Chapter 2C: Transformation of Scottish Society in the 18th and 19th Centuries

While laws can be enacted and repealed by the wills and whims of rulers, economic forces are not so susceptible to human control. In the remaining years of the 18^th century and well into the 19^th, Scotland, particularly in the Highlands, became ever more the economic colony of industrializing Great Britain.

In short, industrialization took farmers from their land to engage in manufacturing and other forms of specialized labor. The urbanization that resulted, not only in England but in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen, created large pockets of the population who needed to be fed and clothed by the labor of others. This, in turn, forced the need in Britain for an efficient agricultural system, one far beyond the capacity of Scottish farmers scraping by on tiny plots of land with expectations limited to sustaining only their families. Highland chieftains evolved with the times into landlords ruling by the laws of economics, not of traditions. In many cases, but not all, clan leaders sold their landholdings to wealthy English gentry, most of whom had little understanding, never mind empathy, for Scottish peasants. The absence of land reform accentuated the victimization of the clansmen.

This all changed with the new economic pressures. Accompanying industrialization in the South was urbanization, necessary for achieving specialization with production on an efficient scale. Along with English cities that were to be at the forefront of industrialization were Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. With urbanization came the need for much greater production and efficiency in agriculture to support greater numbers of people living in cities. This put great pressure to achieve economies of scale in agricultural production in the Highlands. Small farms were barely adequate for supplying families with food for their own tables. They were woefully inefficient in meeting the needs of markets in an industrializing and urbanizing Britain. Small farms were merged into larger ones as landlords sought high profits on their land portfolios. The upshot was that many Scots could no longer be maintained in rural communities. Some Scots were forced off the land through the Clearances while others left less dramatically but just as wrenchingly because they could no longer support themselves on the land they occupied. These were the people who spread to North America, Australia – New Zealand, and other corners of the globe. As one historian has put it, starting in the decades immediately following the debacle of the Jacobite Revolution:

In the 1760s and 1770s as in the rest of Scotland there was a marked acceleration in the rate of social change and, in subsequent decades, material, cultural and demographic forces combined to produce a dramatic revolution in the Highland way of life. In simple terms, traditional society was destroyed in this period and a new order based on quite different values, principles and relationships emerged to take its place…. [T]his decisive change of pace … was brought about by an enormous expansion in the rest of Britain for such Highland produce as cattle, kelp, whisky, wool, mutton, timber, slate and a host of other commodities. The irresistible material and ideological forces which were unleashed transformed the Highlands forever.[1]

These trends continued to play out through the 19^th century. Migration, voluntary as with the Glennies and Reids, or through compulsion, continued. During the mid-century decades, there were years of poor crops, including a potato blight. There were numerous revolts by crofters protesting the Clearances and conditions of impoverishment in general.[2] The Crofters’ Act of 1886, passed as the last of the Glennies were leaving Lochrie and the Reids were planning their emigration from Tollafraick, was an attempt to remedy grievances.

Either way, whether landlords of Scottish lands were descended from clan chieftains of legend or English gentry of means, Rob Roy[3] was shunted aside to make room for Adam Smith. John Glennie and tens of thousands of Scots like him packed their satchels, turned their backs on Strathdon and hundreds of parishes like it, and set out to snare the prospects they imagined in lands beyond the sea.

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[1] Devine, T. M., The Scottish Nation: A History 1700 – 2000. (New York: Viking Penguin). 1999, p. 172.

[2] Ibid., pp. 413-425.

[3] Rob Roy’s life, shaped by Scottish traditions as well as Adam Smith, is a fascinating transitional figure of the times. Rob Roy MacGregor (1671-1734) fought with his father for the Stuarts cause, became a cattleman, fell into debt he could not repay, was declared a bandit and eventually imprisoned. In later years, he was pardoned. His life, in fictionalized versions, was turned into prose by both Sir Walter Scott and Daniel Defoe.