This second part of The Strathnaver Trilogy follows Chief of Mackay and describes the fulfilment of the anti-Gaelic, anti-Mackay policy of the House of Sutherland, under which the entire population of the north-west of Scotland was displaced in what became known as the Clearances. The principal agent of the Duchess of Sutherland in this early version of ethnic cleansing was Patrick Sellar, who was actually brought to trial in 1816 on charges which included culpable homicide, but was acquitted.

Winner of the Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year AwardIn April 1816 Patrick Sellar was brought to trial in Inverness for culpable homicide for his treatment of the Highlanders of Strathnaver, the most northerly part of the Scottish highlands. In the process of evicting them from their ancient lands he had allegedly burnt houses, destroyed mills and wrecked pastures. There is perhaps no more hated nor reviled individual in Highland history. This outstanding new book, however, gives a balanced assessment of the man, a vivid account of a terrible episode in Highland history, and a riveting narration of a tormented life. Richard's book is an account of Sellar's life and times: that he was ruthless, avaricious, devious and cruel is beyond question. But his letters suggest a streak of idealism: did he really believe that the displaced highlanders would be better off, better fed, educated and housed in their new homes? Have the Highlands in the end become more productive and prosperous? In the course of his fast-moving and gripping account, Eric Richards looks carefully at these vexed questions.

This true story of a mass eviction in nineteenth-century Scotland is “a moving, gripping, definitive account of a struggle for survival (Scots Magazine). A Saltire Society History Book of the Year They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were—thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned. Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish Highlands county. What was done in the course of it was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman, seeking a more profitable use of the land. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions, and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but by no means irrecoverable. In this book, James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His research took him to archives in Scotland, England, and Canada, to the now deserted valleys of Sutherland, to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a story of a people’s struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster, covering experiences not featured in any previous such account. “Detailed and unsparing . . . . [The author] is careful to present the evidence for all he records.” —London Review of Books

In nineteenth century paintings, the proud Indian warrior and the Scottish Highland chief appear in similar ways--colorful and wild, righteous and warlike, the last of their kind. Earlier accounts depict both as barbarians, lacking in culture and in need of civilization. By the nineteenth century, intermarriage and cultural contact between the two--described during the Seven Years' War as cousins--was such that Cree, Mohawk, Cherokee, and Salish were often spoken with Gaelic accents. In this imaginative work of imperial and tribal history, Colin Calloway examines why these two seemingly wildly disparate groups appear to have so much in common. Both Highland clans and Native American societies underwent parallel experiences on the peripheries of Britain's empire, and often encountered one another on the frontier. Indeed, Highlanders and American Indians fought, traded, and lived together. Both groups were treated as tribal peoples--remnants of a barbaric past--and eventually forced from their ancestral lands as their traditional food sources--cattle in the Highlands and bison on the Great Plains--were decimated to make way for livestock farming. In a familiar pattern, the cultures that conquered them would later romanticize the very ways of life they had destroyed. White People, Indians, and Highlanders illustrates how these groups alternately resisted and accommodated the cultural and economic assault of colonialism, before their eventual dispossession during the Highland Clearances and Indian Removals. What emerges is a finely-drawn portrait of how indigenous peoples with their own rich identities experienced cultural change, economic transformation, and demographic dislocation amidst the growing power of the British and American empires.

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The official Journal of the John Clare Society, published annually to reflect the interest in, and approaches to, the life and work of the poet John Clare.

This is the first title in a new series called Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution. This series will appeal to those involved in English literary studies, as well as those working in fields of study that cover Enlightenment, Romanticism and Revolution in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.