Highland Clearances

• In the early 1700s, over half the people in Scotland lived in clans in the Highlands.
• Many highlanders spoke Gaelic and worked / lived on small farms known as crofts.
• In the Lowlands, towns and cities were growing and manufacturing / merchants were becoming wealthy.
• The Highlanders were largely Catholics and Jacobites and had participates in the Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and 1745.
• The Jacobites were defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and George I wanted to reduce their power.
• The English began brutally removing all potential opposition from the Highlands by getting rid of Scottish chiefs and clans that did not support George I. This was the start of the Highland Clearances.
• In an attempt to make more money from the land, English landlords moved tenant farmers off the land and set up large scale sheep farming instead. [Enclosure Farming]
• Sheep farming required less labour so many people lost their jobs and homes.
• From the 1780s to the 1820s, thousands of Highlanders were evicted from their homes. Some were forced onto barren coastal lands, or unworkable land where they starved to death.
• Many Highlanders were forced to move to towns and cities in the Lowlands to look for work, but many more migrated to England and to countries such as Canada and America.
• Those who left Scotland became known as the Scottish diaspora and contributed to the growth of the British Empire.