The Great Highland Famine E-Book

Tom M. Devine

• Herausgeber: John Donald
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 876

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The Great Hunger in nineteenth-century Ireland was a major human tragedy of modern times. Almost a million perished and a further two million emigrated in the wake of potato blight and economic collapse. Acute famine also gripped the Scottish Highlands at the same time, causing misery, hardship and distress. The story of that lesser known human disaster is told in this prize-winning and internationally acclaimed book. The author describes the classic themes of highland and Scottish history, including the clearances, landlordism, crofting life, emigration and migration in a subtle and intricate reconstruction based on a wide range of sources. This book should appeal to all those with an interest in Scottish history, the emigration of Scottish people and the Highland Clearances.

Leseprobe

THE GREAT HIGHLAND FAMINE

THE GREAT HIGHLAND FAMINE

Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century

T.M. DEVINE

Research Assistant WILLIE ORR

First published in 1988 by

John Donald Ltd, Edinburgh

Reprinted in paperback in 2001 by

John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

This paperback edition first published 2021

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

ISBN 978 1 910900 50 5

Copyright © T. M. Devine 1988

The right of T. M. Devine to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great in Britain

by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

Introduction

The primary purpose of this book is to provide an account of the potato famine in the Scottish Highlands in the middle decades of the nineteenth century through a consideration of its origin, nature and effects. This was the last great subsistence crisis on the British mainland and potentially the most devastating to affect any region of Scotland since the notorious Lean Years of the 1690s. Events in the Highlands at the time also suggest interesting parallels and contrasts with the Great Famine in Ireland. Yet the Highland famine has not thus far attracted much systematic attention from historians, and even its existence is not widely known outside the relatively small number of those with a serious interest in the Scottish past.1 This may be partly because the crisis in the Highlands did not have the same horrendous impact on death rates as the much greater catastrophe in Ireland. Some might even argue that the absence of a major crisis in mortality suggests that the emergency in the Highlands does not deserve the description of ‘famine’. There are, for instance, social scientists who assert that only excess mortality defines the existence of such a crisis.2 But this is probably too narrow a view and is only one of several definitions to be found in the modern literature on famine.3

The term ‘Highland Famine’ can be justified on at least three counts. First, for almost a decade between 1846 and 1855 the potato, the main subsistence crop of the population of the Western Highlands and Islands, failed in whole or in part and threatened a large number of the region’s inhabitants with both malnutrition, severe destitution and the killer diseases associated with these conditions. Second, massive external assistance was required to reduce the real danger posed to the lives of many thousands of people. Third, the subsistence crisis had a fundamental impact on such crucial social indicators as birth, marriage, emigration and migration. The famine caused a huge exodus from the stricken region on a quite unprecedented scale. The Highland Famine did not directly cause the deaths of many people, except in 1846 and 1847, but it had momentous demographic consequences for the inhabitants of the north of Scotland.

The aim of this study, however, is not confined to a straightforward historical assessment of the potato famine itself. It also seeks to bridge some of the gaps in current literature on the nineteenth-century Highlands which exist in the periods covered by Malcolm Gray’s Highland Economy (1957) and James Hunter’s Making of the Crofting Community (1976). Gray’s volume is restricted to the decades before c. 1840. The main thrust of Hunter’s book is towards the last quarter of the nineteenth century, though he also surveys earlier periods. The middle decades, some of the most crucial in the society’s development, have not hitherto been explored in any depth.

The book also devotes considerable attention to emigration and migration and seeks to make a contribution to an understanding of an important phase in the movement of the Scottish people to overseas destinations. The treatment here, however, is restricted to an examination of the indigenous causes, nature and process of emigration, and no attempt is made to determine the pattern of life eventually adopted by the emigrants in either Canada or Australia. Effective pursuit of the emigrant trail would require another volume concerned with the diaspora itself.

Finally, the study endeavours to contribute to the methodology of Highland history. Scholarly examination of the society after c.1840 has tended towards a kind of duality. On the one hand, there is the statistical treatment favoured by the historical demographers led by M.W. Flinn; on the other, the traditional historical approach using contemporary correspondence, government files and newspapers to construct an essentially iIIipressionistic account of social development. This study tries to combine both methods. The core of the book rests on a foundation of numerical materials: rentals, the published and unpublished census, summonses of removal, emigration records and statistical series produced by both government and destitution committees. Throughout the attempt is made to quantify the issues and problems under discussion, not because of an obsession with number for its own sake but because only through some reckoning of the order of magnitude do patterns become apparent, trends reveal themselves and the fundamental questions come more clearly into focus. Systematic analysis inevitably rests on the greater precision which comes from elementary quantification. A more elaborate manipulation of the data is not attempted, not merely because of the inadequacies of much of the source materials but also because of the limitations of the expertise of the author. ‘Softer’ evidence, of the type mentioned above, is also an essential element. From it derives the information on motivation, attitudes, values and perceptions which are vital to a meaningful understanding of causation and the ideologies and assumptions which drove men to action.

