’s Scottish Diaspora, is an accessible overview of the global movement of Scots. In examining Scots’ ‘wanderlust’, this book situates the history of Scottish migration in the context of contemporary debate about migration. The Scottish Diaspora is a book that wears its impressive theoretical baggage lightly, moving discussion of Scots’ migration away from the unhelpful image of victimhood and forced movement and towards a sophisticated fashioning of the term ‘diaspora.’ Echoing Bueltmann’s earlier work on the Scots in New Zealand, this book defines diaspora as a concept, describing a set of actions, behaviours and identities that actively connect migrants across the globe with the Scottish homeland and with each other. This ‘global Scottish World’ (p. 3) is explored in a number of short and succinct chapters, offering excellent introductions to the themes and locations of the Scottish diaspora. The book is structured in three parts, establishing the theoretical context in diaspora studies before then focusing on key themes and concluding with chapters on the geographies of the Scots abroad, from the ‘near diaspora’ of England to New Zealand. One of the most impressive features of this book is the theoretical foundations that are laid at the outset. Moving beyond rather tired debates about diaspora typologies, Bueltmann, Hinson and Morton argue that the term ‘diaspora’ should not be used as a category, labelling particular (and increasing numbers of) migrant groups and instead becomes useful when deployed as a concept, one which captures the homeland-orientated behaviours of many migrants. Chapter 3 begins the ‘Themes’ section of the book, focusing on the socio-economic factors which lead to migration, from demographic pressures, to fluctuations in standards of living, occupational change and urbanisation. This chapter argues that, contra Devine, there was ‘no paradox’ (p. 53) of Scottish emigration – the pressures of urbanisation were such that they outweighed the attractions of industrialisation, explaining why Scotland became one of the most migrant nations on earth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Having established some of the reasons why Scots left, Chapter 4 quantifies this mass movement of people across the globe and offers a demographic profile of Scottish emigration. Importantly, this chapter uses recent quantitative research to demonstrate that, while there was some regional variation, overall, ‘all regions of Scotland experienced outward migration, and no one region dominated the flow’ (p. 69) and that migration constituted a significant drag on Scottish population growth, shaping the ratio of women and men, both at home and abroad. 93

D. A. J. MacPherson Chapter 5 then turns attention to the emigration experience, examining migrants’ letters to build up a picture of the complexity of passage and settlement. In particular, it makes clear that the Scots made good use of ethnic and family networks to ease their integration into their new environments abroad. One of the key challenges faced by Scottish migrants was encountering indigenous peoples in various colonial environments. Chapter 6 explores this important aspect of the Scottish diaspora, utilizing recent research to demonstrate how such encounters shaped discourses of race and class both abroad and in Scotland, forming a constitutive element of the ‘homeland-diaspora connection’ (p. 95). This chapter makes the key point that Scots were ‘willing imperialists’ (p. 110), just as capable as any other ethnic migrant group of violently dispossessing indigenous groups of their land. Scottish migrants’ propensity to organise themselves along ethnic lines is explored in Chapter 7. Again based on recent research, this chapter argues that Scottish associational culture was so highly developed and pervasive that Scots then drove forward the ‘development of ethnic associations worldwide’ (p. 115). This chapter provides a detailed comparative analysis of variations in Scottish associational culture, demonstrating how St Andrews or Caledonian societies were central to developing both diasporic connections and in helping Scots migrants to thrive and prosper in the civil society of their new homes. Chapter 8 engages with the theme of return migration, building on the other two books reviewed here. As well as detailing the by-now-familiar elements of Scottish return migration, from sojourning to education, this chapter makes excellent use of newspaper evidence to trace the emergence of roots tourism, arguing that this was ‘a distinct type of Scots’ return movement’ (p. 141) which helped to forge and strengthen diasporic bonds among the Scots abroad. The book’s second part, on the geographies of the Scottish diaspora, begins with a chapter on the ‘near diaspora’ of movement within the British Isles. Chapter 9 examines the industrial attraction of the north of England, south Wales and Belfast, while Chapter 10 then moves the story across the Atlantic to the United States, establishing how, over time, America became the most popular destination for Scots migrants. From the heavy involvement of Scots in the slave plantation economies of the south and the Caribbean to the movement west of Scottish migrants to work in mining and textiles, the United States was central to the story of the Scottish diaspora. Chapter 11 covers much familiar territory regarding the movement of Scots to Canada, and challenges some of the more popular narratives of Scottish emigrant success. Africa is the focus of the next chapter, which makes the key point that the presence of Scottish regiments was just as important as the more visible missionaries in shaping Scottish connections with Africa. Moreover, this chapter places slavery at the heart of the Scottish African experience; Scots played a significant role in the slave trade in Africa itself, ‘actively contributing to the alteration of the human landscape’ (p. 207) on the continent. This highlights the chapter’s conclusion, which argues that the Scottish experience in Africa is harder to pin down precisely because of the 94

The Scots Abroad issue of race, being ‘consistently framed around an indigenous other’ (p. 218). Chapter 13 continues to feature the complexity of Scottish diaspora experience in its analysis of the Scots in Asia. From the East India Company, to the trading of Jardine, Matheson & Co. and HSBC, the Scots in Asia largely viewed their stay as a sojourn, but one in which ethnic Scottish networks played a vital role in business and identity terms. And, finally, the last chapter examines the most farflung Scots, in Australia and New Zealand, highlighting the vibrancy of ethnic associational culture and the capacity of Scots for shaping the nature of antipodean society. The Scottish Diaspora concludes with a marvellously creative epilogue, focusing on that ‘essentialist diasporan experience’ (p. 14), the Burns Supper. The epilogue is an imagined toast to the ‘Immortal Memory of Robert Burns’, given by a Scot in Chicago in 1920. Focusing on Burns, this epilogue integrates the key themes of the book, combining creativity and historiography in equal measure in an entertaining end to the work, a whimsical approach that should be embraced by more academic writers. The Scottish Diaspora, then, is the pick of this bunch of recent books on the Scots abroad. While Emigrant Homecomings and Back to Caledonia offer clear and persuasive accounts of return migration, The Scottish Diaspora is one of the very best single-volume studies of Scottish migration. It provides an excellent introduction to the key themes and locations of the Scots abroad, injecting a welcome dose of theory into the Scottish historiographical blood stream. There remains, however, one elephant in the Scottish diaspora room. While women are occasionally mentioned in passing in all three books, none deals with the experience of the female migrant or with gender in a systematic way. Tanja Bueltmann’s most recent book, Clubbing Together (Liverpool University Press, 2015), goes some way towards filling this particular historiographical hole but, while these three books indicate the health of Scottish diaspora studies in many respects, women and gender remain understudied and, consequently, marginalised. The Scots abroad (especially the women) still await their Joan Scott, Donna Gabaccia or Judith Butler. Notes 1. ‘“The Heart is Highland”’, Inverness Courier, 4 November 1958. 2. ‘Canada’s Premier Visits the Highlands’, Highland News, 1 November 1958; P. Buckner, ‘Canada and the end of empire’, in P. Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, 2010), 120–2. 3. See the ‘Diefenbaker’s North’ exhibition, created by Timespan museum in Helmsdale during 2014, available at http://timespan.org.uk/explore/projects/diefenbakers-north/ [date accessed 2 December 2015].

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BOOK REVIEWS

The Gathering Stream: The Story of the Moray Firth. By James Miller. Pp. ix, 248. ISBN: 9781780270951. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2012. £14.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0129 An encompassing 2,000 year history of the Moray Firth region has been accomplished by James Miller in The Gathering Stream. Miller’s work complements his extensive writing on the north of Scotland that incorporates various themes across different time periods, including the twentieth-century subjects of forestry (2009), hydro-electric power (2007) and the North Atlantic campaign in the Second World War (2001, 2003). Miller’s other works – on the Scottish mercenary experience abroad in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (2007), the experience of northern Scottish fishing communities (1998) and the history of Caithness and Inverness (1979, 2004) – have each added to our knowledge of northern Scottish history. The Gathering Stream synthesises a vast amount of thoroughly researched material into an accessible form that offers the reader a thoughtful introduction to the region’s past. Defining the boundaries of the Moray Firth has been a continual discussion, and a general consensus is met concerning the maritime limits of the Moray Firth, from Duncansby Head in the north, Beauly in the south-west, and Kinnaird Head in the east; however, the landward boundaries have been more contested and transverse the HighlandLowland boundary. Miller extends a landward focus from the Mounth northwards and ventures as far west as the dorsum Britanniae, described in accounts of Saint Columba and commonly known as the west-east watershed that runs north to south through Ross and Sutherland. He notes, ‘our story does not always extend so far. It is better simply to go where the history takes us, whether it is to the confines of a single bay or the breadth of the North Sea, and not impose rigid boundaries at the outset’ (p. 2). This broad definition of the Moray Firth allows Miller the opportunity to express the differences between the Highland and Lowland experience in the Moray Firth and to compare the east-west littoral to the north-south, which developed differently in terms of land-use and

Northern Scotland 8, 2017, 96–122 © Edinburgh University Press 2017 www.euppublishing.com/nor

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Reviews demographics. By doing so, Miller contributes to the growing historiography surrounding the Moray Firth that began in antiquity with Ptolemy. In the more recent past, Lachlan Shaw (1775) serves as the foundation of the history of the Moray Firth and has been the starting point for many historians. Cuthbert Graham (1977) added a survey of the region while Ian Mowat (1981) introduced the idea of a ‘Double Frontier’ exploring the cultural and linguistic, HighlandLowland, boundary in Easter Ross between 1750 and 1850. More recently, Ian Hustwick (1994) has explored the Firth’s maritime and trade history while David Worthington (2011) focuses the discussion, arguing that the Moray Firth was a distinctive maritime region during the seventeenth century.1 Miller’s long-dureé approach, over two millennia, argues that the region witnessed the convergence and effects of five distinct cultures and languages – Pictish, Gaelic, Norse, AngloSaxon, and Norman-Flemish – that changed the fabric of the people, landscape and how the region developed. The chronological structure of The Gathering Stream identifies the key stages in Moray Firth history. Chapters 1 to 3 cover: the rise and fall of the Picts, from their Roman encounters, their conversion to Christianity and their disappearance, while caught between two incoming peoples; the Gaels from the south-west; and the Norse from the north and the sea. Chapter 4 focuses on the forging of a new province of Moray and its elites’ political engagement and conflicts with the emerging state of Alba in the tenth century. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the influences of planting Norman-Flemish landowners in the region, the introduction of European-style feudalism and the establishment of burghs as centres of trade, governance and royal influence. Chapter 7 explores how the English occupation and Wars of Scottish Independence influenced the region in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Chapter 8 employs a thematic and comparative approach to highlight the division, interaction and experiences of the people around the Firth living in the Highlands and Lowlands. Chapters 9 and 10 cover the extremely eventful period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, plotting the major cultural, political and religious changes brought about by the Renaissance, Reformation, Covenanters and Jacobites, followed by the introduction of the Enlightenment, agricultural revolution and improvement ideology. Chapter 11 covers the tumultuous Highland Clearances, the establishment of the British Fisheries Society’s planned villages and the introduction of new travel and communications infrastructures into and throughout the region in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter 12 brings the history of the Moray Firth into the twentieth century with its experience in global conflicts, its troubled industrial development and interactions with the Highlands and Islands Development Board and Highland and Islands Enterprise, the improvement of travel and communications infrastructure, and concludes with Miller’s reflections on the present situation of the Moray Firth, as a region moving from distinctive local identities to a regional awareness and shared identity. 97

