Eric Richards to take up visiting role in the Highlands

Prof. Eric Richards,  the internationally renowned expert on the Highland Clearances, will be moving to Dornoch to work with the University of the Highlands and Islands.  He has accepted a visiting Professorship with the University's Centre for History. His four-month visit to the east Sutherland town is being funded by a grant from the Carnegie Trust. 

Due to start in 2014, Professor Richard's time with the University will come shortly after the 200th anniversary of the Strath of Kildonan and Strathnaver Clearances which took place near Helmsdale from 1813. His visit should benefit both his own research and the local community as he hopes to use local archives, teach and supervise students and give talks to history societies and the public. 

Speaking about the visit, Professor Richards said: "A Centre for the study of History in a brand new University in the Highlands and Islands is a dream realised. The bicentenary of the northern Clearances coincides with the present regeneration of the region. I can't think of a better time to be visiting UHI at Dornoch, to recharge my own work on the Highlands and to be part of the exciting agenda of the Centre for History. And, as a migrant myself, and a historian of international migration, this will be an ideal historical laboratory. Being in such close proximity to Andrew Carnegie's old home gives the Centenary Professorship an added frisson."

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Have the Displaced become the Displacer?

There is alot of evidence to suggest that crofters evicted from their lands in both the Highlands and the Lowlands not only emigrated to Canada, Nova Scotia and Australia (forced or otherwise) but also migrated south into England to take up poor farm lands and small holdings that would otherwise not be farmed.

The abilities and skills of crofters to farm on the poorest of soils and climatic challenging areas of the highlands would stand them in good sted when farming on better arable conditions on the plains of Cumbria, Cheshire and Derbyshire. Census records show the increased development of Scots families appearing in Cheshire around 1840 onwards.

Scots names also frequently appear in the more industrialised areas of the Northwest of England, Manchester, Liverpool where industrial development and employment would attract migration towards these areas in the search of work.

Migration within Scotland would have taken crofters towards the new Conurbations of Glasgow and New Lanark where Robert Owen (1771-1858) were cultivating Mills and industrial areas that would have provided both employment and social housing.