The Highland Clearances Seminar Paper PDF

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Seminar paper and presentation on "In what ways was biblical evidence deployed to justify the cause of the crofting community in the era of the Highland Land Wars "...

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The Highland Clearances Seminar Paper Seminar 3 In what ways was biblical evidence deployed to justify the cause of the crofting community in the era of the Highland Land Wars

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With the great literary achievement of the completion of the Bible into Gaelic came a period of new religious enthusiasm1. Around the same time, those who remained in the Highlands around the era of the Clearances experienced a resurgence of Highland spirit. This caused the existing tensions and frustrations among the people to result in ‘land agitation’ or the Land Wars, as they campaigned for 1 Donald Meek, ‘The Bible and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century Highlands’, in (ed.) Wright, DF, The Bible in Scottish Life and Literature (Edinburgh, 1988), p179

crofters’ rights2. The bible almost became a tool to justify their actions during the Era of the land wars, as the crofting community began using the word of God to support their cause. Two such examples that deploy biblical evidence as justification are the works of Dugald Campbell in “The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands” and John Murdoch’s Gaelic pamphlet of 1833, “The Highlanders Jubilee: The Land Question answered from the Bible”. Both sources describe in detail the people’s sufferings and the great injustices they have endured. Adopting various approaches, they incorporate messages and passages from the bible and relate them to the social, economic and political changes that were occurring during this period of the Highland Clearances. John Murdoch was the editor of the Highlander newspaper and produced this anthology of biblical passages and texts which could be used to encourage the people to fight against their opponents: the landlords3. Murdoch’s use of religious arguments for land law reform and repeated contempt of the clergy for their ambivalence resulted in a familiar ideological framework of land reform whilst also inspiring a number of ministers into supporting the community’s cause 4. His objective was to ‘awaken’ among crofters ‘an intelligent and vigorous public spirit and afford opportunity and encouragement to the inhabitants of the Highlands to be heard on their own behalf’ 5 Murdoch’s clear over-riding ambition was to rid the crofters’ of this ‘universal nightmare of the factor and the landlord’6 and free ‘a whole people out of a bondage as hard as that of the Hebrews of Egypt'7.

In Murdoch’s pamphlet there are a number of emergent themes which aim to teach the land question to the Gaels. He stresses the importance of God’s Word and Law, and his ultimate ownership of land given to the people to produce food. In the Gaelic version of the pamphlet (p. 3), Murdoch’s words translate as‘...it is as if Isaiah were writing the history of Scotland in advance.' showing his belief in the ongoing validity of the Bible. Further, he stresses the relevance of the Mosaic Laws to the contemporary Highlands, comparing the provision of land to Abraham to the giving of the Highlands to the Highlanders by God. Murdoch believes the land is to be shared by all, equally distributed among families8. And so by publishing this pamphlet he probably intended to provide the crofters with a systematic Biblical basis for their claims against the landlords9.

2 I.M.M Macphail, The Crofters’ War (Inverness: Acair, 1989), p1-10 3 Meek, The Bible and Social Changes in the Nineteenth Century Highlands, p186 4 A.W, MacColl, Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843-1893 (Edinburgh, 2006), p160-161 5 James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2000), p185-6 6 James Hunter, For the People’s Cause: from the writings of John Murdoch (Edinburgh, 1986), p30 7 Ibid, p159 8 John Murdoch, The Land Question answered from the Bible (Glasgow, 1883) 9 Donald Meek, ‘ “The Land Question answered from the Bible”: The Land Issue and the Development of a Highland Theology of Liberation’, The Scottish Geographical Magazine 103, No. 2 (1987), 84-89

Dugald Campbell, a bailie of Greenock, was the author of the Land Question, which drew comparisons between the Highland people and the Jews. He mentions the change in the laws of land holding by authority of the crown and the chiefs which have caused a series of changes, which have “for the most part been disastrous to the Highland peasantry” 10. He draws attention to the high rents that the tenants were expected to pay and their indignation as they feel they have as much claim to the land they have lived and worked on for generations. Campbell likens the Celtic land tenure to that of the Hebrew laws in the bible and describes the Highlanders situation as somewhat comparable to the poorer Jews.

