Highland Clearances were a series of evictions in the Scottish Highlands from the late 1700’s to the mid-1800’s. Landowners expelled thousands of families from their homes to “clear” land for large sheep farms, which were more profitable than the families’ small farms.
The first clearances began about 1780. Some landowners burned their tenants’ cottages so they could not return. Many landowners relocated the Highlanders to small farms called crofts along the rocky coast of Scotland. There the farmers, called crofters, supplemented their crops by fishing or harvesting kelp, a type of seaweed used in soap and glass making. The fishing was not widely successful, and the price for kelp dropped because the demand for it declined. The tenants could not pay their rents, and many landlords eventually had to sell part or all of their land.
Beginning in 1820, and especially after a plant disease destroyed potato crops in the 1840’s, landowners encouraged the evicted crofters to emigrate. Many Highlanders went to Australia, Canada, and the United States. The evictions began to decline in the late 1850’s.
During the 1880’s, the crofters withheld rent, fought with police, and carried out other protests. In 1886, the government passed the Crofters’ Holdings Act to give the crofters some basic land rights.
