History - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 413

forms of employment for their tenantry, mainly fishing and kelping. Kelp (brown
seaweed) was gathered and burnt to produce soda ash, which was used in the
manufacture of soap, glass and explosives. There was a rising market for soda ash until
the 1810s, with the price increasing from £2 a tonne in 1760 to £20 in 1808, making a
fortune for some landowners and providing thousands of Highlanders with temporary
employment. Fishing for herring - the “silver darlings” - was also encouraged, and new
harbours and coastal settlements were built all around the Highland coastline. Other
landowners developed sheep runs on the Highland pastures, introducing hardy breeds
like the black-faced Linton and the Cheviot. But extensive sheep-farming proved
incompatible with a high peasant population, and many landowners decided to clear
their estates of tenants, some of whom were forcibly moved to tiny plots of marginal
land, where they were to farm as crofters .
The pace of the Highland Clearances accelerated after the end of the Napoleonic Wars
in 1815, when the market price for kelp, fish and cattle declined, leaving sheep as the
only profitable Highland product. The most notorious Clearances took place on the
estates of the Countess of Sutherland, who owned a million acres in northern Scotland.
Between 1807 and 1821, around 15,000 people were thrown off her land, evictions
carried out with considerable brutality. A potato famine followed in 1846, forcing
large-scale emigration to America and Canada and leaving the huge uninhabited areas
found in the region today.

The crofters fight back
The crofters eked out a precarious existence, but they hung on throughout the
nineteenth century, often by taking seasonal employment away from home. In the
1880s, however, a sharp downturn in agricultural prices made it difficult for many
crofters to pay their rent. This time, inspired by the example of the Irish Land
League, they resisted eviction, forming the Highland Land League or Crofters' Party ,
and taking part in direct action protests, in particular land occupations, or land raids ,
as they became known. In 1886, in response to the social unrest, Gladstone's Liberal
government passed the Crofters' Holdings Act , which conceded three of the crofters'
demands: security of tenure, fair rents to be decided independently, and the right to
pass on crofts by inheritance. But Gladstone did not attempt to increase the amount
of land available for crofting, and shortage of land remained a major problem until
the Land Settlement Act of 1919 made provision for the creation of new crofts.
Nevertheless, the population of the Highlands continued to fall into the twentieth
century, with many of the region's young people finding city life more appealing.

The world wars
Depopulation of an all-too-familiar kind was present in the early decades of the
twentieth century, with Highland regiments at the vanguard of the British Army's
infantry offensives in both the Anglo-Boer wars at the start of the century and
World War I . The months after hostilities ended also saw one of the most remarkable
spectacles in Orkney's long seafaring history, when 74 vessels from the German naval
fleet, lying at anchor in Scapa Flow having surrendered to the British at the armistice,
were scuttled by the skeleton German crews that remained aboard (see p.345).

1928 1939 1939-45 1961

The National Party
of Scotland is formed

The population of
Scotland reaches
five million

34,000 Scottish soldiers
lose their lives in World
War II; 6000 civilians die
in air raids

The US deploy
Polaris nuclear
missiles in Holy Loch