Set Adrift Upon the World

Winner of Saltire Scottish History Book of the Year 2016

They would be better dead, they said, than set adrift upon the world. But set adrift they were—thousands of them, their communities destroyed, their homes demolished and burned.

Such were the Sutherland Clearances, an extraordinary episode involving the deliberate depopulation of much of a Scottish county. This was planned and carried out by a small group of men and one woman. Most of those involved wrote extensively about their actions, intentions, and feelings, and much of it has been preserved. There are no equivalent collections of material from those whose communities ceased to exist. Their feelings and fears are harder to access, but they are by no means irrecoverable.

In Set Adrift Upon the World, James Hunter tells the story of the Sutherland Clearances. His research took him to archives in Scotland, England, and Canada, to the now deserted straths of Sutherland, and to the frozen shores of Hudson Bay. The result is a gripping, moving, definitive account of a people's struggle for survival in the face of tragedy and disaster, which includes experiences that have not featured in any previous accounts.