Reviews Miller’s task to map the incoming cultural, linguistic, religious and political influences for 2,000 years of history for the Moray Firth is commendable. He rightly acknowledges that for the early years of this history the sources are few and some speculation is necessary; however, by the sixteenth and seventeenth century far more documents were produced and survive. The rapid pace at which he covers nearly 1,500 years of history in the first six chapters slows for the latter half of the book, covering the remaining 500 years, and benefits from the use of a wider array of sources. However, the second half of the book answers few probing questions. For example, Chapter 9 surveys the complex early modern period which witnessed the Renaissance, Reformation, Covenanters and Jacobites and leaves the reader pondering as to the full extent these massive movements in Scottish history influenced the region. That being said, his treatment of other large changes, such as the planting of Norman-Flemish settlers, moves apace and his brief summations should not be seen as wilful neglect of certain epochs but rather a necessity to accomplish the chronological aims of the book within a reasonable 248 pages. Therefore, this work smartly entices its audience to pursue their own research on the history of the region. While the title is a metaphor for the convergence of streams of cultural and linguistic distinctiveness brought by different peoples, the very literal image of gathering streams, indicating a maritime focus, is largely neglected. Miller’s predominately landward focus, with the notable exceptions of the growth of the fisheries and herring industry, leaves questions as to the extent the waterways were vital. He notes that the shortest side of the Moray Firth triangle was transversed by water, from Kinnaird Head to Duncansby Head (p.1), but he does not fully explore how sea travel functioned as a highway vital within this region. It is widely known that ferries criss-crossed the inner part of the Moray Firth (the Beauly, Cromarty and Dornoch firths) and future research will surely uncover more about this transportation history. Miller’s The Gathering Stream is an excellent survey of Moray Firth history and serves students and the public well. Miller wisely transports the audience to the shores of the Moray Firth with numerous illustrations enhancing his descriptions with images of artefacts, built history and land- and waterscapes. Ongoing and future research of the Moray Firth will expand our understanding of the numerous themes raised by Miller. The 2016 ‘Firths and Fjords’ conference, hosted by the University of the Highlands and Islands Centre for History, has surely begun the process to magnify the history of the Moray Firth, provide an international context for the region and highlight different methodological approaches to regional studies based on adjacent coasts. Finally, Miller’s thoughtful conclusions on the influence of the past on the present state of the Moray Firth encourages the reader to stop and critically reflect on how history has shaped our present-day communities, regions and identities. Wade Cormack University of the Highlands and Islands 98

Reviews Note 1. Lachlan Shaw, The History of the Province of Moray (Edinburgh, 1775); Cuthbert Graham, Portrait of the Moray Firth (London, 1977); Ian R. M. Mowat, Easter Ross 1750–1850: The Double Frontier (Edinburgh, 1981); Ian Hustwick, Moray Firth Ships and Trade during the Nineteenth Century (Aberdeen, 1994); David Worthington, ‘A northern Scottish maritime region: The Moray Firth in the seventeenth century’, International Journal of Maritime History 23 (2) (2011), 181–209.

The Vikings in Islay. The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History. By Alan Macniven. Pp. 419. ISBN: 9781906566623 (pbk). Edinburgh: John Donald, 2015. £25.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0130 This study of the Vikings in Islay, with a place-name survey forming part two of the text, is taking our understanding of the Viking impact on Scotland an important stage further, and in the right direction. That is, we must have detailed studies of the names given by the Vikings in every location, and in every island, before we attempt overall assessments of the type of settlement which they established in Scotland, and before we categorise the naming of their farms. This requirement is especially important in the Western Isles where the toponymy is strongly influenced and obscured by the Gaelic language, and therefore much more difficult to elucidate than in the monophonic Northern Isles. In Orkney and Shetland the farm names are almost 100% derived from the Norwegian language, and they have been well studied by philologists, in Orkney by Hugh Marwick (1929, 1932) and in Shetland by Jakob Jakobsen (1936, reprinted 1993). But the Hebridean and western Scottish material influenced by the Norse has only seen sporadic attempts to come to grips with the very complex place-nomenclature. These include studies of the village names in Lewis by Oftedal (1954), of NorseGaelic contact in the place-names of west Lewis by Cox (1991, 2002), of Norse settlement patterns in Coll and Tiree by Johnston (1995) and in Wester Ross by Fraser (1995). The recent admirable study by Gilbert Markús of the place names of the Isle of Bute (2012, 2012a) is now followed by this present exploration of the ‘place of names’ in the island of Islay. Alan Macniven’s study is ground-breaking in more ways than one. It claims justifiably to be the ‘first major source book’ on the topic of Islay names, and Part 2 consists of a survey of the names of more than 600 settlements, structures and natural features on the island, with glossaries of naming elements in both Old Norse and modern Scots Gaelic. It takes the author’s earlier study of Prehistory and Early History (which he contributed to David Caldwell’s 2008 book, Islay The Land of the Lordship) a great deal further and he contextualises the toponymy more fully with the historical evidence and with some serious philological analysis. The etymological discussions ‘are based on the systematic consideration of early 99

Reviews Note 1. Lachlan Shaw, The History of the Province of Moray (Edinburgh, 1775); Cuthbert Graham, Portrait of the Moray Firth (London, 1977); Ian R. M. Mowat, Easter Ross 1750–1850: The Double Frontier (Edinburgh, 1981); Ian Hustwick, Moray Firth Ships and Trade during the Nineteenth Century (Aberdeen, 1994); David Worthington, ‘A northern Scottish maritime region: The Moray Firth in the seventeenth century’, International Journal of Maritime History 23 (2) (2011), 181–209.

The Vikings in Islay. The Place of Names in Hebridean Settlement History. By Alan Macniven. Pp. 419. ISBN: 9781906566623 (pbk). Edinburgh: John Donald, 2015. £25.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0130 This study of the Vikings in Islay, with a place-name survey forming part two of the text, is taking our understanding of the Viking impact on Scotland an important stage further, and in the right direction. That is, we must have detailed studies of the names given by the Vikings in every location, and in every island, before we attempt overall assessments of the type of settlement which they established in Scotland, and before we categorise the naming of their farms. This requirement is especially important in the Western Isles where the toponymy is strongly influenced and obscured by the Gaelic language, and therefore much more difficult to elucidate than in the monophonic Northern Isles. In Orkney and Shetland the farm names are almost 100% derived from the Norwegian language, and they have been well studied by philologists, in Orkney by Hugh Marwick (1929, 1932) and in Shetland by Jakob Jakobsen (1936, reprinted 1993). But the Hebridean and western Scottish material influenced by the Norse has only seen sporadic attempts to come to grips with the very complex place-nomenclature. These include studies of the village names in Lewis by Oftedal (1954), of NorseGaelic contact in the place-names of west Lewis by Cox (1991, 2002), of Norse settlement patterns in Coll and Tiree by Johnston (1995) and in Wester Ross by Fraser (1995). The recent admirable study by Gilbert Markús of the place names of the Isle of Bute (2012, 2012a) is now followed by this present exploration of the ‘place of names’ in the island of Islay. Alan Macniven’s study is ground-breaking in more ways than one. It claims justifiably to be the ‘first major source book’ on the topic of Islay names, and Part 2 consists of a survey of the names of more than 600 settlements, structures and natural features on the island, with glossaries of naming elements in both Old Norse and modern Scots Gaelic. It takes the author’s earlier study of Prehistory and Early History (which he contributed to David Caldwell’s 2008 book, Islay The Land of the Lordship) a great deal further and he contextualises the toponymy more fully with the historical evidence and with some serious philological analysis. The etymological discussions ‘are based on the systematic consideration of early 99

Reviews written forms and local pronunciation in their topographical, economic and wider societal contexts.’ Here (in the Preface) we learn of another ground-breaking process: the attention which is paid to the ‘historical’ significance of the names as well as their philological interest. The author makes his attention to the historical significance abundantly clear in ‘the extended prose investigation’ of Islay’s ‘fascinating namescape’ which is the achievement of his Part 1, and which he calls ‘a technical manual on the scope and limitations of place-names as source material for history writing.’ This is an ambitious claim and it is an approach which is extremely unusual, one which I have been interested in furthering ever since I became interested in, and indeed fascinated by, the potential of place-names for our understanding of the impact of the Vikings on Scotland. This approach is only feasible with the right linguistic credentials, with the wider knowledge and understanding of Viking settlement history in the home countries and in the Scandinavian diaspora in the British Isles (particularly in the Hebrides), and with a thorough knowledge of the geography of Islay. The author possesses all of these requirements. In Chapter 3 he approaches his subject rationally and explains the basis of his study lucidly and confidently. Acknowledging the ‘exotic character’ of Islay’s place-names and the temptation of approaching the subject with a sense of romance he nonetheless warns the reader that it is necessary to adopt ‘a more sombre, scientific approach.’ This leads him into a very important assessment of the history of studies of Islay names by previous commentators, most notably the well-known, but little-understood works of the naval surveyor, Capt. W. F. L Thomas, who wrote his study of the lslay place-names in 1881–2, and who had firm views on the relationship of the Viking settlers with the native Gaelic population. The author’s critique of Thomas’ methodology is balanced and justified, pointing out that it does not allow for ‘the more nuanced study of ethnic development’ (p.27). (There could have been a fuller exposition of the work of W. D. Lamont). This chapter also introduces the reader to some of the complex history of the ‘Hebridean elite culture’ and the families who dominated that culture. The sources used for the toponymic analysis are introduced here, most importantly the 1749–51 Map of the Island of Islay, drawn up by Stephen MacDougall. It was good to have this map reproduced for the benefit of the reader’s understanding of the basis for much of the succeeding analysis, although extraordinarily there is no cross-reference to it in the text (nor indeed is there a list of figures, a regrettable omission in contemporary published histories). The comment on p.29 that the importance of MacDougall’s map ‘cannot be understated’ is a strange way of expressing the significance of this valuable cartographic source! More straightforwardly the author uses MacDougall’s map as a template and explains in Chapter 4 how it should be ‘read’ under the sub-headings of the ‘Basic Structure and lay-out’, the ‘Name forms and etymology’, the ‘Geospatial context’, the ‘Economic context’ and the ‘Cultural context.’ Under the analysis of etymology, he explains the three-way process of collating and scrutinizing the 100

