by John MacKenzie
Painting of an Arran family being ‘Cleared’, courtesy of the Sannox Centre, Arran
The Clearances, as most iScot readers will no doubt already be aware, took place during the 18th and 19th centuries and involved the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their homes in the Scottish Highlands. This removal from the land, which many families had worked for generations, led to large-scale emigration to the Scottish Lowlands and North America.