Quick Book Review: The Highland Clearances by John Prebble
The Highland Clearances is one of the darkest chapters in the history of the British Isles. Over a period of 100 years, huge swaths of the population of the Highlands and Islands were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for sheep.
When you say that fact out loud, it sounds preposterous and outrageous.
When you sit in a quiet corner and read John Prebble's narrative account of the clearances you will be filled with rage and anger.
John Prebble's book is a masterwork in social narrative history. That tells the tale of how the highland Lairds, after Culloden, betrayed their kin and wards for the profits of mutton and wool.
It is a tale of redcoats, highland lairds, profiteering lowlanders, famine, starvation, a complicit church and a government that oscillated between apathy and cheerleading and emigration to the new worlds. The cast of characters spans all of the layers of society and paints a way of life that was slowly destroyed for profit and betrayal of responsibility between Laird and Clansman.
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This is a book to read if you want to understand how the British Empire even brutalised its own people, and understand the core of modern Scottish political nationalism and why the Highlands are so empty.
I highly recommend you read this book, which you can purchase on Amazon.
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