Reviews body of linguistic evidence, taking into consideration the ‘centuries-long delay’ between the coining and the recording of the Old Norse names as well as the problem of scribal error. This is followed by a discussion of the complexities of phonology and accounting for changes to the original Scandinavian name by later Gaelic speakers. The need for constant reference to specialist place-name glossaries and dictionaries is firmly stated, while the search for parallels from the wider Scandinavian diaspora in the North Atlantic and from the Gaelic-speaking world closer to home is undertaken. A series of useful maps showing ‘Landscape Types’, ‘Topography’ and ‘Land Capability for Agriculture’ help to fit the names into the wider geographical background. All of these broad-ranging components demonstrate the breadth – and depth – of the process which the author has employed in order to make the toponymy of Islay more comprehensible and more fully analysed. His methodology is a model for further studies of the Hebridean settlement location, where the mingling of Gaelic and Old Norse is a specific feature which makes this area of Viking colonialism quite exceptional and – to most of us – incomprehensible (or at least very difficult to study and to understand). Chapter 5, ‘Echoes of the Past. Shadows of the Future’ takes the process of analysis of the different geographical areas further. It is firmly stated that the author is limiting his study to the 177 names on MacDougall’s map which are ‘farmdistricts’, while the 69 names relating to topographical features (and parishes) are omitted as being too typologically varied, without older recorded forms. However on the next pages we do have some discussion of these topographical names, as well as a map (Fig. 5.2) showing different topographical features. It is the section on ‘Patterns in the Landscape’ of the settlement names which brings to the fore the meatiest and most intractable problem of interpretation, and which is the author’s prime focus of investigation. What sort of ‘hybrid’ Norse-Gaelic society developed in the post-Norse period? Which, in fact, of the island’s Gaelic names are survivors from the period before the Viking impact, and which are post-Norse ‘neologisms’ which replaced original Norse names? As the author acknowledges, answering these questions ‘is no easy task.’ He then looks at the eight geographical areas of which the island is made up, as a preliminary to a series of ‘Extra-linguistic observations’, which include the principles of fiscal dating, discussed in Chapter 2, in which the status of farm districts is seen from the ‘trappings of wealth’, such as fortifications, chapels, and graveyards, which include the important pagan Viking burials for which Islay is well-known among archaeologists. These elements are excellently illustrated with his small distribution maps, as also are the Gaelic and Norse place-name elements, which are then examined. The analysis of Gaelic and Old Norse cultural generics goes through some well-worn approaches to these names. Gaelic cultural generics, like baile, cill, and airigh, are discussed and analysed, but with some new and controversial proposals (cill names, for instance, may be much later than normally assumed, and are linked in discussion with the period of Church reorganization in Islay in the late twelfth 101

Reviews or early thirteenth century, pp. 67–9). Old Norse cultural generics are also given the once-over, but with a masterly analysis of their place in the toponymic pattern. The problematical setr/saetr names and their relationship are explained in the most understandable way, and linked in with all the other pastoral farm names in the north Atlantic settlement area (pp. 75–6). This section is full of insights into the place of such toponymic generics in the overall pattern, and new and exciting theories are posited, such as linking byr names (which may be the east Norse byr) to the rulers of the Oslofjord area (p. 78). Basing his wider analysis on this thorough examination of the place names of Islay the author then moves on to the big issues: ‘Continuity or Revision in Land Denominations?’ (Chapter 6), while finally the ‘Viking Agenda’ is explored in Chapter 7. The wide-ranging issues of ‘invasion, predation and migration’ are introduced, with a very well-resourced analysis of the mechanics behind Viking expansion, and the methods by which the Norse settlers obtained land and authority in the islands in the west. The popular image that the raiding was driven by ‘simple piracy’ is questioned and the likelihood that ‘political aspirations’ also played a part is argued. Some very eye-catching analogies are used to help categorise the Viking aims and ambitions, and the ‘Viking impetus’ is considered under the headings of ‘subjugation, settlement and centralization.’ This is all heady stuff, but the wider agenda has indeed to be taken into account when analyzing the circumstances in one island, so historical and archaeological evidence is considered alongside the toponymic. Masterly analysis of all this is crystallised by the author’s total command of the local place-nomenclature and his understanding of the Gaelic-Norse circumstances. We are shown how the cultural blending of the post-Viking period makes our understanding of the Scandinavian impact more difficult, and quite different from other parts of Scandinavian Scotland. The Inner Hebrides is a world apart from Lewis or Orkney and the Scandinavian settlement story has to be understood in the light of the local place-names. This is the important lesson of this study of Islay’s names and it is hugely significant for future studies of the totality of the Viking impact on Scotland. Barbara Crawford University of St Andrews and University of the Highlands and Islands

Land Assessment and Lordship in Medieval Northern Scotland. By Alasdair Ross. Pp. xiv, 393. ISBN 9782503541334 (hbk). Turnhout: Brepols, The Medieval Countryside, 14, 2015. e100.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0131 One of the most enduring problems associated with the study of medieval and early modern Scottish history has been seeking a clear understanding of the 102

Reviews or early thirteenth century, pp. 67–9). Old Norse cultural generics are also given the once-over, but with a masterly analysis of their place in the toponymic pattern. The problematical setr/saetr names and their relationship are explained in the most understandable way, and linked in with all the other pastoral farm names in the north Atlantic settlement area (pp. 75–6). This section is full of insights into the place of such toponymic generics in the overall pattern, and new and exciting theories are posited, such as linking byr names (which may be the east Norse byr) to the rulers of the Oslofjord area (p. 78). Basing his wider analysis on this thorough examination of the place names of Islay the author then moves on to the big issues: ‘Continuity or Revision in Land Denominations?’ (Chapter 6), while finally the ‘Viking Agenda’ is explored in Chapter 7. The wide-ranging issues of ‘invasion, predation and migration’ are introduced, with a very well-resourced analysis of the mechanics behind Viking expansion, and the methods by which the Norse settlers obtained land and authority in the islands in the west. The popular image that the raiding was driven by ‘simple piracy’ is questioned and the likelihood that ‘political aspirations’ also played a part is argued. Some very eye-catching analogies are used to help categorise the Viking aims and ambitions, and the ‘Viking impetus’ is considered under the headings of ‘subjugation, settlement and centralization.’ This is all heady stuff, but the wider agenda has indeed to be taken into account when analyzing the circumstances in one island, so historical and archaeological evidence is considered alongside the toponymic. Masterly analysis of all this is crystallised by the author’s total command of the local place-nomenclature and his understanding of the Gaelic-Norse circumstances. We are shown how the cultural blending of the post-Viking period makes our understanding of the Scandinavian impact more difficult, and quite different from other parts of Scandinavian Scotland. The Inner Hebrides is a world apart from Lewis or Orkney and the Scandinavian settlement story has to be understood in the light of the local place-names. This is the important lesson of this study of Islay’s names and it is hugely significant for future studies of the totality of the Viking impact on Scotland. Barbara Crawford University of St Andrews and University of the Highlands and Islands

Land Assessment and Lordship in Medieval Northern Scotland. By Alasdair Ross. Pp. xiv, 393. ISBN 9782503541334 (hbk). Turnhout: Brepols, The Medieval Countryside, 14, 2015. e100.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0131 One of the most enduring problems associated with the study of medieval and early modern Scottish history has been seeking a clear understanding of the 102

Reviews basic units of assessment into which people of the past carved up the landscape and exploited its resources. Ouncelands, pennylands, merklands, husbandlands, oxgangs, carucates, ploughlands, arachors and davachs were all in use in the Scottish countryside at one time or another from the tenth through the nineteenth centuries. Some of these units were fiscal in nature, designed to facilitate the collection of taxes and to calculate personal obligations and renders of communal dues; others more certainly denoted measurements of arable land, but among the bewildering variety of terms used to refer to territorial divisions in the premodern era few have generated more rigorous discussion – and more acrimonious disagreement – among scholars than the davach (Gaelic dabhach, pl. dabhaichean). Alasdair Ross is not the first to claim that he has arrived at a definitive resolution of the questions that historians have asked about this ancient unit; he will probably not be the last. In this study, a thorough revision and substantial expansion of the doctoral thesis that he completed at the University of Aberdeen in 2003, he nevertheless proposes a compelling history of the origins and functions of the davach. Land Assessment and Lordship is actually two books in one. In the first section, which counts a concise two hundred pages, Ross seeks to answer fundamental questions about dabhaichean: what were they, where did they originate, when and why did they first take shape? In the second section, which consists of five appendices, he identifies more than one hundred and twenty parishes scattered across a vast part of northern and western Scotland and recreates the contours, physical and administrative, of their respective medieval and early modern dabhaichean. Curiously, Ross makes little effort in the main body of his work to refer the reader to these appendices and less still to incorporate into his discussion the nuggets of valuable information that he so painstakingly assembles there. This is regrettable, not least because his reconstruction of medieval parish and davach boundaries is based on a thorough and impressive command of onomastic, archaeological, documentary and topographical source materials. In the opening sections of the book, Ross sketches out the geographical contours of his inquiry, that is, the regions where the dabhach was the chief (or only) unit of land assessment. This area covers much of the medieval provinces of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, Caithness and the northern reaches of the Hebridean Islands, roughly the core of the ancient kingdom of Scotia. In a lengthy historiographical chapter he carefully reviews the several interpretations that historians have offered in respect of the origins and purpose of the davach. He demolishes each in succession and concludes that the unit was neither a quantity of acreage associated with grazing livestock, nor a fixed measurement of grain related to souming, reaping or renders of cash or food. Instead, Ross addresses the puzzle of the davach from the perspective of what he calls a ‘new model . . . underpinned by the landscape itself ’ (p. 48). His questions lead him not only into the written sources that are the stuff of traditional history, but also to the study of place-names, monuments, maps and long-term settlement 103

Reviews patterns. The region of Moray, he suggests, provides both a methodological key for the discovery of dabhaichean in other territories within the boundaries of the old kingdom of Pictland, and an historical template with which to uncover patterns in the early adoption of the unit, for Moray played ‘a crucial role in the development of the medieval kingdom of the Scots.’ In three successive chapters Ross identifies by name and location several hundred davachs. They were, in his estimation, deliberate creations, probably ‘imposed from above’ and thus physical expressions of a lordship which was still embryonic in the tenth century, but which steadily acquired distinct shape after the twelfth, when kings, incoming aristocrats and reform-minded churchmen superimposed over them the feus, manors, baronies, burghs and episcopal provinces so familiar to historians. Ross argues that the ancient dabhaichean of Moray became the ‘building blocks’ (p. 101), first, of the parochial system of the region in the high Middle Ages and, subsequently, of the thanages and lordships that played so crucial a role in the genesis of the kingdom of the Scots more generally. About half of the dabhaichean of Moray were self-contained units of territory. The rest were made up of scattered estates and many were subsequently divided into fractions, but virtually all included stretches of arable terrain, lands amenable to exploitation as pasture, mineral deposits and access to riverine or coastal waters. Despite the breadth and range of their ecodiversity, Ross finds, each and every dabhach ‘contained the natural resources necessary to sustain communities of people on an annual basis’ (p. 101). The evidence for the creation of davachs beyond Moray, in the northern and western reaches of old Scotia, is rather more exiguous but here, too, Ross uncovers plentiful evidence of two types of dabhaichean (self-contained and scattered) and makes a convincing case for tracing in these units the outlines of later medieval parochial boundaries. Here, as in Moray, upland areas designated in post-1200 record sources as forest land may have provided pasture for coastal blocs of territory otherwise lacking in pastoral resources. Ross’s answers to the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of the davachs of northern and western Scotland are alluring and much of what he argues in this book may well settle once and for all scholarly debates about the purpose of these units of assessment in the pre-Improvement landscape. His efforts to identify the period during which dabhaichean were first created ‘from above’ are rather less persuasive, largely because the author is reluctant to commit himself to any one era or to identify a single cause for their formation. He argues for a close relationship between the earliest written notices of davachs and the efforts of twelfth-century kings of Scots to assess and collect common burdens of army service, aid and labour, but the absence of reliable evidence relating to the period before 1100 makes it impossible for him to identify a firm earlier date for effective royal control – military, political or administrative – of the territory beyond the Forth. Ross is left to conclude that the high medieval kings made use of territorial divisions that were already ancient: ‘on balance the probability is that units of land assessment were in use in unnamed parts of Pictland or Alba by the late ninth or 104

