Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances

By James Hunter

Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year
They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were - thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned.
Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode, involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. What was done in the course of that episode was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman. Most of those involved wrote a great deal about their actions, intentions and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but they are by no means irrecoverable.
In this book James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His researches took him to archives in Scotland, England and Canada, to the now deserted straths of Sutherland, to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people's struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster which includes experiences which have not featured in any previous such account.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Origin
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9780857902627

James Hunter

James Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands. He has written extensively about the north of Scotland and about the region’s worldwide diaspora. In the course of a varied career Hunter has been, among other things, director of the Scottish Crofters Union, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and an award-winning journalist. His book Set Adrift upon the World (Birlinn 2016) was Saltire History Book of the Year in 2016.

Reviews for Set Adrift Upon the World

[mbmackay · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A lengthy book about the land clearances by the Duchess of Sutherland in the early 19th century.The arrangement of the book is mildly irritating, lacking a chronological or other organisational basis, by the end, the author successfully conveys the history, causes and impacts of the clearances in the Sutherland domain. The author focuses on small individuals and how lives were adversely impacted by the imperious actions of the great landowners. While the content seems to be impeccably researched, and the author tries hard to be impartial, there is no doubting his personal judgement on the actions of the Duchess and her family and staff. It's a dark period in Scottish history, and the passage of time hardly diminishes the cruelty of the powerful.