It must be stressed from the outset that there are a number of intractable problems associated with some of the major sources which have been used in the analysis. An effort has been made to locate all important, relevant materials for the period and region of study. Where omissions remain it can normally be assumed that the source in question did not provide much useful information or that it is not presently recorded in record office guides, National Register of Archive (Scotland) surveys or in bibliographical literature. The specific difficulties involved in using some of the data which are available for examination anO: the gaps in much of the materials consulted are explored in detail in Chapters 2, 3 and 8. Here, however, attention should be drawn to the general problems associated with three sources which in theory might have yielded hard information of a quantitative nature but which in practice were somewhat disappointing.

The Agricultural Statistics for Scotland only started to appear in the 1850s, near the end of the potato famine. They do not initially record any information on tenants paying less than £20 per annum and so exclude from coverage the vast majority of landholders in the Western Highlands and Islands. Because of this, it is impossible to calculate precise and comprehensive long-run series of changing acreage, cropping systems, tenancy structures and yields from the official returns in the way that can be done for parts of lreland. The Irish Agricultural Statistics and other official sources are not only more detailed but are available from the 1840s and thereafter. Again, Highland demographic history before civil registration must be constructed on the basis of fragile materials and on the understanding that yawning gaps exist in the evidence. Recording of births, marriages and deaths was not only erratic in the region during the 1840s and early 1850s but was artificially distorted by the Disruption of 1843 and the emergence of the Free Church of Scotland. After that date entries in some Church of Scotland registers declined dramatically or disappeared altogether. Customs returns for the Highland ports, the key source for the determination of changing patterns of regional trade during the famine period, have not survived. They were undoubtedly collected in such ports as Stornoway, Tobermory, Portree and Inveraray because extracts from the returns were occasionally produced in evidence before official enquiries. Tragically, however, for the period of this study at least, the originals seem to have been destroyed. The historian of the Highland famine, therefore, is forced to grapple with imperfect materials, base many of his conclusion on imprecise measures and rely also on tentative estimates of what might have happened. The only justification that can be offered is that, at the present time at least, there is no alternative to such an approach.

The study itself is set in three coherent parts. Chapters 1 to 3 identify the origins, nature and demographic effects of the crisis. The analytical perspective of dividing the Highlands into two distinctive social formations, the Western Highlands and Islands on the one hand, the eastern, central and southern zone on the other, is here explained and developed. This structure forms the basic organising principle of the entire study. Secondly, Chapters 4 to 7 examine the varied responses of landlords, government, lowland charities and the people themselves to the emergency. The main purpose of this section is to explain how the Highlands managed to escape a tragedy of Irish proportions. Finally, Chapters 8 to 12 consider the pattern of emigration and migration, the forces which shaped the outward movement and the impact of the famine on the development of Highland society in the medium and long terms.

A project on this scale based on an array of original sources, many of them very demanding of time and labour, would not have been possible without external funding. I am therefore happy to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant No. B00232099) and the University of Strathclyde Research and Development Fund in 1985 and 1986, when most of the gathering and processing of information was carried out. This financial help allowed me to employ a first-class research assistant, my former graduate student, Mr. W. Orr. By his careful, thorough and meticulous work, he made a major contribution to the successful completion of the project.

In 1986 and early 1987 parts of the study were read as papers at Research Seminars in the Universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow, Strathclyde and St. Andrews and given as lectures at the Annual Conference of the British Agricultural History Society (University of Ulster, 1987) and First Residential Conference of the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland (University of Aberdeen, 1987). These meetings not only gave me the opportunity to clarify my thoughts on complex issues but comments and criticisms made on each occasion benefited the development of the entire project.

Acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to consult and cite original material in their care: the Keeper of the Records of Scotland; the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office; the Keeper and Trustees of the National Library of Scotland; the Keeper of the Public Records, Public Record Office; Fr. Mark Dilworth, Catholic National Archives; the Duke of Argyll; the Duke of Hamilton; Cameron of Lochiel; John Macleod of Macleod; John Mackenzie of Gairloch.

I am particularly grateful to Mr. John Mackenzie for his hospitality when examining the Mackenzie of Gairloch MSS; to Mr. C.C. Johnston, Registrar of the National Register of Archives (Scotland) for his efficient and speedy processing of several queries; and to Alastair Lorne Campbell Jr. of Airds, of Argyll Estates, Inveraray Castle, for his generous assistance, often at considerable inconvenience to himself, when research on the immensely valuable Argyll Estate Papers was undertaken.

The following helped by answering queries or providing information: Jeanette Brock; Margaret Buchanan; Fr. Mark Dilworth; Pat Gibb; Liam Kennedy; Mairhi Macarthur; Ann Morton; John Robertson; Willie Sloan; Christopher Smout; Neil Tranter; James Treble; John Tuckwell; Peter Vasey. The maps were drawn by Dr. Miles Oglethorpe.

Mrs. Irene Scouller typed all the successive drafts of along and difficult manuscript. I thank her not only for her skilful work but for her powers of endurance and patience when continuously confronted by my idiosyncratic handwriting.

The volume could not have been completed without the constant support and encouragement of Catherine Mary Devine. To her and our children this book is dedicated with love.

Tom Devine, University of Strathclyde.

NOTES

1 The background to the events of the 1840s is discussed in M Gray, The Highland Ecorwmy, 1750-/850(Edinburgh, 1957)and ‘The Highland Potato Famine of the 1840s’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., vii (1955). James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976) devotes a chapter to the famine though his conclusions differ in some respects from those of this volume. M.M. Flinn et al eds., Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), is concerned almost exclusively with some of the demographic aspects of the crisis.

2See, forexample, M.Alamgir, FamineinSouthAsia:thePoliticalEcorwmyof MassStarvation (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 24; D.G. Johnson, ‘Famine’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed., 1973), 58; G.B. Masefield, Famine: Its Prevention and Relief(Oxford, 1963), 3-4. For a historian’s use of this measure see Andrew B. Appleby, Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Liverpool, 1978), 7-8.

3 They are, inter alia, periods of extreme incidence of hunger and malnutrition; food emergencies identified by an increase in external assistance to relieve the affected population; shortfalls in food production leading to demographic and other changes in the social order. For a recent review of these definitions see Alamgir, Famine in South Asia, and Masefield, Famine; see also P.M.A. Bourke, ‘The Potato Blight, Weather and the Irish Famine’, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, National University of Ireland, 1965.

Abbreviations

Destitution Papers

Free Church Destitution Committee, Statements and Reports (Edinburgh, 1847)

Reports of Central Board of Management of the Fund raised for the Relief of the Destitute Inhabitants of the Highlands and I stands of Scotland, 1847-50 Reports of Edinburgh Section of the Central Board (Edinburgh, 1847-50)

Reports of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland regarding Highland Destitution (Edinburgh, 1847)

Report on Mull, Tiree etc. by a Deputation of the Glasgow Section of the Highland Relief Board (Glasgow, 1849)

Report on the Outer Hebrides by a Deputation of the Glasgow Section of the Highland Relief Board (Glasgow, 1849)

GRO

General Register Office, Edinburgh

McNeil/Report

Report to the Board of Supervision by Sir John McNeil/on the Western Highlands and Islands, Parliamentary Papers, 1851, XXVI

N.C.

(Napier Commission) Report and Evidence of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Parliamentary Papers, 1884, X:XXII-XXXVI

NLS

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

N.S.A.

New Statistical Account of Scotland. 15 Vols. (Edinburgh, 1845)

O.S.A.

Statistical Account of Scotland. Edited by Sir John Sinclair. 21 Vols.(Edinburgh, 1791-99)

pp

Parliamentary Papers

PRO

Public Record Office, London

RGS

Registrar-General for Scotland

Relief Correspondence

Correspondence relating to the Measures adopted for the Relief of Distress in Ireland and Scotland, Parliamentary Papers, 1847, LIII

S.C. on Emigration

Report from the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Condition of the Population of the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, and into the practicability of affording the People relief by means of Emigration, Parliamentary Papers, 1841, VI

SRO

Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh

Tables

1.1 Percentage Share of Total Rental Paid by Tenants with Holdings Valued at Over £20 Per Annum, Crofting Districts, c.1850