Reviews early tenth centuries’ (p. 195). Like several scholars before him, he argues that the extensive reorganization of the Scottish landscape into clearly defined dabhaichean can only have taken place as a consequence of some major disturbance or threat; in his estimation the evidence points clearly to the commencement of the Norse incursions into Scotland and the need for broadly coordinated defence against the enemy’s armies. Ross admits that his book leaves many questions unanswered, not least those relating to the etymology of the term dabhach. But historians who seek to situate the origins of the Scottish state deep in the medieval past – and they are numerous – will find in his work a satisfactory and convincing explanation of the foundations upon which the high medieval kings built their political, legal and fiscal authority. Cynthia J. Neville Dalhousie University

The Wild Black Region: Badenoch 1750–1800. By David Taylor. Pp. xxv, 350. ISBN: 9781906566982 (pbk). Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016. £25.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0132 In-depth studies of Highland regions during the critical years of the eighteenth century are few. Studies that have the substance and quality of The Wild Black Region, David Taylor’s study of Badenoch society during the second half of the eighteenth century, are even fewer. His approach is not selective or narrow but broadly-based, and very successful in being so, dealing in a skilled and assured way with changes in the nature of society; changes in the farm economy; how the most lowly of cottars and sub-tenants experienced change; how landowners and tacksmen did so; how communities responded to the harsher realities of the Badenoch environment and its poor seasons; and how they responded to the changing opportunities of the market place. These core themes are sustained across the study and, more challengingly, interwoven so that their cross-linkages and interactions are apparent to the reader. It succeeds admirably in this, though it does make for an involved discussion in one or two places and there are some minor points of repetition. After an introductory chapter that lays out the involvement or noninvolvement of Badenoch’s clans in the ‘45, and how the area suffered in the aftermath through a military presence, social disruption, the wanton destruction of farm buildings and the theft of stock, Taylor surveys the region’s social hierarchy at this mid-century point. His straightforward division into landowners, tacksmen and the peasantry provides a framework for the discussion of change throughout 105

Reviews early tenth centuries’ (p. 195). Like several scholars before him, he argues that the extensive reorganization of the Scottish landscape into clearly defined dabhaichean can only have taken place as a consequence of some major disturbance or threat; in his estimation the evidence points clearly to the commencement of the Norse incursions into Scotland and the need for broadly coordinated defence against the enemy’s armies. Ross admits that his book leaves many questions unanswered, not least those relating to the etymology of the term dabhach. But historians who seek to situate the origins of the Scottish state deep in the medieval past – and they are numerous – will find in his work a satisfactory and convincing explanation of the foundations upon which the high medieval kings built their political, legal and fiscal authority. Cynthia J. Neville Dalhousie University

The Wild Black Region: Badenoch 1750–1800. By David Taylor. Pp. xxv, 350. ISBN: 9781906566982 (pbk). Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2016. £25.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0132 In-depth studies of Highland regions during the critical years of the eighteenth century are few. Studies that have the substance and quality of The Wild Black Region, David Taylor’s study of Badenoch society during the second half of the eighteenth century, are even fewer. His approach is not selective or narrow but broadly-based, and very successful in being so, dealing in a skilled and assured way with changes in the nature of society; changes in the farm economy; how the most lowly of cottars and sub-tenants experienced change; how landowners and tacksmen did so; how communities responded to the harsher realities of the Badenoch environment and its poor seasons; and how they responded to the changing opportunities of the market place. These core themes are sustained across the study and, more challengingly, interwoven so that their cross-linkages and interactions are apparent to the reader. It succeeds admirably in this, though it does make for an involved discussion in one or two places and there are some minor points of repetition. After an introductory chapter that lays out the involvement or noninvolvement of Badenoch’s clans in the ‘45, and how the area suffered in the aftermath through a military presence, social disruption, the wanton destruction of farm buildings and the theft of stock, Taylor surveys the region’s social hierarchy at this mid-century point. His straightforward division into landowners, tacksmen and the peasantry provides a framework for the discussion of change throughout 105

Reviews the book. There is some clever interplay here between themes that look back at a world that had been and those that highlight changes already in progress. For the reviewer, his analysis of the place of tacksmen in Badenoch’s hierarchy forms the most valuable section of this chapter. It contains some excellent commentaries, such as those on their claims to duthchas and the close bond which they had with their under-tenants. In the immediate post-Culloden world of the Highlands, they probably had most to fear about how change would affect them, given what had happened elsewhere. Chiding others who have taken a damning view of tacksmen, Taylor works hard to rescue their reputation, giving them a makeover that is more than just cosmetic. Though he acknowledges that they burdened sub-tenants with a level of rent which, in cumulo, covered what they owed for their holdings, he sees them, as a group, as having the energy, enterprise and – not surprisingly, given how they had free-loaded – the capital needed for the changes that were unfolding, such as land improvements and cattle marketing. The two chapters which follow explore the nature of the subsistence and commercial economies respectively at this mid-century point, again ranging broadly over the mid-century decades. These are richly-themed and wellillustrated chapters. That on the subsistence economy displays fine command of the routines of husbandry life and their setting. That on the commercial economy covers the complex relationships between tacksmen and landowners as regards issues of rent and wadsetting, as well as more comment on the claims by tacksmen to having the hereditary right to their land, or the duthchas. Documenting the active use of claims by so-called doucassers like this is particularly useful. So also is the well-informed discussion of the micro-economics and risks of droving, an activity that was underpinned by the capital and business acumen of tacksmen and whose inter-linked chain of debts could be as long as the droving routes themselves. The remaining chapters are organised on a decadal basis, with one on change during the years 1750–70, followed by three dealing with the 1760s, 1770s and 1790s respectively. I was not entirely convinced by this all-too-neat decade by decade break-down of the discussion. This is not to say that Taylor does not have a great deal to say in these chapters, for they include discussion of significant changes in occupancy, land improvements, outbreaks of war, the impact of poor seasons and such like, as well as a revealing analysis of the role played by military service in providing cash supplements and the profits to be made from droving. However, I was left with the feeling that ordering the discussion on a decadal basis like this did not enable him to fully draw out the unfolding of trends or the full impact of particular events before they were passed, batonlike, from chapter to chapter. Further, he does not explain sufficiently why he drew the book to a conclusion at 1800. Yes, as he makes clear, Badenoch in 1800 was a different world compared to that of 1750, but he also acknowledges what changes still had to happen, changes that are anticipated only in a sentence or two, not at length, so that some might unfairly claim that it is a story only half told. 106

Reviews These reservations apart, though, the book has very clear strengths. Taylor’s exploration of how tacksmen adjusted from their role within the clan system to a role within the new world of commercial or market-orientated farming has considerable value for the wider debate. It is an exploration that has numerous sub-themes that add greatly to the text, such as the confrontation between key tacksmen and the duke of Gordon’s officials, or the lives of personalities, like John Dow, the ‘Black Officer’, who, with impeccable timing, appears as the young Iain Dubh mac Alasdair on the very first page and who dies in an avalanche on the next to last and whose life embodies many of the core themes of the book. Though the text shows a thorough awareness of the published literature, a great deal of its merit lies in its exemplary use of a rich array of documentary sources. The author’s extensive use of correspondence and notes, as well as matter-of-fact sources like rentals and farm surveys, has enabled him to bring key figures – like James Ross and William Tod, the duke of Gordon’s chamberlain and factor respectively – very much alive, drawing out their attitude to many things and the thinking that lay behind their recommendations. For the reader, this is a very satisfying and rewarding book. It is polished in both style and content, with none of the rough edges that one sometimes finds in a published doctorate. In his concluding remarks, the author makes the case for the individuality of Badenoch, both as regards its character and in its response to change over the second half of the eighteenth century. Yet in Taylor’s hands, The Wild Black Region is more than a lesson unto itself. Future historians across the Highlands will have much to learn from its many insights and from the rounded and accomplished way in which it explores change. Robert A. Dodgshon Aberystwyth University

Two Hundred Years of Farming in Sutherland. The Story of my Family. By Reay D. G. Clarke. Pp. xxi, 206. ISBN: 9781907443602 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2014. £9.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0133 Many books have been written about the Highland Clearances but their focus has usually been on the fate of the displaced small farmers who were ejected rather than the large commercial sheep farmers who ousted them. Yet in glen after glen in the West Highlands and among the Islands you can find the remains of abandoned pre-clearance farming townships and, nearby, the roofless shells of the larger and more substantial farmsteads that replaced them, indicating that there is another story to be told, that of the sheep farmers who took over from the small tenants. 107

Reviews These reservations apart, though, the book has very clear strengths. Taylor’s exploration of how tacksmen adjusted from their role within the clan system to a role within the new world of commercial or market-orientated farming has considerable value for the wider debate. It is an exploration that has numerous sub-themes that add greatly to the text, such as the confrontation between key tacksmen and the duke of Gordon’s officials, or the lives of personalities, like John Dow, the ‘Black Officer’, who, with impeccable timing, appears as the young Iain Dubh mac Alasdair on the very first page and who dies in an avalanche on the next to last and whose life embodies many of the core themes of the book. Though the text shows a thorough awareness of the published literature, a great deal of its merit lies in its exemplary use of a rich array of documentary sources. The author’s extensive use of correspondence and notes, as well as matter-of-fact sources like rentals and farm surveys, has enabled him to bring key figures – like James Ross and William Tod, the duke of Gordon’s chamberlain and factor respectively – very much alive, drawing out their attitude to many things and the thinking that lay behind their recommendations. For the reader, this is a very satisfying and rewarding book. It is polished in both style and content, with none of the rough edges that one sometimes finds in a published doctorate. In his concluding remarks, the author makes the case for the individuality of Badenoch, both as regards its character and in its response to change over the second half of the eighteenth century. Yet in Taylor’s hands, The Wild Black Region is more than a lesson unto itself. Future historians across the Highlands will have much to learn from its many insights and from the rounded and accomplished way in which it explores change. Robert A. Dodgshon Aberystwyth University

