Politics of Highland Improvement

Juliette Desportes is a postdoctoral researcher based at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Her research focuses on the ways Highland land has been managed, transformed, and contested across the long eighteenth-century, with a particular interest in rural histories and geographies of protest and resistance and the politics of the ‘land question’ in Scotland.

• IllustrationsAcknowledgementsAbbreviations and ConventionsIntroduction: The Drifts of Progress 1. BeginningsFrom Central Governance to Estate Management2. Mapping ProgressCartography and the Making of the Improved Highlands?3. The Origins of CroftingSmallholdings and the Alternate Geographies of Improvement4. Spinning ImprovementManufacture and Experiences of Labour5. Repertoires of NegotiationSubversion, Adaptation, and Contestation in Estate Petitions6. Contested SpacesPractices and Environments of ResistanceConclusion: The Highland Landed Estate in the 'First Phase of Clearance'Appendices Bibliography Inde