1.2 Tenants Paying £10 Per Annum Rental or Less as Percentage of All Tenants, Crofting Districts, c.1850

1.3 Social Stratification of West Highland Crofting Townships, c.1850

1.4 Oat Yields, Western Highlands and Lowland, c.1851

1.5 Annual Percentage Population Increase by Region and County, 1801-1840

1.6 Emigration from West Highland Parishes noted by 1841 rensus Enumerators

1.7 Sutherland Small Tenants, Western Parishes, 1836-1846

2.1 Estimated Extent of Potato Failure, 74 Highland Districts, December 1846

2.2 Estimated Percentage of Families in Highland Districts, by County, ‘not paupers but now destitute of food’, December 1846

2.3 Estimated Length of Time Corn Crops Might Support Rent-Paying Families, 74 Highland Districts, December 1846

2.4 ‘Remunerative Employment Provided’, Crofting and Farming Districts, December 1846

2.5 Average Cottar Population (Estimated) as Percentage of Total Population, Crofting and Farming Districts, 1846

2.6 Estimated Percentage of Families, Insular Districts, ‘not paupers but destitute of food’, December, 1846

2.7 Abstract of Largest Numbers Receiving Relief from Central Board as Percentage of Total Population, 1848-1849

2.8 Relief Recipients, Wester Ross Districts and Villages, 1848

2.9 Rent Arrears, Kelp and Crofting Townships, Lord Macdonald Estates, Isle of Skye, 1830-1854

2.10 Argyll Fishing District Survey, 1851

2.11 Numbers on Relief, WesterRoss, April 1848

2.12 Numbers Likely to Seek Relief, Skye, December 1847

2.13 Largest Numbers of Relief, Skye and Wester Ross, 1847-1850

3.1 Annual Deaths, Moidart, 1838-1855

3.2 Annual Deaths, Arisaig, 1838-1860

3.3 Annual Burials, Iona, 1835-1854

3.4 Annual Burials, Dornoch, 1835-1854

3.5 Poor on Roll, -Highland Counties, 1846-1853

3.6 Baptisms and Marriages, Iona, 1829-1854

3.7 Baptisms and Marriages, Moidart and Arisaig, 1830-1860

3.8 Baptisms and Marriages, Tiree, 1835-1854

3.9 Annual Baptisms, Sixteen Crofting Parishes, 1835-1854

3.10 Net Out-Migration, Crofting Parishes, 1801-1891

3.11 Estimated Net Migration Loss, Selected West Highland and Hebridean Parishes, 1841-1861, as Proportion of Net Migration Loss, 1801-1890

3.12 Highland Crofting and Farming Parishes, Populations, 1801-1901

3.13 Population of Outer Hebridean Parishes, 1801-1921

3.14 Estimated Net Out-Migration, Crofting and Farming Regions by County, 1801-1891

3.15 Net Out-Migration (Estimated) from Selected West Highland and Hebridean Parishes as Percentage of Starting Population, 1841-1851

3.16 Net Out-Migration (Estimated) from Sqlected West Highland and Hebridean Parishes as Percentage of Starting Population, 1851-1861

4.1 Sheep Prices, 1835-1865

4.2 Prices of Wool (Laid Cheviot and Laid Highland), 1840-1860

4.3 Tenant and Rental Structure, Parish of Lochbroom, Wester Ross, 1851

4.4 Poor on Roll and Occasional Poor by County, 1846-1851

5.1 Source of Relief Funds, Edinburgh Section, 1846-1847 and General Relief Committee, Paisley, 1841-1842

6.1 Demand for Railway Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1846-1847

6.2 Harvest Wages in Lowland Scotland, 1845-1854

6.3 Pattern of Demand for Harvest Labour, 1845-1854

6.4 Pattern of Demand for Fishing Labour at Wick, 1846-1852

7.1 Highland Parishes with Evidence of Substantial Removals, 1846-1856

7.2 Highland Parishes with Evidence of Some Removals, 1846-1856

7.3 Summonses of Removal and Sequestration, Tobermory Sheriff Court, 1846-1852 (by area)

7.4 Sources of Highland Kelp sold by W.A. and G. Maxwell of Liverpool, 1817-1828

7.5 Poor Rates in the Highlands, 1851-1853: Proportion Percentage of Paupers Relieved to Total Population

8.1 Heads of Household born in Western Highlands and Islands but Residing in Selected Easter Ross and Eastern Inverness-shire Parishes, 1851 and 1861

