1. Highland popular protest can be split into three distinct phases. Beginning in the 1740s, the first phase was essentially defensive in character and can be broadly described as attempts to resist the introduction of large scale, single-tenanted sheep farms. The principal form such resistance took was the refusal to accept eviction passively. This first phase was concentrated in the south and east Highlands and is generally accepted to have continued into the first half of the nineteenth century. The second phase is marked by the movement of protest north and west and is characterised by more assertive actions. These were principally a forced seizure of land (known more generally as ‘land raids’) previously cultivated by the land-working population and expropriated by their landlords under the drive for agricultural improvement. This second phase has become known as the Highland Land Wars and is generally accepted to have begun in 1882, although there are important precedents, and ended around the turn of the century. The third stage (less well known than the previous two) is broadly delimited by the inter-war years and characterised geographically by a further retreat of protest into the north and west heartland. Important contributions to this area of study include: Richards, E., ‘How tame were the Highlanders during the Clearances?’, Scottish Studies, XVII (1973), 33–50;Google ScholarJohn, P.Dunbabin, D., Rural Discontent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1974);Google ScholarHunter, James, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976);Google ScholarLogue, Kenneth, Popular Disturbances in Scotland 1780–1815 (London, 1979);Google ScholarGrigor, Iain F., Mightier than a Lord (Stornoway, Lewis, 1979);Google ScholarRichards, Eric, A History of the Highland Clearances, vol. 1 (London, 1982);Google ScholarCharles, W.Withers, J., Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region (London, 1988);Google ScholarLeneman, Leah, Fit For Heroes? (Aberdeen, 1989);Google ScholarIain, M.MacPhail, M., The Crofters War (Stornoway, Lewis 1989);Google ScholarWithers, C W. J., ‘“Give us land and plenty of it”: the ideological basis to land and landscape in the Scottish Highlands’, Landscape History 2 (1990), 45–54;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCameron, E. A. ‘The political influence of Highland Landowners: a reassessment’, Northern Scotland, 14 (1994), 27–49;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDevine, Tom M., Clanship to Crofters War (Edinburgh, 1995);Google ScholarCameron, E.A. ‘Land raids in the Highlands, 1886 to 1925’, forthcoming.Google Scholar Of the foregoing only Cameron and Leneman have focused on the period after 1918 in any systematic way, whilst both Hunter and Withers attempt to integrate the events of the period into more general studies. Recent research has revealed, however, more incidents of protest and more detail of these incidents than has hitherto been recorded. See Robertson, I.J.M., ‘The historical geography of popular protest in Highland Scotland, 1914–c1939’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Bristol, 1995).Google Scholar
