Badenoch today is a landscape of empty glens and ruined settlements, but
it was not always so. This book examines the transformative events that
shaped the region's destiny: climate and market forces, hunger and
relief measures, sheep farms and sporting estates, agricultural
improvement and proprietorial greed, and the evolution of clanship.
Although this is an intensely localised study, the dramatic nature of
change is explored against the wider context of events not just across
the Highlands, but also within the British state and its global
empire.
Badenoch's journey moves from the relative prosperity of the Napoleonic
Wars into the terrible post-war destitution that devastated peasant,
tacksman and Duke of Gordon alike. Estate reform and 'improvement'
gradually brought a degree of economic and social stability, but
inevitably resulted in depopulation as people were forced off the land
to seek refuge in the impoverished 'planned villages' or to abandon
their Gaelic homeland for life in the Lowlands. For those with the
means, however, emigration provided lucrative opportunities unimaginable
at home.
Through extensive use of documentary evidence, much of it previously
unseen, David Taylor paints an intimate portrait of the historically
neglected region of Badenoch - one that provides a compelling new
perspective on Highland history.
