The Highland Clearances

The Highland Clearances are still regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in Scottish history. Families were forced off the land and literally chased to the ends of the Earth - to make way for sheep.
Tens of thousands of people were evicted from land which their families had held for generations by the ruthless factors of landlords, who were often absentees. In many cases, terrified Highlanders were burned out of their homes and entire glens emptied. Most of these wretched tenants only found peace and managed to build a new life by going to America and Canada.
Highlanders had always faced a struggle to live off the land - but, until the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, they had been protected by the Clan system, which ensured they paid fair rents and their basic needs were met.

After Culloden, the population of the Highlands increased, largely because of the beginning of potato planting and advances in medical treatment. However, this created its own problems. With more people living off the same relatively unproductive land, there were fewer resources to go round. As a result, emigration started, and it increased in the 1780s after the American War of Independence. Even before then, however, people were heading to make a life for themselves in North America.

The end of the clan system after Culloden made the work of the tacksmen - the men who collected rents on behalf of the chief - redundant. Many of them left Scotland, taking their families and often their local communities with them.
The real pressure for change in the Highlands came when the so called Improvers - those who sought to make the Highland economy more productive - realised that they could make money out of populating the area with sheep.
The advantages were obvious. Many Highlanders scrabbled a living off poor quality cattle, but by the 1770s the demand for wool had grown and its price had doubled in 10 years. The animals could also be slaughtered for mutton.

Contrary to popular belief, Highlanders were not torn from their land and put on boats to America. The process was a much more subtle one than that.
Initially, they were moved to the coast to places such as Thurso and Brora where it was believed they could make a living in fishing and Kelping - the processing of seaweed into alkali, which was booming at the time and was highly labour intensive.
The Highlanders had no choice about leaving the land. They didn't have the cash or experience to buy and tend sheep. Instead, sheep farmers were brought in by the landlords. They believed that by moving their subjects to the coast, they would be able to earn a far better living than they could off the impoverished Highland land.
Those who were moved were given small parcels of land, known as crofts, and they became known as crofters for the first time. However, often it wasn't of much use to them. Sometimes the land was so poor that they were forced into industries such as kelping anyway. Even if the land was productive, the luckless tenants were often charged such extortionate rents that they couldn't afford it - once again forcing them to look to other forms of work. If tenants tried to stay on their lands in the glens, the local factors removed them by brute force - a favoured method was to pull down the roofs of their homes while they looked on and then set fire to the roof tresses to ensure they could not be rebuilt.
Some of the evictors, such as Patrick Sellar, the factor who worked for the Countess of Sutherland, acted despicably. Sellar personally directed the clearance of 430 people from Strathnaver, and was charged with the murder of an old woman, of whom he is said to have remarked: "She has lived too long - let her burn."
His trial was held in Inverness, but the jury was packed with local landowners and Sellar was found not guilty and allowed to carry on with his work. The law officer who had brought the charge against him was sacked.

The Countess of Sutherland and her husband the Marquis of Stafford were regarded as the worst landlords of all. By 1811, around 15,000 of their tenants had been moved to make way for sheep, with huge social and economic consequences.
The brutal work of thugs, including Sellar, only served to further increase their notoriety.
As people flocked to the coast in one of the worst instances of ethnic cleansing ever seen in Scotland, problems increased. Too many people were trying to milk the natural resources to keep themselves alive. This resulted, for instance, in over kelping.
Giving the Highlanders the opportunity to make a living from fishing also proved to be little short of a disaster, since they had little or no knowledge of how to do this. When they were able to exploit the industry successfully, it simply led to overfishing.

Until the 1820s, there had only been a trickle of emigrants, but then the economy took a turn for the worse and the vibrant kelp industry collapsed. Another problem was that the price of cattle - still an important agricultural commodity - fell. To heap on the misery further, the 1830s and 1840s also saw the failure of the potato crop, which until then had provided Highlanders with a staple food.
With people being made destitute and the Highlands completely unable to support them, some people headed south to try and find work in the new urban centres such as Glasgow. But many turned to the colonies as their only means of escape from hardship.
By this stage, the landlords were prepared to pay for their travel, since transportation meant they avoided having to find some form of work for them and disposed of the problem of keeping them. For many emigrants, there was really no choice - if they wanted to continue to work the land, they literally had nowhere else to go.

Once in Canada, Scots helped to open up the country, settling in Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and the remote north west, and working parcels of land which were assigned to them.
There is little doubt that Scots shaped the history of the continent.
By populating the Red River area of Manitoba, for instance, they established a British settlement there and stopped the Americans from advancing up as far as Hudson's Bay. If the Scottish settlement had not existed and the by then independent Americans had been able to push north, then Canada would certainly not exist in its present form today.