In the 1880s, Lord Napier conducted an investigation into the conditions that cottars and crofters found themselves in, in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Excessive rents, insecurity of tenure and summary evictions were the main complaints, which gave rise to civil unrest. The rising at Braes, Isle of Skye, prompted the establishment of a Royal Commission by Prime Minister William Gladstone.
Its findings have now been published on the Net by Lochaber College Mallaig. I would like to thank Westword, the monthly paper for Mallaig and area, for bringing this to general attention. The report is published as five PDF-files, which require Acrobat Reader to be installed on your computer. LCM is hosting the files on the servers of the UHI Millennium Institute, as they could not cope with the volume of traffic themselves.
"Thanks for posting this, looking forward to reading the report, though from the sounds of it, nothing much has changed except the lack of civil unrest and an uprising! :-D"
ReplyDeleteHermit from Sanday
"Thank you"
C from England
"Please be advised that the documents are very large (nearly 900 pages each) and take a long time to load, even on a broadband connection. "
Arnish Lighthouse from Stornoway
"227 years to publish a report - what chance does Charles de Menezes stand? That's slow even by the Bloody Sunday and the Diana inquest enquiry."
Donald from Playing ludo with Calum
"Unfortunately Sunny from Arran knows all about excessive rents, insecurity of tenure and summary evictions. 'Plus ca change' as Carol's neighbours might say."
Annie B from the usual
"A report published in the 1880s has just been released online? Now I know things are laid back out west but isn't that taking things a bit far? Old Lord Napier must have been ahead of his time anticipating the www."
Hyper-Borean from Alceringa
"The report was published in the 19th century, but it has been made available on-line as it is of major historical significance. "
Arnish Lighthouse from Stornoway
"There's no point being ironic here..."
Flying Cat from The Irony Board