As the issue of overpopulation loomed amidst the potato blight, landlords saw eviction and emigration as a necessity in order to protect their estates. They were able to use their power to manipulate the Highlanders and force them off their lands. Though it can be argued that the people in the Highlands may have left the region to seek a more profitable, stable life elsewhere despite the clearances, the clearances surely exacerbated the imbalance between the population, land, and resources, and led to economic and even cultural changes across the Highlands.
Example: the Sutherland Clearances
One of the most well documented and controversial examples can be found with the Sutherland Clearances in the far north of Scotland. Removal of tenants on the Sutherland estate began towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Lady Sutherland was just a child and others managed her estate for her. During this time period, some families emigrated and others intended to move to planned coastal villages to seek other employment opportunities with the assistance of the Sutherland estate. However, this assistance did not prove fruitful as the Sutherland estate did not have enough money to build these fishing villages (Eric Richards, Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances, 1999). When Lady Sutherland married George Granville Leveson-Gower, the 1st Duke of Sutherland, in 1785, the estate came into money and debts began to be paid off. Improvements were made on the estate, though restructuring (involving the removal of tenants) had already begun. Lady Sutherland and her advisors, concerned about the potato famine and overpopulation, were encouraged by agricultural changes involving sheep — thus catapulting the estate into clearances for years to come (Eric Richards, The Leviathan of Wealth, 2013).
The Sutherland Clearances gradually became more and more dysfunctional, especially in the hands of Patrick Sellar, a key advisor to Lady Sutherland. Evicted tenants grew resentful and people began to riot and protest. As described by James Hunter in Set Adrift Upon the World (2015), when the evictions occurred, homes were sometimes burned to the ground so occupants could not come back to reclaim what was theirs. These houses were made out of materials that caught fire quickly and sometimes the flames would leap from house to house, causing massive destruction: