Loch Treig, Lochaber, one of the first Highland lochs to be dammed as part of a hydro-electric scheme
Historians writing about the Great War emphasise that the date of the armistice, 11 November 1918, can be misleading. In many areas of Europe this date is not especially important and ‘aftershocks’ of the war continued until the mid-1920s. While events in the Scottish highlands were not of the same order as those in eastern Europe, this idea of seeing continuity between war and peace is helpful in trying to understand the ‘inter-war’ period. Thinking more specifically about the highlands, it is important not to indulge in exceptionalism. To see the experience of the region as distinctive, or unique, even in a Scottish context, is to neglect the ways in which its history interconnects with wider themes in Scottish and British history, not least the effects of the global economic depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Aftershock