Governing the Highlands: The Place of Popular Protest in the Highlands of Scotland after 1918
This paper seeks to explore the relationship between agencies of government and crofting tenantry in the Highlands of Scotland, as manifested in events of popular protest after 1914. These events seem to have received little attention when compared to disturbance of earlier periods, which have been extensively documented, and the period after 1918 in particular has been under represented in the literature. Furthermore the actions of agencies of government were significantly different in this later period. Where before the Great War government actions were wholly reactive, this paper will demonstrate that during the war and after, the Board of Agriculture made significant attempts to be proactive in the face of incipient protest. Yet, conflict, and the resultant acts of protest, continued to be a characteristic element of social relations in the Highlands in the post-war period. This paper seeks to show that whilst the actions of the land-working population were of central significance, this conflict was not solely between the tenantry and landowners or agencies of government but was also within those various groupings. Consequently, it is argued that protest attests to a complex nexus of conflict on both regional and national levels.