Land and the “Crofter Question” in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

The scale and rapidity of the outbreak of land agitation in the Scottish Highlands in the 1880s took many onlookers by surprise, reflecting a general perception in Britain of the Highlanders as loyal and, in the decades following the suppression of the Jacobites, 'pacified'. This article sets the events of 1880s into a longer-term context, and examines the balance between 'internal' and 'external' forces on the development of the 'Crofters' War'.