The Bible provided a model by which the Highlanders could interpret their history, offering a guide of how to respond to the ongoing changes within their society. They were able to make comparisons between their own struggles and the accounts of God’s people in the Old and New Testament. They were able to relate spiritually, socially and politically, especially in terms of the land question 11. Some compared the contemporary Highlands under the allegedly tyrannically rule of the landlords to Egypt, which was the starting-point of the Exodus12. The Mosaic land laws legislated that the land belonged to the tribe as a whole and was to be divided between families who were to cultivate it, keep livestock and live on it. This was similar to the customs of the Highland people prior to the Clearances 13.

Biblical justification for land reform was employed in various situations, for example in speeches at an open-air meeting in January 1885, where estate factors were compared to Heman, the persecutor of the Jews in the book of Esther14. Reverend Donald MacCalum was another key figure described as “the foremost land campaigner among the clergy”15. He presented the landlords in the role of Pharaoh and the crofters’ as the oppressed children of Israel, where the only form of restitution was the redistribution of the land to the people16. This led to the crofters’ belief that the bible sanctioned the idea that the landlords had usurped their land and confirmed their claim to it17. Their main opposition was identified as the factors and the landlords who had caused this injustice.

It can be see that it is no exaggeration to say that the Bible played a key role in justifying the movement for the crofters’ rights and its culmination in the passing of the Crofter’s Holdings Act of 188618. The Highland people truly believed in their claim to the land of their predecessors and viewed 10 Dugald Campbell, The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands (Paisley, 1884), p12 11 Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, p148 12 Meek, “The Land Question answered from the Bible”, 85 13 Campbell, The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands, p11 14 MacColl, Land, Faith and the Crofting Community, p162 15 Douglas Andsdell, ‘The 1843 Disruption of the church of Scotland in the Isle of Lewis’ in the People of Great Faith, The Highland Church 1690-1900 (Stornoway, 1998), p152 16 MacColl, Land, Faith and the Crofting Community, p169 17 Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, p222 18 Meek, The Bible and Social Changes in the Nineteenth Century Highlands, p186

the treatment they were receiving by the landlords and factors “as gross and cruel injustice” 19. When the Highland Land Law Reform Association was established in 1886 the membership card bore a biblical quote from Ecclesiastes 5:9: 'The profit of the earth is for all', clearly demonstrating the religious aspect associated with the campaign for land rights. It also displayed the motto 'Is treise tuath na tighearna' which translates to 'A tenantry is mightier than a lord', affirming their belief that as a collective they had more right than the landlords to their land20. Although religion was not the only justification the crofting communities adopted to support their cause during the Land Wars, the works of Campbell and Murdoch undoubtedly contributed considerably to the religious enthusiasm the crofters displayed after 188021.

Bibliography 19 Campbell, The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands, p13 20 Meek, ‘ “The Land Question answered from the Bible”, 84 21 Ibid, 85

Andsdell, Douglas, ‘The 1843 Disruption of the church of Scotland in the Isle of Lewis’ in the People of Great Faith, The Highland Church 1690-1900 (Stornoway, 1998)

Campbell, Dugald, The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands (Paisley, 1884)

Hunter, James For the People’s Cause: from the writings of John Murdoch (Edinburgh, 1986) Hunter, James, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2000) MacColl, A.W., Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843-1893 (Edinburgh, 2006)

Macphail, I.MM.,The Crofters’ War (Inverness: Acair, 1989)

Meek, Donald, ‘The Bible and Social Change in the Nineteenth Century Highlands’, in (ed.) Wright, DF, The Bible in Scottish Life and Literature (Edinburgh, 1988) Meek, Donald,’“The Land Question answered from the Bible”: The Land Issue and the Development of a Highland Theology of Liberation’, The Scottish Geographical Magazine 103, No. 2 (1987)

Murdoch, John, The Land Question answered from the Bible (Glasgow, 1883)...