This is a book about social and economic change in a Highland parish during the nineteenth century. Much has been written about the earlier stages of the Highland clearances—most of it by fervent partisans of the crofters—but practically nothing about the later stages of the same revolutionary process, when sheep-farming became unprofitable and many of the grazings were cleared again, this time for sport. Neither have the landlords, and especially the reasons for their agrarian policies, received much attention; yet they were on the whole reasonable men, as good and as bad as people generally are, and they deserve as much consideration as any other section of the population. I have therefore tried to cover here the process of change between the temporary equilibrium of the years around 1800 and the very different equilibrium that developed by 1900 after the stresses of the mid-century, and at the same time to avoid the customary over-emphasis on the misfortunes of the Highland peasantry.

Generalisation in this field is not yet possible—the detailed work must come first—but the parish of Morvern proved to be particularly well suited to the kind of investigation that can usefully be made.