The Spectator - October 20, 2018

a major cultural figure, but here she is lam-

entably relegated to the sidelines. Also,

for some strange reason, the book’s first

30 pages are dedicated solely to Josef’s

‘Homage to the Square’ paintings, con-

sisting of three or four different coloured

squares nested in one another. Yes, it was

his signature series; yes, it’s impressive

(he made 2,400 variations over the final

quarter-century of his life). But a discussion

of such technical matters as their hardboard

support surely isn’t a way to grab readers’

attention from the off.

Rightly or wrongly, Josef has gone down

in history as Albers the austere, the exem-

plar of a rigorous Bauhaus modernism

— and there’s little in this biography to

change that.

Far left: ‘Self-

portrait,’ 1916.

Left: ‘Homage

to the Square:

Renewed

Hope’, 1951

by Josef Albers

Relocate or emigrate

Stuart Kelly

The Scottish Clearances: A History

of the Dispossessed, 1600–1900

by T.M. Devine

Allen Lane, £25, pp. 464

There is a degree of irony in the open-

ing chapter of T.M. Devine’s history, lam-

basting popular previous depictions of

the Clearances and citing ludicrous com-

parisons to Nazi genocide and the misty-

eyed melancholy of John Prebble. Though

it does not mention such iconography as

Thomas Faed’s painting ‘Last of the Clans’,

a cottar to being a shoemaker in the local

town is rather different from having

your house burnt down and being forci-

bly deported to Nova Scotia. Conflating

the two experiences seems to me to be

rather ungenerous.

The sheer difference of the Lowlands

and the Highlands is important. The clan

structure, which was already fraying in

the north, never took hold in the south,

despite a similar degree of banditry and

reiving. Scotland was not an integrated

country even when England and Scot-

land were ruled by one crown. There is an

important essay hidden in the book which

contrasts the Irish experience in the 19th

century with that of the Scots. The Irish took

up arms, faced with both famine and ‘land

reform’; while the Scots meekly took to the

ships for shores a-yonder. Why should this

be the case? Devine blames — or at least

in part blames: as this is an academic book

every contention is doubled with its oppo-

site — Presbyterian deference and the clan

ideal that the laird would look after his

clan. There is a fascinating chapter on

the rural unrest in the south-west of

Scotland, which does link clearly to the

‘Killing Times’ of the 17th century and reli-

gious rebellion.

There are some notable myth-busting

moments in this enquiry. For example,

the population of the Highlands actu-

ally increased after the Clearances. The

ruined stone cottages which accompa-

ny so many online sites about the period

were a relatively late development, and

it is likely, if you are into genealogy, that

your Scottish ancestors came from Moth-

erwell or Melrose rather than somewhere

more romantic that has appeared in Out-

lander. In some cases the arguments have

been made more eloquently and vocif-

erously — in, for example, Neil David-

son’s avowedly Marxist The Origins of

Scottish Nationhood, which like Devine’s

latest work argues that raising 100 clans-

men for a square go meant less than hav-

ing 100 guineas to barter on the London

gaming tables.

I did wonder at the cut-off date of 1900.

Of course, by that date, Scotland had under-

gone the most rapid industrialisation in his-

tory, and farm workers were flocking to the

cities. But not to continue the story into

such issues as community land buy-outs or

the creation of the New Towns — surely

another form of nudged internal migration

— leaves the story, such as it is, dangling.

In short, I may pick this book up again to

check a fact, but reading it from cover to

cover is an unlikely proposition.

used for the paperback of Prebble’s book,

or Erskine Nicol’s ‘An Ejected Family’

in all its schmaltzy Victorian glory, such

depictions are clearly the target. Yet the

book itself is called The Scottish Clearanc-

es: A History of the Dispossessed and not,

which would actually be more accurate,

‘Patterns of Land Ownership, Agricultur-

al Change as well as Internal and External

Migrations in Scotland, 1600–1900’. Not

such a grabby title.

Devine, as a historian, is meticulous if

not always enthralling. There is an air of

the Harold Wilson era about this book.

With white-hot research, lots of carefully

calibrated tables and perhaps the occasion-

al use of a slide rule and logarithm book,

the Truth can be established. I may never

need to know again that the average price

for meal imported from the Clyde to the

Outer Hebrides went from £2.2s per boll to

16s per boll between 1840 and 1880, or that

the cattle herd in Sutherland, between 1790

and 1808, fell from 5,140 to 2,906 while

sheep numbers rose from 7,840 to 21,000

(a suspiciously round number). Facts

may be chiels that winna ding an downa

be disputed, but interpretations of data

certainly are. Yet buried under the statisti-

cal chest-puffing there is a lot to admire in

this book.

For a start, there is closer attention paid

to the south of Scotland as well as the High-

lands. Whether the forms of expropriation

of property are commensurate I will leave

for the reader to decide: all I will say is

that moving from a subsistence existence as

In a myth-busting moment we learn

that the population of the Highlands

actually increased after the Clearances

© 2018 THE JOSEF AND ANNI ALBERS FOUNDATION/ARTIST’S RIGHTS SOCIETY(ARS), NEW YORK/DACS, LONDON/VG BILD-KUNST, BONN