Edinburgh University Press could hardly have chosen a better subject, nor a more appropriate author, to launch its Debates and Documents in Scottish History series. To say that the Highland Clearances have been the subject of much debate is clearly a huge understatement, their place in the popular national imagination, even national identity, underlined by one of the earliest debates in the reconvened Scottish Parliament, which in September 2000 voted to “express regret” for “the occurrence of the Highland Clearances.” It is also true to say that, from the 1820s onward, the Clearances have generated as much heat and smoke as light, featuring highly politicized and polemical writing on both sides of the “Improvement” debate. As Eric Richards notes, “The ‘Clearances' became a proxy for a much wider question about the fate of the Highlands in general, of the entire Gaelic culture and language which seemed to go into steep decline at the time of the evictions” (7).

The cover of Debating the Highland Clearances is in many ways an obvious statement of intent—a striking woodcut that moves away from the hackneyed images of Faed and Landseer and suggests a modern approach to a complex and controversial topic. Certainly, no better author could have been chosen to tackle this subject—Richards has been the doyen of Clearance scholars since the 1970s. His back catalog includes pioneering work on the Sutherland estate, on Patrick Sellar, and on the two-volume History of the Highland Clearances (1982 and 1985), which remains unsurpassed in terms of content and analytical depth.

Following the aims of this particular series, Part I discusses the Clearances in general terms and sets these events in historical and historiographical context. The initial chapter not only charts the development of a debate over the Clearances in pamphlets and the press but also makes the reader aware of various sources that can be used to research the subject. Different types of written source—from Marx and Sismondi to the Napier Commission—are highlighted, as is relevant criticism of these texts (“Marx never set foot in the Highlands,” Richards notes, “and wrote mainly from a numbered seat in the British Museum” [17]). Importantly, this demonstrates quite clearly how the Clearances became a favorite subject among polemicists of various persuasions and how lines between myth and reality could become blurred. This, in turn, should increase the sensitivity of the reader/student to similar issues in historical sources more generally. The author then turns his attention to the twentieth century, noting the contributions of various types of historians to the Clearances debate and examining the portrayal of the Clearances in museums, monuments, and in political life. An interesting aside is the point made about the stretching of the definition of “Clearance,” which has expanded both temporally and spatially in the writing of the past two decades.

To claim merely that chapters 2–5 then go on to give an overview, or narrative, of the Clearance period in Highland Scotland would be to underestimate the value of this work. Drawing on more than three decades of original research, Richards is uniquely placed to identify the main events and overall themes that made up this period. As anyone familiar with his earlier work would expect, Richards writes with great clarity, and in the style of this series he inserts throughout the text references to the source material found in Part II. In describing the pre-Clearance era, he examines demographic patterns and social and economic changes, and he also notes regional variations within the broad “Highland” region. In doing this, he challenges the rosy view of pre-Clearance life often found in popular and influential novels, such as Consider the Lillies or Butcher's Broom, and ensures that the Sutherland case—which looms large in the popular imagination—is not taken as the sole paradigm for Clearance. Moving into the “Clearance” period, Richards continues to present complex issues in a lucid and accessible manner, without in any way glossing over these inherent complexities. Chapter 4 examines the reaction of the Highlanders to these socioeconomic changes and is based on Richards's earlier writing on patterns of resistance to Clearance, which in the 1970s, alongside historians such as James Hunter, helped to challenge the preconception of a docile and cowed tenantry.

Having set the documentary and historiographical context, Richards proceeds in Part II to present the reader with a selection of documents related to the Clearances. These documents have been chosen not only to highlight specific “set-piece” events—although material relating to Sutherland, Sollas, Leckmelm, and other infamous clearances is, naturally, included—but also to demonstrate the sheer breadth and often contradictory nature of the available evidence. The writing of interested outsiders—Adam Smith, Samuel Johnson, and Karl Marx—is presented alongside emigrant letters, translations of contemporary Gaelic verse, newspaper editorials, estate papers, and parliamentary committee reports. All of the sources are cross-referenced for use with Part I, but it is all presented chronologically and can used as a basic sourcebook in its own right.

Overall, this is as good an introduction to the Clearances as has been written and should become compulsory reading in courses dealing with general rural or social history, as much as in geographically focused classes on British or Scottish history. It not only takes its readers on a historical journey, it also engages with them, asks questions of them (including stimulus questions and suggestions for small-scale research projects), and therefore deepens their understanding of the subject. An inherently politicized subject is tackled in an extremely balanced way, and this book should be used as a model for those authors and publishers who wish to present controversial topics as a means of shedding light on broader historical questions.