Two Hundred Years of Farming in Sutherland. The Story of my Family. By Reay D. G. Clarke. Pp. xxi, 206. ISBN: 9781907443602 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2014. £9.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0133 Many books have been written about the Highland Clearances but their focus has usually been on the fate of the displaced small farmers who were ejected rather than the large commercial sheep farmers who ousted them. Yet in glen after glen in the West Highlands and among the Islands you can find the remains of abandoned pre-clearance farming townships and, nearby, the roofless shells of the larger and more substantial farmsteads that replaced them, indicating that there is another story to be told, that of the sheep farmers who took over from the small tenants. 107

Reviews This book traces the fortunes of the Clarke family at Eriboll, a farm which lies almost as far north and west as you can get on the Scottish mainland, from before the Clearances into the twentieth century. The author has written this book under the guidance of two respected historians, James Hunter and Annie Tindley, who provide a foreword. Nevertheless there are some surprising omissions from the bibliography, particularly the recent work of Professor Robert Dodgshon on Highland society and environment. Unfortunately, the period of prosperity with high wool prices and high stocking levels of sheep was tragically short, with a sharp fall in wool prices in the 1870s and 1880s. By the early 1890s more and more farms were being given up and replaced by deer forest. Echoing Frank Fraser Darling the author reminds us that the Highlands and Islands are neither natural nor unspoilt but a devastated countryside. Eriboll was transferred to the Sutherland estates in 1829 though the Clarke family retained the tenancy. At a later date it was acquired by the Board of Agriculture. The tenants of the large sheep farms became a new middle class in Sutherland society; Eriboll ran to some 35,000 acres, a huge area though not the largest farm in Sutherland. It is interesting to see some stereotype villains presented in a far from usual guise from the point of view of the new incoming farmers. The duke of Sutherland is portrayed as an understanding and sympathetic landlord, with James Loch as his able lieutenant. The author has an unfortunate tendency to treat pre-improvement agriculture in the Highlands as having been uniform without actually demonstrating that this was so. A description of pre-improvement in Aberdeenshire by Archibald Grant of Monymusk is taken uncritically to apply to Sutherland. Nevertheless, at a time when an SNP government in Scotland is pressing for far-reaching land reforms, it is worth remembering how the Highlands came to be in their present state and how many enthusiastic plans have foundered on unrealistic assessments of the region’s prosperity. Telling the story with a focus on a single farming family gives the story an immediacy which is lacking in the pages of some of the more generalised economic history textbooks. The limited range of Christian names and surnames used by the Clarke family for the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth centuries makes the identification of family members difficult, but for the nineteenth century the range of Clarke family contacts which led to marriage and the variety of occupations was predictably international, including farming in South Africa, military service with the East India Company and trading with Russia and the Caribbean. The last few chapters of the book are a kind of ‘best practice guide’ on how to farm sheep effectively in this region in the nineteenth century when agriculture was in its prime. At this period Eriboll had a sizable population. I would have liked to read more about the impact of the deterioration of the grazings and the impact on the landscape and environment. It would also be interesting to hear Reay Clarke’s views on present-day farming in this area and 108

Reviews how the ‘Highland Problem’ could be alleviated if not actually solved. Although the illustrations have not reproduced very well this book conveys very effectively the landscapes, the atmosphere and the farming people of this remote corner of Sutherland. Ian Whyte Lancaster University

Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson. By Richard J. Grace. Pp. 476. ISBN: 9780773544529 (hbk). Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. £22.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0134 Among the dignitaries attending a 2006 ceremony to mark the refurbishment of the Lewis memorial to Sir James Matheson, the most influential of the island’s nineteenth-century owners, were senior representatives of one of the presentday world’s more highly-quoted companies. That was appropriate. For the man commemorated by this memorial – overlooking Stornoway Harbour from rising ground above Cuddy Point – helped found, and did much to ensure the long-term success of, the company in question, Jardine Matheson. Prior to his purchasing Lewis in 1844, his memorial’s inscription states, James Matheson ‘was long resident at Canton’ where, in partnership with William Jardine, he established ‘the eminent House of Jardine, Matheson & Co’ – a firm, the memorial inscription continues, whose ‘high repute for honour, integrity and magnificent hospitality. . . gave a free passport to all using its name throughout the East.’ So far, so conventional. Less to be expected perhaps are the memorial’s floral decorations. Like the sculpted flowers surrounding James Matheson’s grave in Lairg, these are poppies of the sort that are the source of opium – a drug which, in today’s world, is mostly trafficked in the form of heroin. Jardine Matheson’s central role in smuggling Indian opium into China, where the drug had been declared illegal by the imperial authorities, is at the heart of this fine book – a painstakingly researched and illuminating study of the two men who, during the 1820s and 1830s, put together the soon thriving commercial concern that still bears their names. William Jardine, the older of the pair, was of Dumfriesshire farming stock. James Matheson, born in 1796, was the second son of Donald Matheson of Shinness who, like his forebears, was a tacksman on the Sutherland Estate. This Shinness connection explains why James Matheson – knighted by Queen Victoria in 1850 – expended some part of his opium-derived fortune on the purchase (in 1840) of an extensive landholding in that vicinity. It also explains why, prior to his death in 1878, he chose to be 109

Reviews how the ‘Highland Problem’ could be alleviated if not actually solved. Although the illustrations have not reproduced very well this book conveys very effectively the landscapes, the atmosphere and the farming people of this remote corner of Sutherland. Ian Whyte Lancaster University

Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson. By Richard J. Grace. Pp. 476. ISBN: 9780773544529 (hbk). Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014. £22.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0134 Among the dignitaries attending a 2006 ceremony to mark the refurbishment of the Lewis memorial to Sir James Matheson, the most influential of the island’s nineteenth-century owners, were senior representatives of one of the presentday world’s more highly-quoted companies. That was appropriate. For the man commemorated by this memorial – overlooking Stornoway Harbour from rising ground above Cuddy Point – helped found, and did much to ensure the long-term success of, the company in question, Jardine Matheson. Prior to his purchasing Lewis in 1844, his memorial’s inscription states, James Matheson ‘was long resident at Canton’ where, in partnership with William Jardine, he established ‘the eminent House of Jardine, Matheson & Co’ – a firm, the memorial inscription continues, whose ‘high repute for honour, integrity and magnificent hospitality. . . gave a free passport to all using its name throughout the East.’ So far, so conventional. Less to be expected perhaps are the memorial’s floral decorations. Like the sculpted flowers surrounding James Matheson’s grave in Lairg, these are poppies of the sort that are the source of opium – a drug which, in today’s world, is mostly trafficked in the form of heroin. Jardine Matheson’s central role in smuggling Indian opium into China, where the drug had been declared illegal by the imperial authorities, is at the heart of this fine book – a painstakingly researched and illuminating study of the two men who, during the 1820s and 1830s, put together the soon thriving commercial concern that still bears their names. William Jardine, the older of the pair, was of Dumfriesshire farming stock. James Matheson, born in 1796, was the second son of Donald Matheson of Shinness who, like his forebears, was a tacksman on the Sutherland Estate. This Shinness connection explains why James Matheson – knighted by Queen Victoria in 1850 – expended some part of his opium-derived fortune on the purchase (in 1840) of an extensive landholding in that vicinity. It also explains why, prior to his death in 1878, he chose to be 109

Reviews buried in Lairg rather than in the vicinity of Lews Castle, the Stornoway mansion constructed for him shortly after he became Lewis’s laird. Richard J. Grace is a little bit hazy as to the precise nature of tenurial arrangements on the eighteenth-century Sutherland Estate where it was not quite the case that a tacksman of the Shinness sort ‘paid an annual sum’ to the earls of Sutherland and, in return, ‘retained the rents. . . collected from the earl’s tenants.’ But this can be forgiven. Grace’s book, after all, is less about his subjects’ family backgrounds, more about the nature of the careers they forged in what that Lewis memorial calls ‘the East.’ Jardine’s path to the Orient began with an Edinburgh medical training that led to his becoming an East India Company’s ship’s surgeon. From Shinness, by way of Inverness Royal Academy and Edinburgh University, Matheson (who did not complete his university studies) made his way first to London and then, two years later, when still only nineteen, to Calcutta (now Kolkata). Two years after that, in 1819, Matheson was in Canton (now Guangzhou). At that stage, according to Grace, he was ‘bright, eager and to some degree reckless’ – exactly the qualities required of anyone looking to profit, as Matheson very much was, from such opportunities, both legal and illegal, as were available in a China where western interlopers were regarded with the profoundest of suspicion. Technically, British trade with China – which, at the insistence of the Chinese government, could be conducted only through Canton – was, until 1834, an East India Company monopoly. But there was plenty of scope for independent traders like James Matheson and William Jardine, whose partnership took shape in the course of the 1820s, to find buyers for imported commodities like cotton and – more significantly – opium. Then available freely both in India (where opium poppies were grown) and in Britain (where it was the basis of laudanum and other medical preparations), opium was outlawed in China. However, the imperial government in Beijing, though certainly (and understandably) alarmed by the individual misery and the social dislocation arising from increasingly widespread opium-smoking, lacked the power to enforce its will on Jardine Matheson whose fleet of specially constructed clipper ships was eventually bringing huge quantities of opium into the country. Jardine Matheson, moreover, could call, should all else fail, on UK back-up. When, in the mid-1830s, Matheson returned to London to lobby for British intervention on the side of merchants like Jardine and himself, he insisted that it could not be in Britain’s interest to leave the Chinese – ‘a people characterised,’ Matheson wrote, ‘by a marvellous degree of imbecility, avarice, conceit and obstinacy’ – in unchallenged possession ‘of a vast portion of the most desirable parts of the earth.’ This argument carried the day. When the Chinese at last had some success in curtailing opium imports, the eventual outcome was British military intervention intended to ensure, by means of what turned into the Opium War of 1840–42, that more and more of China was opened up to companies like Jardine Matheson – now able to operate freely out of newly seized British sovereign territory in the shape of Hong Kong. 110

Reviews By the time the Opium War ended, Matheson was UK-bound. Although he retained his interest in Jardine Matheson, and developed a secondary interest in that other archetypally imperial company, P&O, Matheson never again visited China or any other part of Asia. Instead he went into politics – serving as Ross and Cromarty’s MP from 1847 until 1868 – while, at the same time, devoting a great deal of attention to his Lewis estate. From Richard J. Grace’s perspective, Matheson’s activities in Lewis are no more than a postscript to his Chinese involvements, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) Grace is arguably too kind about the Shinness tacksman’s son’s treatment of Lewis and its people. But that, like Grace’s comparable failure to get fully to grips with Sutherland, should not be held against him. What Grace aimed to do in this book – and in this he succeeded – was to demonstrate how, in early nineteenth-century China, two Scotsmen on the make (which is very much what Matheson and Jardine were) could, by taking advantage of a particular set of historical circumstances, come home very, very rich. James Matheson, Grace demonstrates, was well aware – how could he not be? – of the often tragic effects of opium addiction. But these, Matheson reckoned, were opium addicts’ responsibility, not his. Grace makes no moral judgements. Perhaps neither should we. But with Lews Castle about to become Scotland’s newest museum and archive, it is to be hoped that space will be found there to acknowledge that the castle would not exist but for money made, literally and directly, from the sufferings of innumerable consumers of banned drugs. James Hunter University of the Highlands and Islands

Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement, and Community Ownership in the Hebrides. Edited by Ewan A. Cameron. Pp. viii, 248. ISBN 9781907443572 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2013. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. By James Hunter, with photographs by Cailean Maclean. Pp. xi, 204. ISBN 978190744328 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2012. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 Given the wholesale nature of the Highland Clearances and the continuing reverberation of their effects throughout the Highlands and Islands even two hundred years after their commencement, recovery is something of a novel 111

Reviews By the time the Opium War ended, Matheson was UK-bound. Although he retained his interest in Jardine Matheson, and developed a secondary interest in that other archetypally imperial company, P&O, Matheson never again visited China or any other part of Asia. Instead he went into politics – serving as Ross and Cromarty’s MP from 1847 until 1868 – while, at the same time, devoting a great deal of attention to his Lewis estate. From Richard J. Grace’s perspective, Matheson’s activities in Lewis are no more than a postscript to his Chinese involvements, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) Grace is arguably too kind about the Shinness tacksman’s son’s treatment of Lewis and its people. But that, like Grace’s comparable failure to get fully to grips with Sutherland, should not be held against him. What Grace aimed to do in this book – and in this he succeeded – was to demonstrate how, in early nineteenth-century China, two Scotsmen on the make (which is very much what Matheson and Jardine were) could, by taking advantage of a particular set of historical circumstances, come home very, very rich. James Matheson, Grace demonstrates, was well aware – how could he not be? – of the often tragic effects of opium addiction. But these, Matheson reckoned, were opium addicts’ responsibility, not his. Grace makes no moral judgements. Perhaps neither should we. But with Lews Castle about to become Scotland’s newest museum and archive, it is to be hoped that space will be found there to acknowledge that the castle would not exist but for money made, literally and directly, from the sufferings of innumerable consumers of banned drugs. James Hunter University of the Highlands and Islands

Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement, and Community Ownership in the Hebrides. Edited by Ewan A. Cameron. Pp. viii, 248. ISBN 9781907443572 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2013. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. By James Hunter, with photographs by Cailean Maclean. Pp. xi, 204. ISBN 978190744328 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2012. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 Given the wholesale nature of the Highland Clearances and the continuing reverberation of their effects throughout the Highlands and Islands even two hundred years after their commencement, recovery is something of a novel 111

Reviews By the time the Opium War ended, Matheson was UK-bound. Although he retained his interest in Jardine Matheson, and developed a secondary interest in that other archetypally imperial company, P&O, Matheson never again visited China or any other part of Asia. Instead he went into politics – serving as Ross and Cromarty’s MP from 1847 until 1868 – while, at the same time, devoting a great deal of attention to his Lewis estate. From Richard J. Grace’s perspective, Matheson’s activities in Lewis are no more than a postscript to his Chinese involvements, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) Grace is arguably too kind about the Shinness tacksman’s son’s treatment of Lewis and its people. But that, like Grace’s comparable failure to get fully to grips with Sutherland, should not be held against him. What Grace aimed to do in this book – and in this he succeeded – was to demonstrate how, in early nineteenth-century China, two Scotsmen on the make (which is very much what Matheson and Jardine were) could, by taking advantage of a particular set of historical circumstances, come home very, very rich. James Matheson, Grace demonstrates, was well aware – how could he not be? – of the often tragic effects of opium addiction. But these, Matheson reckoned, were opium addicts’ responsibility, not his. Grace makes no moral judgements. Perhaps neither should we. But with Lews Castle about to become Scotland’s newest museum and archive, it is to be hoped that space will be found there to acknowledge that the castle would not exist but for money made, literally and directly, from the sufferings of innumerable consumers of banned drugs. James Hunter University of the Highlands and Islands

Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement, and Community Ownership in the Hebrides. Edited by Ewan A. Cameron. Pp. viii, 248. ISBN 9781907443572 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2013. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops: Community Ownership of Land in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. By James Hunter, with photographs by Cailean Maclean. Pp. xi, 204. ISBN 978190744328 (pbk). Kershader: The Islands Book Trust, 2012. £15.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0135 Given the wholesale nature of the Highland Clearances and the continuing reverberation of their effects throughout the Highlands and Islands even two hundred years after their commencement, recovery is something of a novel 111

Reviews concept and not one that has as yet developed a wide literature. Cameron’s slim volume condenses the proceedings of a conference on the topic, held on the Isle of Lewis in September 2012, in to 250 pages comprising twelve varied and interesting reflections on what recovery may mean. The first contribution comes from prolific author James Hunter who, in another guise as first director of the Scottish Crofters’ Union, surely provides living proof that, where today’s crofters are concerned, some recovery really has taken place. His paper, parts of which have been incorporated in his more recent magnum opus, Set Adrift Upon the World, ends with the following rallying cry: ‘Out of the last fifty centuries, Strathbrora (Sutherland) has only been depopulated for the last two. One day, somehow, that’s sure to be put right. And when it is, the brief time that the strath has been empty will seem – will rightly seem – an aberration.’ The passing of the Crofting Act of 1886 must be seen as a stepping stone towards some sort of recovery yet it was only after that seminal event, sometimes well after, that direct action, in the form of land raiding, became a frequent weapon in the arsenal of recovery. The Park Deer Raid of November 1887, while not typifying this form of activity, was a striking example of the ability of the putative crofters to seek publicity for their cause and, as it ended in acquittal for the main protagonists, is rightly considered a major victory in the so-called Land War. John Randall, whose biographical details are mysteriously omitted from this book, sets the raid in its context and does his best to establish exactly where the great encampment, central to the story, was actually located. The three-day raid was planned at Balallan in the Parish of Lochs by the schoolmaster, Donald Macrae, and illustrates the importance to recovery of community leadership which can so often hang on an individual or a very small group. It is no accident, therefore, that the location of the Recovery Conference was at Balallan School or that the Park Raid is commemorated in a memorial cairn nearby. Even before the Clearances, emigration from the Highlands and Islands was not uncommon though, in its pre-Clearance form, it emanated from the people, often led by their tacksmen, in pursuit of opportunity. During the Clearances themselves it was not a matter of choice and, in the twentieth century, the long road to the Dominions was sought by many in a diaspora which continued well in to living memory. (I might myself be in Hudson Bay now were it not for my mother putting her foot down in the sixties!) Recovery through emigration is dealt with in considerable detail by Marjory Harper, Professor of History at Aberdeen University, who recounts what is often a dismal tale of emigrants misled and hopes unfulfilled. Nevertheless, in her conclusion, Professor Harper asserts that the descendants of the dispossessed, wherever they find themselves in today’s world, are ‘convinced that their ancestors made the right decision.’ My own relatives in Canada and New Zealand concur. Space does not permit me to comment on all the papers presented in Recovering from the Clearances. However, suffice to say that I found information and opinion in every one which was new to me and enhanced my understanding of the story 112

Reviews of the Clearances, a story which is still not complete. If I were to pick two further contributions to highlight they would be Ewan Cameron’s more general paper on Land Reform across the UK which sets the Scottish experience in context with that in England, Wales and, even more tellingly, in Ireland. The other would be Iain J. M. Robertson’s on ‘Memorialisation: Commemorating the Heroes of the Land Struggle.’ James Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History, now has more than a dozen weighty volumes under his belt but none quite like this one. At first sight, From the Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops could be mistaken for a coffeetable book given its A4 landscape format, glossy cover and abundance, not just of photographs, but also of those little shaded boxes, beloved of the coffee table fraternity, with which it is similarly adorned. The pictures, featuring a judicious mix of landscape and people, are the work of Skye-based photographer Cailean Maclean and make clear his excellent rapport with both elements. The main text deals individually with each of the twenty present and prospective Community Land Ownership Groups currently extant in Scotland from Gigha in the south to Melness in the north outlining, in highly readable fashion, how each came into being and how they are now faring. The path to Community Land Ownership is rarely, if ever, a smooth one and the road travelled afterwards may be equally rocky but, ‘with half a million acres of land now in community ownership in Scotland, resulting in new homes; new businesses; and the unleashing of a new sense of confidence, energy and opportunity,’ it all paints a remarkably hopeful picture. Woven through the stories are the sometimes quite unexpected ways in which successive governments, through their development agencies or through their policies, have helped or hindered such groups along their way. The main message is one of increasing resilience and developing determination within these groups, both traits which augur well for continuing recovery from the Clearances. And the little boxes? Far from coffee-table vacuity, each contains a pertinent quotation, sometimes from politicians as diverse as David Cameron, Peter Peacock, Bill Aitken and Brian Wilson; sometimes from agencies, such as the Forestry Commission; and sometimes from the Community Groups themselves, which serve to elucidate the adjacent main text or illustration. All in all this is an invigorating amalgam and a tale of hope which may yet be fulfilled. And finally. Orkney, Shetland, Faroe and Iceland each have something which the Highlands, and the Hebrides, do not possess to the same extent – a comprehensive native literature. The Islands Book Trust is taking potent steps to rectify this omission and the two books reviewed above are worthy extensions to that endeavour. Jim A. Johnston Independent Researcher

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Reviews Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish 1871–1945. Edited by Ewen A. Cameron and Annie Tindley. Pp. viii, 234. ISBN: 9781906566746 (pbk). Edinburgh: John Donald, 2015. £25.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0136 At first glance, Dr. Lachlan Grant seems an unlikely subject for an academic biographical study. He is not one of those great leading lights of medicine like William Cullen or James Young Simpson (both the subjects of considerable biographical examination); indeed his name is largely unknown to historians of medicine. While Grant was a star student at Edinburgh University Medical School in the 1890s, he chose to return to the Highlands, where he had grown up, working as medical officer in Skye’s tiny hospital before settling as a GP in Ballachulish in 1900, where he worked for the rest of his life. Why then should this Highland GP merit such scholarly attention? Grant has one great advantage as a subject: an extensive archive of his writings survive in the National Library of Scotland, largely drawn from medical journals and newspapers. This resource provides the body of materials required to build up a picture not just of Grant’s professional life as a medical practitioner, but also the social and political views that underpinned his active participation in debates about the future of the Highlands, in the period between the Land Reform agitation of the 1880s and the developments after the Second World War. This breadth of interests is largely what makes Grant a figure worthy of study: his activities provide a way into significant debates about the future of the Highland economy and people. The chapters that make up Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish 1871–1945 are drawn from conference papers, complemented by a selection of Grant’s own works. The volume opens with two biographical considerations by Roderick MacLeod (author of a biography of Grant) and Allan I. MacInnes, which serve to provide an outline of Grant’s life and career and the context for the following seven papers, which address different aspects of Grant’s activities. Papers by Patricia Whatley and John Stewart give a sense of the difficult world of the Highland GP. Grant’s evidence to the Dewar Committee (reproduced among the documents) chimed with the conclusions of the Committee’s final report – that Highland practitioners struggled to make an adequate income, and that many lacked access to decent housing and had no security of tenure as parish medical officers. From the patients’ point of view, medical help was often far off, expensive, and at the same time, limited in its scope – there were few specialist services, nurses or hospital beds in the Highlands. Similarly, the Highlands and Islands Medical Service, established in 1912, aimed to implement the solutions put forward by Grant – to improve GPs’ pay and conditions of service, and to expand the range of services available. As Stewart points out, Grant had a broader health agenda, arguing for the introduction of strategies of disease prevention, including cutting-edge medicine in the form of laboratory services to diagnose diseases (especially TB) 114

