A survey of how Highland society organised its farming communities, exploited its resource base and interacted with its environment from prehistory to 1914
In this highly original book, Robert Dodgshon suggests that in order to understand change we first need to understand the geographical circumstances under which society finds change difficult. Secondly, he shows how society's use of space is a powerful source of this inertia, and the different sources of geographical inertia are explored. By examining this inertia we learn that society has long steered change around such spaces. This is an important and innovative book and will be of interest to a range of geographers, historians and social theorists.
This new approach to Highland history before the Clearances draws attention to little-studied yet important economic and social processes within the Highland clan system and argues that we should consider the problems of traditional Highland society, economy and environment together. Exploring how the different aspects of the clan system - chiefs and kinsmen, landlords and tenants, farming systems, production strategies and marketing - changed between the 16th-18th centuries, it shows how the character and ideology of clans and chiefdoms are inextricably part of the twin problems of socio-political control and food production. Shifting the emphasis away from depictions of Highland society as lawless and disorganised, this is a welcome antidote to the many romanticised views of pre-Clearance society. Prize Winner! Honorable Mention - Frank Watson Scottish History Prize 1999
This monograph explores traditional farming communities in French-speaking areas of the western Alps for the period 1500-1914 and how they endured in such an environment despite the many problems and risks which it posed for their subsistence and welfare. Using an extensive amount of archival material drawn from the relevant regional archives, the book presents a great deal of fresh data. Its central theme is how such communities responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by the highly variegated environment of their setting. The view taken is that their strategies of exploitation stressed diversity and flexibility, mapping the highly varied ecologies and resource opportunities of their setting into these strategies by spreading livelihood and risk as widely as possible. This interpretative framework is developed across all the book's themes: landholding, arable and livestock sectors, use of the commons and, finally, how communities coped with climate-based risks. The book appeals to geographers, historians, environmental scientists and everyone interested in traditional farming communities and their long-term challenges.
This is the first overview of Highland society ever to be written which covers the period from the rise of Somerled to the first clearances. The period has been chosen as one of considerably continuity and the book deals with four main themes – the changing political relationships and tensions within the region, the clans, their composition, alliances, strongholds and patterns of display the changes in settlement over time, and the economy of the Highlands and Islands. Most books on the Highlands concentrate either on crofting or on high politics, but without a full understanding of the dynamics of society, much of Highland history is difficult to comprehend. This book is not a dry economic narrative, but a lavishly illustrated story of a society in many ways unique in Europe, a story of feasting in great halls such as Dunvegan, of the galley fleets of the great lords, of strange pagan survivals in ritual and belief, and of a magnificent oral tradition. This is both a new and exciting view of a society too often dismissed either as a backward relic of the past or combed through for similarities with Scotland south of the Highland line.
This monograph explores traditional farming communities in French-speaking areas of the western Alps for the period 1500-1914 and how they endured in such an environment despite the many problems and risks which it posed for their subsistence and welfare. Using an extensive amount of archival material drawn from the relevant regional archives, the book presents a great deal of fresh data. Its central theme is how such communities responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by the highly variegated environment of their setting. The view taken is that their strategies of exploitation stressed diversity and flexibility, mapping the highly varied ecologies and resource opportunities of their setting into these strategies by spreading livelihood and risk as widely as possible. This interpretative framework is developed across all the book's themes: landholding, arable and livestock sectors, use of the commons and, finally, how communities coped with climate-based risks. The book appeals to geographers, historians, environmental scientists and everyone interested in traditional farming communities and their long-term challenges.
A survey of how Highland society organised its farming communities, exploited its resource base and interacted with its environment from prehistory to 1914There has long been a view that the farming communities to be found in the Highlands prior to the Clearances were archaic forms. The way in which they were organised, the way in which they farmed the land and the technologies which they employed were all seen as taking shape during prehistory and then surviving relatively unchanged. Such a view first emerged first during the late nineteenth century and found repeated expression through a number of studies thereafter. However, its entrenchment in the literature was despite the fact that many ongoing studies have highlighted aspects of how the region changed from prehistory onwards. This study confronts this conflict over the question of continuity/discontinuity debate through an analysis of the cultural landscape. Starting with prehistory, it examines the way in which the farming community was organised: its institutional basis, its strategies of resource use and how these impacted on landscape, and the way in which it interacted with the challenges of its environment. It carries these themes forward through the medieval and early modern periods, rounding off the discussion with a substantive review of the gradual spread of commercial sheep farming and the emergence of the crofting townships over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout, it draws out what changed and what was carried forward from each period so that we have a better understanding of the region's dynamic history, as opposed to the ahistorical views that inevitably flow from a stress on cultural inertia. Key Features:The book provides a one-stop text for the long-term history of the Highland countryside, one nuanced in ways that address topical themes like landscape and environmental change.It synthesises a great deal of work on the Highland farming community during the medieval and early modern periods in terms of its institutional organisation, resource exploitation, landscape impacts and interactions with environment so as to produce an overall review from prehistory down to 1914. Introduces new ideas and arguments that have not been treated or previewed in other published work, such as in chapter 6.Provides the most substantive review of the continuity/discontinuity debate in the Highland landscape currently available
This monograph explores traditional farming communities in French-speaking areas of the western Alps for the period 1500-1914 and how they endured in such an environment despite the many problems and risks which it posed for their subsistence and welfare. Using an extensive amount of archival material drawn from the relevant regional archives, the book presents a great deal of fresh data. Its central theme is how such communities responded to the opportunities and challenges presented by the highly variegated environment of their setting. The view taken is that their strategies of exploitation stressed diversity and flexibility, mapping the highly varied ecologies and resource opportunities of their setting into these strategies by spreading livelihood and risk as widely as possible. This interpretative framework is developed across all the book's themes: landholding, arable and livestock sectors, use of the commons and, finally, how communities coped with climate-based risks. The book appeals to geographers, historians, environmental scientists and everyone interested in traditional farming communities and their long-term challenges.
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