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A Vulnerable Society:
The Western Highlands and Islands, c.1800-1846
Two Highland Societies
By the 1840s two broadly divergent social and economic systems had emerged in the Highland counties of Scotland. In the southern and eastern districts, which included central and eastern Inverness-shire, Easter Ross and the greater part of mainland Argyllshire, a type of social structure had developed which will be referred to throughout this volume as ‘farming society’.1 It had several characteristics which, though not equally uniform in all areas, served to differentiate the south and east from the far western mainland and the islands.2 As in most of the Lowlands, there had occurred a widespread consolidation of land between c.1780 and c.1840. The number of rent-paying tenants declined, holdings were enlarged and a greater proportion of the population than had been the case in the old order fell into a dependent position as farm servants, labourers, cottars and crofters. The extent of consolidation and its social effects varied between districts. In the coastal strip north of Inverness, large units of over 100 acres were general, whereas in southern Argyllshire and Highland Perthshire ‘family’-sized holdings of forty to sixty acres were often more common. Throughout all these areas, however, there was a general tendency towards the concentrated control of tenancies in the hands of a smaller number of men.3 In a group of four parishes in Argyll in the later 1830s, no more than one quarter of all families rented directly from the proprietor, while in the Easter Ross parish of Killearnan only five per cent of those engaged in agriculture were classified as ‘farmers’.4
Agrarian specialisation varied. Large pastoral farms existed alongside holdings where mixed agriculture was dominant.5 Along the east coast rim, arable cultivation was also to be found on a considerable scale. It followed, therefore, that in several districts within the region there was a continued demand for labour as both the area of cultivated land and productivity per acre increased within an unmechanised system of food production. Some of the labouring classes in certain localities were entirely landless. For example, fifty-four per cent of the employed population of the parish of Kilmartin in Argyll were either farm servants or labourers.6 The more common pattern, however, in central and eastern Inverness-shire and parts of Ross, was for farmers to draw their labour supply from a semi-landless class of crofters and cottars. These groups possessed small lots of land, but most primarily depended for a living on the work they could obtain in the neighbourhood from the larger farmers. In many coastal districts this pattern varied, with the produce of the small holding taking second place to the earnings from fishing as the prime source of subsistence.
This was a social system in which the decisive influence on the standard of life for most of the population was the demand for labour in the bigger holdings which specialised in arable or mixed husbandry and the health of the fishing industry along the north-east coast. While distress was not unknown and the labouring classes only achieved at best a modest standard of comfort, there was little experience here of the persistent levels of acute destitution which characterised the much poorer society to the west and north.
The relative resilience of the new social order was apparent in a number of ways. There was a diverse structure of cropping and food supply. The potato was certainly a prime element in rotation systems and in the diet of the smallholding and labouring classes. But in most districts grain was either as significant or even more important in the structure of production and consumption. In the parish of Nigg, according to the New Statistical Account, the value of the acreage in grain crops and potatoes was eighty-three per cent and seventeen per cent respectively; in Tain, eighty-nine per cent and eleven per cent; in Craignish, sixty per cent and forty per cent; in Strachur, sixty-eight per cent and thirty-two per cent.7 Again, though profound levels of poverty existed within the region, especially in such villages as Kingussie and Newtonmore, material standards in general were measurably higher than those of the Western Highlands.8 Food shortages were not unknown, yet the majority of the population did not live continuously close to the basic minimum of subsistence. The harvest failure of 1836-7 brought many in the Western Highlands and Islands to the brink of starvation. But there was much less need for destitution committees established during the crisis to come to the aid of the people of the central and eastern areas.9 The modest material improvements characteristic of much of the region were visibly demonstrated in the extensive construction of new houses built of timber, mortar, slates and glass.10
Above all this was a society where the majority no longer depended mainly on their own smallholding for survival. This is not to say that most people in all areas had become entirely detached from the land in the manner characteristic of so many Lowland regions. But the money economy was well developed. Cottars and crofters who worked for bigger farmers were partly paid in kind and cash. Fishermen sold their catch in the markets of the south. Pools of money income existed to provide a source of savings and something of an insurance against the worst economic or natural disasters. Perhaps the most telling indicator of the erosion of the old subsistence society was the vast increase in the importation of goods from the Lowland towns in the first half of the nineteenth century. The local manufacturers of cloth and even the production of shoes had virtually disappeared from many parishes in the farming region by the 1840s.11
These material changes were influenced by two main factors. Many localities, especially in eastern Inverness, Easter Ross and parts of southern Argyllshire were blessed with a relatively favourable natural endowment. The Highland massif is a great tableland which tilts slightly towards the east. This provides good drainage systems for the land surface of the eastern zone, affords protection against heavy rainfall and, through the great straths or river valleys which intersect the mountain range, facilitates communication with the economic heart of Scotland to the south. The climatic and topographical advantages of many parishes, at least in relation to the poor circumstances of the west, help to explain the early development of arable surpluses, larger holdings and the modest capital accumu...
