Highlands Clearance

Nero

Well-known member
I was watching Romesh Ranganathan's Hebridean program earlier. Well worth a look if you've not seen it.

The Highland Clearance was covered and is something I've no knowledge of, so done some reading. What a shocking event in Scottish and British history.

People moved from historical areas for loyalty to the king and or money and sheep!
 
And similar things would happen today if the rich and powerful thought for one moment that they could get away with it. A lot of the " freedoms" and a lot of " our laws" that the people behind Brexit cried about was about taking us back to the good old times when thinks like that could be done.
 
The more you read about the clearances and the persecution of the Scots people and their traditions, and also our similar role in the suppression of the Irish - and in particular the famines (contrary to popular belief there wasn't just one) - the more shocked you'll be. As alluded to by Osboro, all this ballhooks about "putting the Great back into Britain" is so wide of the mark as to be offensive.
 
The more you read about the clearances and the persecution of the Scots people and their traditions, and also our similar role in the suppression of the Irish - and in particular the famines (contrary to popular belief there wasn't just one) - the more shocked you'll be. As alluded to by Osboro, all this ballhooks about "putting the Great back into Britain" is so wide of the mark as to be offensive.

Not that it makes it better, but the Highland Clearances, as tragic as they were, were acts largely perpetrated by other Scots.
It's still a British tragedy, and the British state was definitely complicit in the causes of it, but this reads more like blaming the English for it when it's far more complicated than that.
 
The Highland Clearances, as tragic as they were, were acts largely perpetrated by other Scots.
It's still a British tragedy, and the British state was definitely complicit in the causes of it, but this reads more like blaming the English for it when it's far more complicated than that.

I was just going to say wasn't it other Scots involved? That's the impression I have from the limited information I've looked at.

The Jabobite movement seemed more about breaking the recent Union.
 
Fair enough, I was treating the two separate things - the persecution of Scottish culture, including the banning of Tartan and speaking of Gaelic; and the clearances - with one cause, when they are different events.
 
And people wonder why the Scots hate us and are now looking for independence. And the Irish are not too keen on us either, part of that island has gained independence by having fight for it and of the other part, a lot of people want their independence from the UK..
Also, haven't our friendly government instructed gun boats to patrol "our" fishing waters to stop those nasty foreigners getting the fish.
Have a look up about the Massacre of Amritsar. Or how the British treated the indegenious peoples of the countries whose goods we plundered.(Read the victims versions, not the British version).
Or the invention of concentration camps for women and children.
And if you think our leaders have changed since those dark days, you only need to remember that as recently as last year a Tory MP proposed to stop allowing food to be sent from England to Ireland if Ireland didn't back the UK in the Brexit saga.
 
Here's a lovely quote, roughly from the era in question. Had the writer ventured as far as Middlesbrough at that time, they'd have included the people who built our town too:

“THE MISSING LINK: A creature manifestly between the gorilla and the negro is to be met within some of the lowest districts of London and Liverpool by adventurous explorers. It comes from Ireland, whence it has contrived to migrate; it belongs in fact to a tribe of Irish savages: the lowest species of Irish Yahoo. When conversing with its kind it talks a sort of gibberish. It is, moreover, a climbing animal, and may sometimes be seen ascending a ladder laden with a hod of bricks.”
Punch Magazine, London, 1862
 
Did anyone see Iain Duncan Smith's comments the other day? Wishing he was 21 again now Brexit was done, so he could buccaneer across the world like days past!

I would say one thing though. Scottish, Irish and Welsh hate of England is often misplaced. Most English are like them and just normal people. What has the general population of today got to do with historical Kings and their ego to conquer?
 
Fair enough, I was treating the two separate things - the persecution of Scottish culture, including the banning of Tartan and speaking of Gaelic; and the clearances - with one cause, when they are different events.
Again, without diminishing it, something in part done by other Scots.

The speaking of Gaelic was banned by a Scottish King and by a Scottish Parliament.

Before the modern age, the Lowlands and the Highlands were very different culturally. The Lowlands being predominantly Scots/English speaking, and the the Highlands being predominantly Gaelic.
 
Again, without diminishing it, something in part perpetuated by other Scots.

The speaking of Gaelic was banned by a Scottish King and by a Scottish Parliament.

Before the modern era, the Lowlands and the Highlands were very different culturally.

I've heard that alluded to before actually about the culture. People I worked with from the Highlands, would, depending on the context mention places like Edinburgh were English anyway.
 
Again, without diminishing it, something in part done by other Scots.

The speaking of Gaelic was banned by a Scottish King and by a Scottish Parliament.

Before the modern era, the Lowlands and the Highlands were very different culturally. The Lowlands being predominantly Scots/English speaking, and the the Highlands being predominantly Gaelic.
True, James initially banned the speaking of Gaelic but the real crackdown came 100 odd years later, after Culloden. And yes I'm aware that battle was Scot against Scot to an extent, but it was essentially the Scots wanting independence from the UK, which as now was ruled from London.
 
True, James initially banned the speaking of Gaelic but the real crackdown came 100 odd years later, after Culloden. And yes I'm aware that battle was Scot against Scot to an extent, but it was essentially the Scots wanting independence from the UK, which as now was ruled from London.

The SNP probably see themselves as contemporary Jacobites in fact.
 
I've heard that alluded to before actually about the culture. People I worked with from the Highlands, would, depending on the context mention places like Edinburgh were English anyway.

Kernel of truth from history, though obviously not the case now.
Edinburgh and surrounding Lothian were a part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Bernicia and then Northumberland for hundreds of years.

Became part of Alba (Scotland) in 973.

But then you could use the same argument to say the Isles and Orkney and Shetland are actually Norwegian.
 
Kernel of truth from history, though obviously not the case now.
Edinburgh and surrounding Lothian were a part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Bernicia and then Northumberland for hundreds of years.

Became part of Alba (Scotland) in 973.

But then you could use the same argument to say the Isles and Orkney and Shetland are actually Norwegian.

Shetland has a lot of Norwegian names actually, plus the annual Viking festivals. I remember Shetland stating in 2014 that if Scotland went independent, they would go independent from Scotland!
 
Shetland has a lot of Norwegian names actually, plus the annual Viking festivals. I remember Shetland stating in 2014 that if Scotland went independent, they would go independent from Scotland!
Yes I remember the first time I was up there, seeing street names like Stig's Cross and Olaf's Place!
 
Shetland has a lot of Norwegian names actually, plus the annual Viking festivals. I remember Shetland stating in 2014 that if Scotland went independent, they would go independent from Scotland!

The flags of both island groups are deliberately Scandinavian too.

Our islands are a huge melting pot.
 
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