June Skinner Sawyers. Bearing the People Away. (Sydney, NS: 2013, Cape Breton University Press. Pg 317. ISBN:978-1-927492-59-8)

The Highland Clearances took place over a period of time, between the 1750s to the 1880s, with the worst episodes taking place between 1790 and 1855. Highland crofters were evicted from their lands to make way for a new kind of agricultural model; they were often forcibly removed from their ancestral lands by absentee land-owners, subjected to various kinds of abuse, and either relocated to substandard or unfamiliar lands, or forced to emigrate. The specific events of this removal are enumerated and discussed in the book, along with the historical, political, and cultural forces that drove them, the people involved, and the results. Rather than a narrative history of the Highland Clearances, the information contained in the book is presented as a resource and arranged accordingly. The bulk of the book is an historical dictionary, but there is also a chronology of major events in the history of the Highlands and Islands, an extensive list of references (28 pages of them), a period map of the Highlands that allows the reader to cross reference with the contemporary writings, and an index. Of particular interest to historians (and perhaps also to casual readers), is an appendix that includes samples of material from primary sources, such as court records, a notice of eviction, letters, newspaper and magazine reports, pamphlets, and contemporary song lyrics. The short two-page introduction addresses the attempts of some modern historians to downplay the events, and points out that more label it an example of what we would call “ethnic cleansing.” The text generally is instructive for anyone who wishes to understand some of the deep-rooted antipathies (on both sides) that are driving political events in Britain today, for just as interpersonal issues that have never been resolved continue to fester long after physical wounds have healed, ethnic and religious groups that share a country and a troubled history suffer from the effects of the unexamined events of their pasts. (Witness the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) in Scotland and the recent resounding defeat of the Labour Party in the Scottish cities and towns from which it sprang, and its traditional stronghold.) There are entries on the Lowland Clearances and the attitudes of Lowlanders toward the Highlanders (hint: “an inferior race”). Throughout the volume, the tone is even-handed and almost understated, making the information contained even more chilling when presented in prose of such restraint. Some entries are short and factual, while others are much longer. For example, the entry on Jacobite songs segues into a discussion of how Walter Scott and Robert Burns managed to idealize and romanticize the Highlands, and stir the interest of English society in a people who they had virtually tried to exterminate a few years before. The entries demonstrate the intersection of history, culture, and art. Entries on Canadian novelists Margaret Laurence, Hugh MacLennan, and Alistair MacLeod discuss how the events of the Clearances have reverberated down the generations and coloured the thinking and the work of some of the best of Canadian literature, writing from the perspective of the immigrant who is caught between two worlds, haunted by a great sense of loss and exclusion. That theme shows up in many parts of cultural life in Scotland, and spills over to Canada and the USA. Sawyers covers most of them with entries related to poetry (Mary [Mhairi Mhor nan Oran] MacPherson and Sorley MacLean); music (Runrig, Capercaillie, and Catherine Anne MacPhee); film (John McGrath); and design (Alexander McQueen). Sawyers’s entry on clan is extensive and serves to clarify for readers unfamiliar with the social and cultural background of the Highlands …