The Highland Clearances - John Prebble

A detailed and dramatic account of  about 100 years of Highland Clearances.  The book covers them by both date and region.  It mentions many of the main characters, (who are mostly landlords and their agents as there were very few notable people who raised their voice against the clearances; it was mostly the little nameless people who fought their own evictions).  There is some attention to the economic background of the Clearances and the changing situation of the large clan chiefs/landowners, but by and large the landowners, both Scottish and English, are portrayed as greedy and heartless - which is a fair portrayal when you start considering the details and human experience of the Clearances.

This book raises some interesting larger issues.

First, the Clearances seem to have occurred right at a time when modern capitalism was taking shape in England.  One of the important ground rules was around ownership of resources whatever they might be.  The owner of a property was free to do what he pleased with it, regardless of its effect on society at large and those immediately around him.  I suspect this is the first naked formulation of man as a stand-alone being, separate and independent of the social context in which he lives.  He is neither owed nothing nor owes anything - except of course as dictated by the Law, which you clearly see here gamed for the owners benefit.  An excellent example of how Law and morality, or even human decency, can be diametrically opposed to each other.
Interestingly, one of the critics of the Clearances at the time was Swiss, and he noted how the legal system in Switzerland would never allow such rampant disregard for social fall-out by owners and  holders of large capital.  Their legal system recognized some kind of mutual relationship between peasants and landowners.

You also see the ancient link between organized religion and power, with local ministers and priests preaching submission to the Law above all even in the face of their personal experience of the misery the Clearances caused.  But this is an old story common to many cultures.

I wonder if you can also see this Clearance experience as a first trial run of colonialism that later spread throughout the British Empire and other European powers' holding.   Perhaps Ireland was even earlier - I will have to read up on it.  The Clearances as a model.  If this is the case, then you can see what a strong influence early English capitalism had on shaping the western capitalist model that has dominated.

There is also the issue of clashes of world views.  The Highlands lived in a premodern capitalist society where the main cultural values were family and clan reputation, relationship with the ancestral land, and a net of stories and histories in which the present nestles (not to say that people actually lived that way - this was life's backdrop, backstage scenery against which life was played).  After Culloden, the Scottish nobility encountered an English elite where money, wealth and consumption had already become the paramount social values, and where the earlier worldview had become a source for romantic dreaming and fantasy escapism (ie. Sir Walter Scott).

Also to note that the Highland people were essentially a mountain people and in some ways there struggle is similar to what has gone on, and still goes on, in the Caucasus with those mountain peoples.  The Caucasus people have also maintained forgotten or marginalized languages, and kept those values of a tribal warrior society - valour, honour, attachment to the land.

Another interesting question - how historical, place-centred, story driven identity is transformed into a personal mythology that functions as a form of entertainment and self-aggrandizement grafted onto an essentially consumerist, essentially hollow personal identity that has no awareness of the past and dreams only of future riches and material goods.

Interesting quote:

"The Highlander's soul lives in the clan and family traditions of the past, the legends of the ingle, the songs of the bards.  The master-idea of the English mind - the idea of Business - has not dawned on this soul, has not developed its peculiar virtues in his character.  He is loyal but not punctual, honest but not systematic.  The iron genius of economical improvements he know not and heeds not."

                          - from John Roberston, journalist, 1840s

This concept of economic improvement, increasing the value of the land and its products but with total disregard for the people who actually live on the land - rather like GDP growth and its relation to eating and paying ones bills; the two are not necessarily related.  Depends on who's at the receiving end of the "improvements".

Another peculiar parallel is to the way the Native People were treated in Canada and the U.S.  Their land was considered unused and, though communally held, seen as owned by no one.  They were cleared from their land and left in squalid conditions.  They too came from  culture and worldview that was considered worthless, inferior and in need of 'improvement".  The real irony is that the Scottish immigrants (among others) essentially reenacted the Clearances but now as the new landlords.

The same parallels exist to the Palestinian/Israeli situation.

What if this is a trope of history, or at least modern history in the capitalist era?  When capitalism and consumerism meet older societies and cultural groups with historical, less material values, the older society is destined to be marginalized, vilified, dispossessed and dispersed or destroyed (and then romanticized, as what has happened to Native and Highland culture - OK, the Israelis have a way to go here...).

Many and Many A Year Ago - Selçuk Altun

Similar to his other books - convoluted, complex mystery plot line; one of the main characters is a series of cities in Turkey (also South America), broadening out from Istanbul.  For me though, this book is a bit over the top.  They mystery is too convoluted to the point where you lose interest and stop trying to follow it.  It is as if the impulse to present places takes over as the driver of the story, and the plot line loses cohesion as it is bounced from one locale to another. Least favourite book so far...

Les Écossais: The Pioneer Scots of Lower Canada 1763-1855 - Lucille H. Campey

Some interesting chapters on settlement around Montreal, Eastern Ontario, and also around Scotstown.  Almost nothing on the area around Richmond.  I suspect Richmond area was settled by a mix of immigrants:  Loyalists, English, Irish and Scottish.  Perhaps they all become intermingled and lost their sense of separate identities.  The most documented area seems to be the area around Scotstown-Megantic, where most of the settlers seem to have come from the outer Hebrides, in particular the isle of Lewis.  These more homogeneous communities seem to have kept up their oral traditions and history better than the mixed communities; even speaking Gaelic into the mid-20th century.

This books again reminds why many of the Scots immigrants perhaps did not keep up their Scots links, as they were mostly unwilling emigrants forced off their land and betrayed by the local chieftains, power elites and landowners.  The Scotstown communities were not so much hanging onto   a broader Scottish identity as continuing local transplanted communities tied to place of origin.

There are a lot of shipping lists with dates and ports of departure.  One thing I can surmise is that my McLean ancestors probably sailed from Greenock, the closest large shipping port to Argyll.

Les braises - Sandor Marai

Un écrivain hongrois du début du 20e siècle, récemment redécouvert il paraît.  Un roman qui explore l'amitié, l'amour et le trahison.  Tout se passe un après midi et surtout une longue nuit où deux anciens amis se retrouvent après une quarantaine d'années.  Il n'y a pas d'action; le livre plus ou moins entier consiste de leur conversation autour de la table et au long de la nuit dans le salon.  Plus un monologue qu'une vraie conversation.   C'est subtile, et c'est surprenant comment l'auteur peut faire marcher son manège aussi bien qu'il ne le fasse.  Mais je dois avouer que pour moi, c'était un peu lent, et des fois j'ai sauté des paragraphes, peut-être même des pages...
C'est un peu démodé comme livre - les grandes valeurs abstraites dont ils discutent n'ont plus de sens vraiment de nos jours.  Au fait, plutôt qu'un roman du début du 20e siècle, c'est un roman de la fin du 19e siècle.  Il paraît que c'est tout un genre dans l'Europe de l'est, surtout dans les pays de l'ancien empire austro-hongrois - la nostalgie de l'Empire, de l'identité supranationale de cette période.

Comme les livres de Thomas Mann, Zweig et Roth, mais un peu moins dense, moins long, plus abordable.