THE HIGHLAND ECONOMY, 1750–18501
| Published date | 01 February 1959 |
| Date | 01 February 1959 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1959.tb00100.x |
THE HIGHLAND ECONOMY, 1750-1850l
Opinion on the ‘Highland problem’
too
often falls into one
of
two
radically opposed camps.
To
some,
it,
like the poor, will always be
with us; to others, it is capable of fairly easy solution provided
certain appropriate administrative and economic remedies are applied.
Both groups err through failing to appreciate the essence of what
really is the
‘
Highland problem.’ In the first place the problem is not
only economic; the social environment of the Highlander is equally
relevant. Secondly, although some economic problems may perhaps
be successfully considered without knowledge
of
their historical
origins, this is certainly not
so
with the Highlands. Lack of know-
ledge of the history of Highland society can result only in facile and
futile economic policy for its future. The essence of the present
‘
Highland problem
’
is to be found only in the past. In helping many
towards such an appreciation, Mr. Gray’s book will be particularly
successful. Readers of the
Scottish
Journal
of
Pofitical Economy
have already encountered aspects of his work
on
this topic; now we
have
a
brilliant synthesis.
Mr. Gray is concerned with a century when two sets of ideas and
customs came into conflict in the Highlands.
On
the one hand were
those derived from the earlier society of the clan, when strategy rather
than economy dominated Highland
life.
Hence came the recognition
of the binding obligations of kinship and the attachment
of
the Gael
to the land.
On
the other hand were the new, primarily economic,
motives, acceptable in an industrial society but not
in
one ruled by
custom. The refusal
of
the Highlander
to
accept these,
to
allow his
conduct to be motivated by economic ambition, is not only an
his-
torical episode. It is also relevant to the present. But in the eight-
eenth century such an ideological clash would alone have rent
Highland society; its impact was worsened by the contemporaneous
population increase.
Mr. Gray analyses the response of the Highland economy to the
stimulus
of
the new motives, but, as is usual even today, the response
differed. In the south and in the east physical endowments were more
favourable
;
the arable holdings were larger and population did not
show the concentrated expansion of the north and west.
So
the land
was improved
:
there was
‘
solvency through reform.’ The north and
west, particularly to the west of the watershed, remained, then as
Malcolm
Gray,
The
Highland
Economy,
Edinburgh:
Oliver
&
Boyd, 1957.
25s.
59
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