The Lowland Clearances

[JS Sanders]

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Negatory pard. I tend to be wary of them.

[McClef]

I'm not an expert on these - perhaps because John Prebble didn't write a book about them...

But it was an age of emigration with many leaving from all parts of the UK for the New World or the Colonies. The Industrial revolution had made many move to the towns and cities which had occurred as a more gradual process so there had not been the more traumatic change that had occurred in Scotland.

[Phil]

I think the experience of Robert Burns' family in trying to eke out a subsistence living as tenant farmers in the latter half of the 18th century possibly gives an insight into the demographic shift away from agriculture at the time. Industry and the growth of cities was drawing people away from the land for the certainty of a regular wage as farming became a less attractive option. Burns himself said of his time farming at Mossgiel that for many years meat was "a stranger" on their table and with no money to spend on improving land, crop yields were extremely poor. Coupled with this is a lesser known fact - Scotland also suffered from the potato famine just the same as Ireland, and this too would have accelerated the flight from the land. Unable to pay rent, tenants would have been evicted and landowners amalgamated the small fields of the time into larger, more economically viable units. Plus they had access to the finance needed to improve and fertilise the land.
I doubt if there was any forced clearances of the kind experienced in the Highlands, more an economic migration brought on by new opportunities in the cities and in the overseas colonies.

[Rob Wright]

Clearances in the lowlands go even further back. After the Union of Crowns, many of the border reiver families such as the Grahams and Armstrongs were deported en masse to remove the lawless elements from the old border region between Scotland and England.

Rob

[Phil]

Clearances in the lowlands go even further back. After the Union of Crowns, many of the border reiver families such as the Grahams and Armstrongs were deported en masse to remove the lawless elements from the old border region between Scotland and England.

The borders were a different case altogether. The people there had lived a precarious existence for generations as opposing armies from Scotland and England waged war back and forth across their lands, destroying everything as they passed. The result was that they resorted to reiving (that's where bereaved originates) both English on Scots and vice-versa as the only way to support their families. James VI and I put an end to it by deporting many of them to Ireland and the colonies where their reiving skills were put to good account but it was not the type of economic clearance seen in the following two centuries.

[Rob Wright]

The borders were a different case altogether. The people there had lived a precarious existence for generations as opposing armies from Scotland and England waged war back and forth across their lands, destroying everything as they passed. The result was that they resorted to reiving (that's where bereaved originates) both English on Scots and vice-versa as the only way to support their families. James VI and I put an end to it by deporting many of them to Ireland and the colonies where their reiving skills were put to good account but it was not the type of economic clearance seen in the following two centuries.

While not completely similar, economics were a factor in the border clearances, the border clearances can be seen as a precursor of the large scale displacement that came in the centuries after.


Rob

[Phil]

While not completely similar, economics were a factor in the border clearances, the border clearances can be seen as a precursor of the large scale displacement that came in the centuries after.


Rob

The only economics involved was who was stealing from whom. The troublesome border clans were a political issue addressed by James when he took over in London as part of the unification of his kingdom. The "borders" were re-named the "middle shires" and the troublemakers ruthlessly suppressed to bring peace to the area.