From Chiefs to Landlords

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 and 18th centuries, it shows how the character and ideology of clans and chiefdoms are inextricably part of the twin problems of sociopolitical control and of production. Shifting the emphasis away from depictions of Highland society as lawless and disorganized, this is a welcome antidote to the many romanticized views of pre-Clearance society.

Emeritus Professor Robert A. Dodgshon was formerly Gregynog Professor of Geography and Director of the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University). His previous books include Land and Society in Early Scotland (1981), From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493-1820 (1998) and The Age of the Clans (2002).