Debating the Highland Clearances

Richards challenges his readers to understand a historical phenomenon and wrestle with analysis of primary and secondary sources through two complementary sections! fills the gap where an analytical overview has been sorely needed. He offers no easy resolutions but encourages readers to wrestle with the very mixed motives, events and outcomes termed 'Highland Clearances' as well as with the dichotomised rhetoric which has characterised debate. -- Elizabeth Ritchie, University of Guelph Scottish Historical Review Graham examines the tensions and uncertainties of 1690s Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, and how they led up to what for him amounts to a ritual sacrifice. In doing so, he sets himself the task of reconstructing the mindset of a community-no easy goal, but one which he accomplishes in availing himself of spiritual diaries, private correspondence, newspapers, parliamentary and church records, and pamphlets, among other valuable primary sources! This timely volume does not shy away from modern implications of the Aikenhead case. Graham has offered us not only a fine addition to the literature on seventeenth-century Scotland, but a portrait of contemporary life all the more vivid due to its relevance to debates we face over three centuries later. -- Nathan P. Gray, University of Glasgow Kelvingrove Review Although this book is of course focused on the clearances, it could make essential reading for any student or practitioner of history in how to write on a controversial topic. -- Annie Tindley History Scotland It is in this sense above all that the Highland Clearances are, as Eric Richards comments in his new book, 'a classic historical problem'. Because the issues at stake in the clearances were so basic to the formation of modern society, and because the economic and other forces then in conflict remain in conflict today in some of our planet's most crisis-ridden localities, there is not, and cannot be, anything approximating to a definitive verdict on the clearances. Debate, in other words, will continue. But if such debate is to yield more than endless contention, it needs to be well informed. Hence this book's value. -- James Hunter, UHI Centre for History Scottish Historical Review Richards challenges his readers to understand a historical phenomenon and wrestle with analysis of primary and secondary sources through two complementary sections! fills the gap where an analytical overview has been sorely needed. He offers no easy resolutions but encourages readers to wrestle with the very mixed motives, events and outcomes termed 'Highland Clearances' as well as with the dichotomised rhetoric which has characterised debate. Graham examines the tensions and uncertainties of 1690s Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, and how they led up to what for him amounts to a ritual sacrifice. In doing so, he sets himself the task of reconstructing the mindset of a community-no easy goal, but one which he accomplishes in availing himself of spiritual diaries, private correspondence, newspapers, parliamentary and church records, and pamphlets, among other valuable primary sources! This timely volume does not shy away from modern implications of the Aikenhead case. Graham has offered us not only a fine addition to the literature on seventeenth-century Scotland, but a portrait of contemporary life all the more vivid due to its relevance to debates we face over three centuries later. Although this book is of course focused on the clearances, it could make essential reading for any student or practitioner of history in how to write on a controversial topic. It is in this sense above all that the Highland Clearances are, as Eric Richards comments in his new book, 'a classic historical problem'. Because the issues at stake in the clearances were so basic to the formation of modern society, and because the economic and other forces then in conflict remain in conflict today in some of our planet's most crisis-ridden localities, there is not, and cannot be, anything approximating to a definitive verdict on the clearances. Debate, in other words, will continue. But if such debate is to yield more than endless contention, it needs to be well informed. Hence this book's value.