The Highland Clearances From roughly 1785 to the late 1850s, landowners in the Scottish Highlands evicted small farmers on a massive scale and used the land for sheep farms, which proved more profitable. This site tells the stories of those evicted, from their perspective and that of contemporaries such as Karl Marx and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Articles describe the breakdown of clan society that led to the Clearances, and how the complicity of locals and the inaction of the Church helped the Clearances succeed. Some Scots tried to resist eviction, but many more, encouraged by the British government, emigrated to Canada and Australia. The stories of these uprooted people live on in this site. (in U.K. History)
