Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora by Graeme Morton

Author:Graeme Morton [Morton, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, North America, Australia & New Zealand, Modern, 19th Century, World
ISBN: 9781000203752
Google: oA8HEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-10-28T01:39:21+00:00

Climatic destitution at the end of the nineteenth century

For those not affected by poor harvests, there was some level of stability through the 1860s and 1870s, with population pressure reduced slightly by lower levels of nuptiality.57 But instability came again in the 1880s with a fall in the price of meat and an international trade depression that reduced demand for temporary workers in the lowland towns and cities.58 The lasting economic effects of the severe winter of 1878/9 came from landlords facing new levels of competition from abroad, including wheat imported from America and refrigerated lamb and beef from New Zealand, Australia and America.59 This was also a period of heightened political instability in Highland Scotland. Declarations raised over the condition of the crofters took impetus from the agitation that secured the Irish Land Act (1881) and brought fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale to the tenant. As tensions spilled into violence, the crofters’ cause was promoted through the free press, with John Murdoch’s The Highlander the most incessant and effective voice.60 The first session of the Royal Commission into the conditions of the crofters and cottars, established by Gladstone to head off any further disturbances, began on 8 May 1883 at the Braes in Skye, where the previous year crofting families ’deforced’ the sheriff’s officer sent to enforce rent rises and eviction notices. Francis Napier, 10th Lord Napier of Merchistoun and 1st Baron Ettrick (1819–98) led the Commission, and Sir Kenneth S. Mackenzie, Donald Cameron, Charles Fraser-Mackintosh, Sheriff Alexander Nicolson and Professor Donald Mackinnon joined him at the first session.61 From examining how the region’s climate was used to explain the plight of the crofters and cottars, three lines of enquiry structured the evidence: the quality of the soil and growing conditions of the region, the supposed indolence of the people in response to the climate they inhabited, and the opportunities thought possible from growing crops under a colonial—primarily Canadian—climate.

In Gairloch there was much debate over who had previously paid, and who would now continue to pay, for the improvements that had been made to ease the consequences of low agricultural returns.62 Investment in harbours, bridges, drainage and fencing were all part of the response to the congestion and destitution, and each was a mitigation of the challenging topography and sea state that endured weather unconducive to producing adequate harvests or catches of fish. In the evidence presented to Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, the weather was deemed both character forming and fundamental to the work that went on. Crop failure was attributed—‘in my candid and decided opinion’—to worsening weather over recent years. The crop would not come to a good head because of the amount of moisture in the soil, and when it ripened the threat of storm damage was seen to be all too likely.63 This was not simply an argument that climatic conditions had not been sufficiently mitigated, but that the rules had changed because the climate had worsened and systems of farming previous used were now no longer capable of achieving sufficient returns.

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