Editing History of Scotland (section)

===Collapse of the clan system===
{{main|Scottish clan#Collapse of the clan system}}

[[File:Runrigs - geograph.org.uk - 308174.jpg|thumb|The remains of old run rig strips beside Loch Eynort, Isle of Skye. Run rig was the pre-clearance method of arable farming before agricultural improvements were introduced.]]
The clan system of the Highlands and Islands had been seen as a challenge to the rulers of Scotland from before the 17th century. [[James VI and I|James VI's]] various measures to exert control included the [[Statutes of Iona]], an attempt to force clan leaders to become integrated into the rest of Scottish society. This started a slow process of change which, by the second half of the 18th century, saw clan chiefs start to think of themselves as commercial landlords, rather than as patriarchs of their people. To their tenants, initially this meant that monetary rents replaced those paid in kind. Later, rent increases became common.<ref name="Devine 1994">{{Cite book |last=Devine |first=Tom M. |title=Clanship to Crofters' War: The social transformation of the Scottish Highlands |date=1994 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-0-7190-9076-9 |edition=2013 |ol=26826862M |author-link=Tom Devine}}</ref>{{Rp|11–17}} In the 1710s the Dukes of Argyll started putting leases of some of their land up for auction; by 1737 this was done across the Argyll property. This commercial attitude replaced the principle of ''{{Lang|gd|dùthchas}}'', which included the obligation on clan chiefs to provide land for clan members. The shift of this attitude slowly spread through the Highland elite (but not among their tenants).{{R|Devine 1994|p=41}} 

As clan chiefs became more integrated into Scottish and British society, many of them built up large debts. It became easier to borrow against the security of a Highland estate from the 1770s onwards. As the lenders became predominantly people and organisations outside the Highlands, there was a greater willingness to foreclose if the borrower defaulted. Combined with an astounding level of financial incompetence among the Highland elite, this ultimately forced the sale of the estates of many Highland landed families over the period 1770–1850. (The greatest number of sales of whole estates was toward the end of this period.)<ref name="Dodgshon">{{Cite book |last=Dodgshon |first=Robert A. |title=From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493–1820 |date=1998 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=0-7486-1034-0 |location=Edinburgh}}</ref>{{Rp|105–107}}{{R|Devine 1994|pp=1–17}}{{R|Devine 2018|p=37-46, 65-73, 131-132}}

The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 gave a final period of importance to the ability of Highland clans to raise bodies of fighting men at short notice. With the defeat at Culloden, any enthusiasm for continued warfare disappeared and clan leaders returned to their transition to being commercial landlords. This was arguably accelerated by some of the punitive laws enacted after the rebellion.<ref>Stephen Conway, ''War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland by Stephen Conway'' (2006), p. 139.</ref> These included the [[Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746]] ([[20 Geo. 2]]. c. 43), which removed judicial roles from clan chiefs and gave them to the Scottish law courts. [[T. M. Devine]] warns against seeing a clear cause and effect relationship between the post-Culloden legislation and the collapse of clanship. He questions the basic effectiveness of the measures, quoting [[W. A. Speck]] who ascribes the pacification of the area more to "a disinclination to rebel than to the government's repressive measures." Devine points out that social change in Gaeldom did not pick up until the 1760s and 1770s, as this coincided with the increased market pressures from the industrialising and urbanising Lowlands.{{R|Devine 1994|p=30-31}}

The change of clan leaders from patriarchs of their people to commercial landowners gave rise to the first phase of the [[Highland clearances]], with many tenant farmers being evicted and resettled in crofting communities.

In 1846 the [[Highland potato famine]] struck the crofting communities of the North and West Highlands. By 1850 the charitable relief effort was wound up, despite the continuing crop failure, and landlords, charities and the government resorted to encouraging emigration. The overall result was that almost 11,000 people were provided with "assisted passages" by their landlords between 1846 and 1856, with the greatest number travelling in 1851. A further 5,000 emigrated to Australia, through the [[Highland and Island Emigration Society]]. To this should be added an unknown, but significant number, who paid their own fares to emigrate, and a further unknown number assisted by the [[Colonial Land and Emigration Commission]].<ref name="Devine 1995">{{Cite book |last=Devine |first=Tom M. |title=The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century |date=1995 |publisher=Birlinn Limited |isbn=1-904-60742-X |location=Edinburgh |ol=30548121M |author-link=Tom Devine}}</ref>{{Rp|201–202,207,268}}{{R|Devine 2018|p=320}}{{R|Devine 1994|p=187-189}} This was out of a famine-affected population of about 200,000 people. Many of those who remained became even more involved in temporary migration for work in the Lowlands, both out of necessity during the famine and having become accustomed to working away by the time the famine ceased. Much longer periods were spent out of the Highlands – often for much of the year or more. One illustration of this migrant working was the estimated 30,000 men and women from the far west of the Gaelic speaking area who travelled to the east coast fishing ports for the herring fishing season – providing labour in an industry that grew by 60% between 1854 and 1884.{{R|Devine 2018|p=335-336}}

The clearances were followed by a period of even greater emigration from the Highlands, which continued (with a brief lull for the First World War) up to the start of the [[Great Depression]].{{R|Devine 2018|p=2}}