Reviews in their early stages, as well as more traditional approaches such as educating the population in better hygiene. Grant’s interests ran far beyond medicine. He was actively engaged with fundamental social and economic issues in the West Highlands through associations such as the Highland Development League (founded 1936), and he published widely on the topic, including an influential pamphlet New Deal for the Highlands (1935) (both the title and the approach owed something to Roosevelt‘s New Deal). Grant shared his analysis of the root problems of the Highland economy with many other commentators. Marjorie Harper discusses Grant’s view of emigration as a drain on the human resources of the region, with policies pushing the young and fit to leave Scotland (although he did not acknowledge that many young men and women wanted to emigrate to make a better future for themselves), and leaving behind the old and the weak. Although Grant pointed a finger of blame at landowners, who chose to turn their land over to sheep farming or shooting, he saw the system of landownership as the root of the problem, not the actions of individual landowners. If Grant’s analysis of the Highlands’ problems has a tinge of nostalgia looking back to an age of crofting, his solutions were forward-looking. He advocated greatly expanding schemes for the purchase of land by the government so that it could be let out to residents who wanted to pursue crofting, the opening up of the region by improved roads, and the creation of a range of new industries such as hydro-electric schemes and the smelters set up by the British Aluminium Company. As Annie Tindley points out in her article, such ideas were not new, but Grant played a significant role in articulating the issues and leading discussions on both the Highlands’ problems and possible solutions. He remained an independent voice in these debates: although a close friend of Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald, Grant’s views were not radical enough for parts of the Labour Party but, equally, Grant’s calls for Westminster government action over the land issue set him apart from the nationalists. This collective biography reveals some of the contradictions in Grant’s views over time. In 1902, he was famously involved in a protracted lock out at the Ballachulish Slate Quarries. As part of a set of new working conditions, the directors of the company sacked Grant from his post of medical officer. Although company officials claimed that Grant had not carried out his duties (a claim subsequently proved to be false), it was more likely that they feared Grant was likely to speak out against the working and housing conditions of the slate workers, at a time when the company was seeking to maximise profits through new working practices. By contrast, Grant was fulsome in his praise of the working conditions and the housing provided for workers in the British Aluminium Company’s works at Kinlochleven. Grant’s enthusiasm for the industry was fired by his belief in the need for new industries in the Highlands, and perhaps also by the company’s efforts to build good relations with leading figures within the region. As Andrew Perchard points out, Grant’s enthusiasm was not shared by all. Other doctors in the area complained of the poor standard of the 115

Reviews workers’ housing, and an investigation by the Medical Research Council revealed potential dangers from dust and fumes from the furnaces – problems which the company refused to ameliorate through better ventilation. Dr Lachlan Grant provides an engaging portrait of a man both ordinary – he was a rank and file medical practitioner – but also unusual in the breadth of his extra-professional activities. His multi-dimensional life provides historians with a snapshot of larger issues of his day. But, like a snapshot, this book fires the reader’s curiosity to know more. We learn much of Grant’s thinking but the articles leave the reader wanting to know about Grant’s actions in campaigning groups such as the Highland Development League and Crofter’s Association. And what was the impact of Grant’s words? Was he simply a commentator on the complexities of a changing world – albeit an active one – or did his words bring about change? Deborah Brunton The Open University

Voices of the Forest: A Social History of Scottish Forestry in the Twentieth Century. By Mairi Stewart. Pp. xvi, 352. ISBN 9781 06566647 (pbk). Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, 2016. £20.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0137 This book tells the story of Scottish forestry through the memories and views of those who worked in and managed the forests. It commemorates and celebrates foresters from the men and women who were out digging the drains and felling trees by hand in the early days, to senior managers in what became Forestry Commission Scotland. The text is very readable and strongly supported by photographs of the people and the work described. While it is about the situation in Scotland it will be of interest to those in the rest of the UK as well. The book is one outcome of a project that was led by the University of the Highlands and Islands, supported mainly by the Forestry Commission but with input from a range of other bodies including the Scottish Forestry Trust. More detail is available on the website Forestry Memories.1 The first chapter, ‘Remnants of a once mighty race’ (the people, not the trees), follows the felling of a particularly fine stand in Perthshire, through to the milling of the timber, introducing the changing nature of forestry since the Boreland stand was planted in 1948. It sets the often elegiac tone for the book. There are numerous photographs of felling gangs, planting gangs, parties of senior officials in a more-or-less standard line-up pose, a reminder of the thousands of men (and sometimes women) who worked in the industry in its heyday. Hardships in the forest and in how people lived are not ignored and there are regular references to consequent illness and injuries. Nevertheless this is primarily the record of 116

Reviews workers’ housing, and an investigation by the Medical Research Council revealed potential dangers from dust and fumes from the furnaces – problems which the company refused to ameliorate through better ventilation. Dr Lachlan Grant provides an engaging portrait of a man both ordinary – he was a rank and file medical practitioner – but also unusual in the breadth of his extra-professional activities. His multi-dimensional life provides historians with a snapshot of larger issues of his day. But, like a snapshot, this book fires the reader’s curiosity to know more. We learn much of Grant’s thinking but the articles leave the reader wanting to know about Grant’s actions in campaigning groups such as the Highland Development League and Crofter’s Association. And what was the impact of Grant’s words? Was he simply a commentator on the complexities of a changing world – albeit an active one – or did his words bring about change? Deborah Brunton The Open University

Voices of the Forest: A Social History of Scottish Forestry in the Twentieth Century. By Mairi Stewart. Pp. xvi, 352. ISBN 9781 06566647 (pbk). Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, 2016. £20.00. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0137 This book tells the story of Scottish forestry through the memories and views of those who worked in and managed the forests. It commemorates and celebrates foresters from the men and women who were out digging the drains and felling trees by hand in the early days, to senior managers in what became Forestry Commission Scotland. The text is very readable and strongly supported by photographs of the people and the work described. While it is about the situation in Scotland it will be of interest to those in the rest of the UK as well. The book is one outcome of a project that was led by the University of the Highlands and Islands, supported mainly by the Forestry Commission but with input from a range of other bodies including the Scottish Forestry Trust. More detail is available on the website Forestry Memories.1 The first chapter, ‘Remnants of a once mighty race’ (the people, not the trees), follows the felling of a particularly fine stand in Perthshire, through to the milling of the timber, introducing the changing nature of forestry since the Boreland stand was planted in 1948. It sets the often elegiac tone for the book. There are numerous photographs of felling gangs, planting gangs, parties of senior officials in a more-or-less standard line-up pose, a reminder of the thousands of men (and sometimes women) who worked in the industry in its heyday. Hardships in the forest and in how people lived are not ignored and there are regular references to consequent illness and injuries. Nevertheless this is primarily the record of 116

Reviews those who stuck with the forest, the survivors, and the pictures painted must be seen in that light. Understandably those who left after a week, a month, a year because they could not stick it, or disagreed with what was going on, are not well represented. The approach is roughly chronological. Chapter 2 charts the development of Scottish forestry up until the Second World War. It describes the formation of the Royal Scottish Forestry Society and the role of the big private estates in pioneering approaches that would be later adopted by the Forestry Commission after its establishment in 1919. The general circumstances leading to the establishment of the Commission following the First World War and the early history of afforestation are well known, but this chapter (and indeed the rest of the book) provide the detail of what it was like and how it was seen at the time, through quotes, maps, copies of letters and accounts. Chapter 3 deals with the Second World War period, for which there is a much greater range of oral sources available. The account covers not only issues such as maintaining the labour force in the forest, in the face of losses to recruitment to the forces, but how the increased demand for timber and its transport to the markets could be met. While I knew of timber being floated down rivers, it was fascinating to come across a picture of logs being assembled into a raft. Separate sub-sections deal with the different groups that were brought in to replace the lost local labour – the Newfoundlanders, the Canadians, the Women’s Timber Corps, and the British Honduran Forestry Unit. A theme running through these sections is the interplay between these different groups and the local communities – sometimes very positive and supportive on both sides, but also with evidence of prejudice and ill-feeling in other instances. Another aspect that I was unaware of was the widespread felling of German forests that took place after the war as part of reparations, to provide material to rebuild war-ravaged countries. A report on Post-war Forestry Policy produced in 1944 laid the foundation for the Forestry Act of 1945: the report promised jobs, homes and acre upon acre of productive forests. For many of those who contributed to the book the post-war years were the heyday for Scottish forestry (chapter 4). Immediately after the war most forestry work still involved considerable manual labour and forestry seems to have appealed to many coming back from wartime service who were looking for a change of direction. There is also a valuable account of experiences of the 1953 storm: for many in England this meant the flood and loss of life in the eastern counties, but at the same time the impact on Scottish forests and its timber industry was immense. The pictures of men with axes and saws give way to accounts of the introduction of new machinery, frequently being used with a disturbing lack of protective clothing. The move towards mechanisation, however, as in other industries, foreshadowed a decline in employment, although initially some of the changes were more a shift from direct employment by the Forestry Commission 117

Reviews to more work being done by contractors. Nevertheless there were still major markets such as for mining timber and pulpwood underpinning the justification for commercial forestry. Chapter 5 looks at where and how the foresters were living during this time, which is not something well-covered elsewhere. Before widespread car ownership, workers needed to be relatively close to the forests in which they were based. Squads were moved around as different areas became available for largescale planting or felling, which led to the development of ‘bothys’ – communal accommodation for gangs of single men (or men working away from their families). As most would have experienced national service in the forces, this was perhaps less of a change than it would have been to later generations. Children might end up attending a variety of different schools as their families moved along with the mobile sawmills to where the next big fellings were. New forest villages where forestry workers settled more permanently were created. Some of these thrived, some did not, proving too isolated for the families concerned. In particular there were few opportunities for employment for the women. Chapter 6 takes forestry through the 1970s and the breaking down of the old orders. The Commission is described as one of the ‘last bastions of the old colonial approach’, which also fits with my impressions of it from the late seventies. This had strengths in that the Commission tended to look after its own and the communities with which it worked, but it also fostered a hierarchical way of working that was increasingly out of tune with the times. The work-force in forestry was shrinking but the skills needed were also changing rapidly with mechanisation, reorganisations and the increasing need to take more account of objectives other than just wood production. More and more of the workforce came from the specialist training schools or university courses. The paperwork to time-in-the-forest ratio was increasing and many of the older forestry generation regretted this and left. Chapter 7 covers the roller-coaster of changing markets and forestry funding during the 1980s and 1990s. The closure of the deep mines killed off what had been a major market for props, chocks and cover boards, and the Corpach pulp mill closed; but new opportunities arose through exports to Scandinavian mills. Planting programmes rapidly expanded in northern Scotland, based on technological developments that allowed the ploughing of deep peat, with available finance from favourable tax regimes. However, there were also growing environmental concerns about the damage, as many saw it, caused by forestry’s expansion in the post-war years. This is mentioned but not much covered, although there is an extensive account of Sylvia Crowe’s work on improving the landscape of the forests. Perhaps this is because those criticising forestry were generally outside the industry, and hence outside the scope of this project. Perhaps for some the wounds were still too raw. The change in the 1988 Budget shifted forestry support to a grant-based system with a substantial reduction in the rate of new planting. 118

