Edinburgh Lectures 2007

The modern rural landscape of trim fields, separate farm steadings and country villages was formed over two centuries ago during the Age of Improvement. This was a time of revolutionary change: many thousands lost land, entire communities were uprooted and the entire social structure of the countryside transformed forever. Yet these 'Lowland Clearances' are forgotten. Unlike the Highland Clearances, there was no enduring folk memory of dispossession and the Lowland trauma has also no resonance in modern Scottish culture .Using a wide range of archival sources, Scotland's leading historian, Tom Devine, will attempt to explain why this was and in the process try to resolve one of the most intriguing puzzles in the nation's history.

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