Lowland Clearances

The Lowland Clearances in Scotland are one of the results of the British Agricultural Revolution, which changes the traditional system of agriculture which has existed in Lowland Scotland for hundreds of years.

Hundreds of thousands of cottars and tenant farmers from the southern counties of Scotland are forcibly moved from the farms and small holdings they had occupied.Many small settlements are torn down, their occupants forced to new, purpose-built villages.

John Cockburn of Ormiston, for example, displaces cottars to the outskirts of his new ranch.

Other displaced farmers move to the new industrial centers of Glasgow, Edinburgh and northern England.As a result, between 1760 and 1830, many tens of thousands of Lowland Scots emigrate, taking advantage of the many new opportunities offered in Canada and the United States after 1776 to own and farm their own land.

Others choose to remain, either by choice, out of an inability to secure transatlantic passage, or because of obligations in Scotland.

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