Reviews The final chapter brings the story up to the present, but I feel leaves the reader with a rather nostalgic view of the forests and those who have worked in them. I did not get a sense of the concern that there is about the threats from new tree diseases, deer and climate change; the uncertainties over whether forests and forestry should be focussed around the needs of the urban population or to provide rural employment; and how forests and forestry are to be funded in future. Devolution has led to institutional re-organisations and further changes for forestry seem likely to continue. It would have been good to have ended the book with some interviews from the ‘new voices of the forest.’ Overall, though, it is a book I shall certainly be dipping into again. Keith Kirby University of Oxford Note 1. http://www.forestry-memories.org.uk/index.asp

Lairds, Land and Sustainability – Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management. Edited by Jayne Glass, Martin F. Price, Charles Warren and Alister Scott. Pp. xviii, 238. ISBN: 9780748645909 (pbk). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. £24.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0138 In 2013, the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee began its enquiry into land reform in Scotland by commissioning a controversial briefing paper from Jim Hunter, Peter Peacock, Andy Wightman and Michael Foxley entitled ‘432:50 – Towards a comprehensive land reform agenda for Scotland’. The authors argued that ‘Scotland has the most concentrated pattern of private land ownership in the developed world. The degree of concentration is evident from the fact that a mere 432 landowners account for half of all Scotland’s privately owned land – such land (since not much more than 10 per cent of Scotland is in public ownership) accounting, in turn, for the bulk of the country.’1 In due course, in its final report (2015, p. 17), the Committee went even further, claiming that ‘concentrated land ownership has a negative impact on attempts to create a more socially just Scotland.’2 Land reform is of course primarily a devolved matter, as a result of which the Scottish Affairs Committee focused almost exclusively on the impact on rural land of UK-wide taxation and agricultural subsidies. In Scotland itself, the Land Reform Review Group, established by the Scottish Government in 2012, proposed a more comprehensive set of reforms covering both urban and rural land in its 2014 final report. These included recommendations to improve the quality of information about rural land ownership in Scotland and set an upper limit on 119

Reviews The final chapter brings the story up to the present, but I feel leaves the reader with a rather nostalgic view of the forests and those who have worked in them. I did not get a sense of the concern that there is about the threats from new tree diseases, deer and climate change; the uncertainties over whether forests and forestry should be focussed around the needs of the urban population or to provide rural employment; and how forests and forestry are to be funded in future. Devolution has led to institutional re-organisations and further changes for forestry seem likely to continue. It would have been good to have ended the book with some interviews from the ‘new voices of the forest.’ Overall, though, it is a book I shall certainly be dipping into again. Keith Kirby University of Oxford Note 1. http://www.forestry-memories.org.uk/index.asp

Lairds, Land and Sustainability – Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management. Edited by Jayne Glass, Martin F. Price, Charles Warren and Alister Scott. Pp. xviii, 238. ISBN: 9780748645909 (pbk). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. £24.99. DOI: 10.3366/nor.2017.0138 In 2013, the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee began its enquiry into land reform in Scotland by commissioning a controversial briefing paper from Jim Hunter, Peter Peacock, Andy Wightman and Michael Foxley entitled ‘432:50 – Towards a comprehensive land reform agenda for Scotland’. The authors argued that ‘Scotland has the most concentrated pattern of private land ownership in the developed world. The degree of concentration is evident from the fact that a mere 432 landowners account for half of all Scotland’s privately owned land – such land (since not much more than 10 per cent of Scotland is in public ownership) accounting, in turn, for the bulk of the country.’1 In due course, in its final report (2015, p. 17), the Committee went even further, claiming that ‘concentrated land ownership has a negative impact on attempts to create a more socially just Scotland.’2 Land reform is of course primarily a devolved matter, as a result of which the Scottish Affairs Committee focused almost exclusively on the impact on rural land of UK-wide taxation and agricultural subsidies. In Scotland itself, the Land Reform Review Group, established by the Scottish Government in 2012, proposed a more comprehensive set of reforms covering both urban and rural land in its 2014 final report. These included recommendations to improve the quality of information about rural land ownership in Scotland and set an upper limit on 119

Reviews the total amount of land that any individual or single beneficial interest could own in Scotland. Among the many responses to the LRRG’s early call3 for evidence was a highly professional 266-page submission from Scottish Land and Estates, the representative body of private landowners and land-based businesses in rural Scotland. At the core of the Scottish Land and Estates evidence (2014, p. 41) came the counter argument to the views articulated by Jim Hunter and colleagues, namely that ‘a modern land reform debate should focus on the best use of land and what the desired outcomes of land management should be and, then, how best those outcomes can be delivered to provide a range of primary and secondary outcomes, rather than simply on who owns the land.’4 Is the purpose of land reform in Scotland then primarily one of promoting ‘better’ (or in today’s parlance ‘more sustainable’) land management practices, irrespective of how land is owned, or is it that of creating more equitable patterns of ownership, which proponents often argue will lead to improved management? This schism lies at the heart of the current debate around rural land reform in Scotland and helps explain the sharp differences between radicals and gradualists. For if traditional lairds can be trusted to embrace sustainable management practices and (slightly parodying the title of the LRRG final report) manage ‘the land of Scotland in the common good’, rather than just in their own private interests, why should we concern ourselves with getting rid of them? It is this question that makes the recent book on ‘Lairds, Land and Sustainability’, edited by Jayne Glass and her colleagues, such an interesting contribution to the land reform debate in Scotland. The book brings together a series of nine chapters, variously written by a combination of seven different authors, which together provide a thorough account of current management practices in upland Scotland – pursued not only by private estates but by the increasingly important community and NGO (nongovernmental) sectors. The first two chapters provide a valuable foundation for the book, clearly setting out key concepts on upland land management and explaining how such areas can be viewed as a set of ecosystem services. Despite extensive private land ownership, uplands generate very significant public goods that belong to the wider community. The essential proposition of the authors is thus that upland areas require improved policy-making and decision-making to facilitate sustainable management and environmental governance. This requires joined up management involving dialogue and sharing between resource users and managers. In this context, the second chapter controversially suggests that ‘at its best, (private) estate management provides an exemplar of integrated, crosssectoral management of the upland environment’ (p. 37). Meanwhile, public policy towards the Scottish uplands is split between different agencies with different priorities, while the Scottish Government’s own focus on sustainable economic growth seemingly conflicts with the more integrated frameworks that are deemed necessary to secure truly sustainable development. 120

Reviews The next three chapters of the book offer valuable insight into the operation of private landed estates in Scotland, drawing on a detailed survey of eighty-four landowners who between them owned some 1.8 million acres of rural Scotland. This highlights the immense variety of management practices and strategies pursued by different upland estates. Nevertheless, management traditions developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries remain highly powerful today, while recent land reform legislation has had remarkably little impact on upland estates, despite original fears among landowning interests that it would depress land values, reduce investment and employment and threaten natural heritage. The subsequent case studies of twelve different estates demonstrate some commitment among private landowners to social and environment priorities, once financial survival is assured. While the case studies ‘indicate that resident and inherited landowners can contribute to the maintenance of resilient communities in the Scottish uplands’ (p. 105), ‘bad apples’ certainly exist. Yet, no comment is offered by the authors on whether the ‘bad apples’ are prevalent enough to justify a radical land reform policy, although the largely sympathetic account of private landownership presented in this book makes one doubt whether this would be their position. That said, the detailed and very interesting ethnographic study of relations between private landowners and local communities, presented in the third of these chapters certainly reveals negative as well as positive aspects of private land management, while arguing that much depends ‘on individuals, their backgrounds, values and, at times, their confidence’ (p. 125). The book then moves on to look at the growth of community and NGO land ownership, before setting out a detailed tool by which to assess sustainable land management practices in the uplands. Community ownership is shown to have very considerable potential, but does not necessarily resolve all the conflicts of upland land management. The account of NGO ownership, evident in the work of the RSPB, National Trust for Scotland and John Muir Trust, for example, might usefully have been extended to evaluate rather than merely report criticisms that its growth has reduced local accountability and sensitivity. The sustainability tool is particularly useful in moving debate on beyond traditional owner notions of ‘stewardship’ and ‘responsibility’ towards twelve practical types of action that can be taken to achieve five identified principles of sustainability relevant to upland management. How then does ‘Lairds, Land and Sustainability’ speak to current debates on rural land reform in Scotland? First and foremost, the book is based on detailed research and scholarship and the insights it provides certainly contributes to a policy arena that is often more characterised by heat than light. But the evidence presented in the book is complex and messy – there are, for example, plenty of well-intentioned private landowners who place significant importance on the well-being of their local communities, even though their relative significance is not necessarily clear. Conversely, community and NGO ownership, while having much potential, is not always a panacea. 121

Reviews Maybe this kind of mixed picture is precisely what might be expected from a theoretical approach that is strongly grounded in agency analysis, with much less attention paid to the social and economic structures that frame and indeed constrain agency behaviour. Nevertheless, those of radical persuasion who wish to overturn the prevalent social and economic structures of the Scottish uplands are unlikely to be persuaded by the authors’ story of the potentially positive contribution of private landowners to upland sustainability. Yet, Scotland’s pragmatic politicians may see the mixed and complex picture presented in this book as good reason to continue their hesitant approach to land reform and avoid any measures that might be portrayed as too radical. David Adams University of Glasgow Notes 1. J. Hunter, P. Peacock, A. Wightman and M. Foxley, 432:50 – Towards a Comprehensive Land Reform Agenda for Scotland, House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee Briefing Paper (London, 2013), 5. 2. House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, Land Reform in Scotland: Final Report, Eighth Report of Session 2014–15 (London, 2015), 17. 3. Submissions of evidence to the LRRG are still available at http://www.gov.scot/ Publications/21013/07/2790/0; see also Land Reform Review Group, The Land of Scotland and the Common Good, Scottish Government (Edinburgh, 2014). 4. Scottish Land and Estates, Response to the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Review Groups (Musselburgh, 2014), 41.

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