page_title: Highland Clearances
section_title: Agricultural Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Highland Clearances / Economic and social context / Agricultural Revolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Runrigs Old runrigs - fertile strips of land, once cultivated - beside Loch Eynort, Isle of Skye.
context_page_description: The Highland Clearances were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in the period 1750 to 1860.
  In the first phase, clearance resulted from agricultural improvement, driven by the need for landlords to increase their income. This involved the enclosure of the open fields managed on the run rig system and the shared grazing. Especially in the North and West of the region, these were usually replaced with large-scale pastoral farms stocked with sheep, on which much higher rents were paid, with the displaced tenants getting alternative tenancies in newly created crofting communities, where they were expected to be employed in industries such as fishing, quarrying or the kelp industry. The reduction in status from farmer to crofter was one of the causes of resentment from these changes.
  The second phase involved overcrowded crofting communities from the first phase that had lost the means to support themselves, through famine and/or collapse of industries that they had relied on, as well as continuing population growth. This is when "assisted passages" were common, when landowners paid the fares for their tenants to emigrate.
context_section_description: The first phase of the Highland Clearances was part of the Scottish Agricultural Revolution but happened later than the same process in the Scottish Lowlands. Scottish agriculture in general modernised much more rapidly than in England and, to a large extent, elsewhere in Europe. The growing cities of the Industrial Revolution presented an increased demand for food; land came to be seen as an asset to meet this need, and as a source of profit, rather than a means of support for its resident population.
  Before improvement, Highland agriculture was based on run rig arable areas and common land for grazing. Those working in this system lived in townships or bailtean. Under the run rig system, the open fields were divided into equivalent parts and these were allocated, once a year, to each of the occupiers, who then worked their land individually. With no individual leases or ownership of plots of land, there was little incentive to improve it (for instance by drainage or crop rotation systems). Nor, with common grazing, could an individual owner improve the quality of his stock. Enclosure of the common lands and the run rig fields was a method of improvement. More commonly, there was a greater change in land use: the replacement of mixed farming (in which cattle provided a cash crop) with large-scale sheep farming. This involved displacement of the population to crofts on the same estate, other land in the Highlands, the industrial cities of Scotland or other countries. The common view is that the shepherds employed to manage these flocks were from outside the Highlands. This is an oversimplification, as Gaelic-speaking tacksmen and drovers were to be found in the sheep trade from the 1780s. When sheep were introduced in the Sutherland Clearances, over half the leases were taken up by Sutherlanders.
caption: The remains of old run rig strips beside Loch Eynort, Isle of Skye
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