8.2 Detached Single Individuals (not related to Heads of Household) born in Western Highlands and Islands, but Residing in Selected Easter Ross and Eastern Inverness-shire Parishes, 1851 and 1861

8.3 Departures for U.S.A., Canada, Australia (including New Zealand) from Principal Scottish Ports, 1846-1856

8.4 Assisted Emigration to British North America by Highland Landowners, 1846-1846

8.5 Total Emigrants Assisted by Individual Proprietors, 1846-1856

8.6 Total Emigrants Assisted by Landowners (Area and Year), 1846-1856

9.1 Summonses of Removal as Proportion of Number of Households, Parish of Barvas (Lewis), 1848-1853

9.2 Census Areas and Population, Parish of Barvas, Lewis, 1851

9.3 Summonses of Removal, Island of Lewis, 1848-1853

9.4 Summonses of Removal and Kelp Parishes, Lewis, 1845-1853

9.5 Lewis Population, 1841-1911 (excluding Stornoway Burgh)

10.1 Tiree Population, c. 1750-1841

10.2 Net Out-Migration (estimated) from Parish of Tiree and Coll, 1801-1911

10.3 Tenant Structure in Tiree, c.1850

10.4 Total Expenditure, Tiree Estate, 1843-1849

10.5 Total Rent Actually Paid in Tiree by Each Class, 1843-1849

10.6 List of Emigrants from Tiree on Charlone and Barlow, June 1849

10.7 List of Emigrants from Tiree, July 1851, on Conrad, Birnam and Onyx

10.8 Population Structure, Island of Tiree, 1841 and 1849

10.9 Tenant Structure of Tiree, 1847-1861

10.10 Tiree Tenancies, 1847-1881

11.1 Lists of Ships Containing Emigrants to the Australian Colonies Assisted by the Highland and Island Emigration Society, year ending April 1853

11.2 Year of Departure and Destinationof H.I.E.S. Emigrants, 1852-1857

11.3 Source of Emigrants Assisted by H.I.E.S. by Estate, April 1852-April 1853

11.4 Geographical Origins of H.I.E.S. Emigrants, 1852-1857

11.5 Age and Sex Structure, H.I.E.S. Emigrants, 1852-1857

11.6 Ages of Emigrants Supported by H.I.E.S., 1852 and early 1853

12.1 Napier Commission Evidence on Redistribution of Croft Lands After Clearances and Emigration, 1846-1856

12.2 Sex Ratio: Selected West Highland Parishes and Districts, 1841 and 1861

12.3 Percentage of All Households ‘Lost’ by Age of Head, Kilfinichen (Mull) and Barvas (Lewis), 1841, 1851, 1861

12.4 Average Number of Offspring, New Households, Kilfinichen (Mull) and Barvas (Lewis), 1861

12.5 Average Number of Offspring per Household, Kilfinichen (Mull) and Barvas (Lewis), 1841-1861

Contents

Introduction

Abbreviations

Tables

Figure

Maps

1. A Vulnerable Society: the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1800-1846

2. Anatomy of the Potato Famine

3. The Demographic Consequences

4. The Landed Classes

5. The Provision of Relief

6. Temporary Migration

7. Clearances

8. The Pattern of Migration and Emigration

9. Coercion and Emigration: the Isle of Lewis, 1846-1890

10. Emigration, Social Change and Economic Recovery: the Isle of Tiree, 1760-1890

11. Emigration to Australia: the Highland and Island Emigration Society, 1851-1859

12. Impact and Aftermath: the Western Highlands and Islands, 1850-1890

Appendix 1: Crofting and Farming Parishes, Argyll, Inverness, Ross and Sutherland

Appendix 2: Potato Crop Reports, 1848-1856

Appendix 3: West Highland Cattle Prices, 1845-1853

Appendix 4: West Coast and Hebridean Fisheries, 1845-1849

Appendix 5: Reports of Sickness and Disease, Highland Districts, 1846-1854

Appendix 6: Highland Applications Made Under the Drainage Act, 1846-1847

Appendix 7: Removals and Land Consolidation, Highland Parishes, before 1845

Appendix 8: Numbers ‘Temporarily Absent’ at Census, Highland Parishes, 1841-1861

Appendix 9: Temporary Migration and the Crofting Region: Parish Patterns in the 1840s

Appendix 10: Assisted Emigration by Highland Landowners, 1846-1856

Appendix 11: Principal Evictions in the Highlands, 1846-1856

Appendix 12: Cattle Stocks in Crofting Districts, c.1851

Bibliography

Index