Output details

The Making of the Modern Scottish Highlands

This original and extensive study examines a critical juncture in the history of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Adopting contrapuntal analysis to novels, polemics and other primary sources, including Gaelic poetry and song, the first part of the book outlines the dominant narratives, motifs and tropes that shaped internal and external perspectives on the region and its people. The second section demonstrates how this informed different discourses on regional development and reconstruction while the last part examines reactions from Gaelic activists, bilingual intellectuals and Highland residents to the cultural transformations caused by economic and social ‘modernisation’.

Through the collection and analysis of a significant body of material, this detailed monograph challenges historiographical orthodoxies by locating the mid twentieth century as the pivotal moment when the modern Highlands were created. The generation of a particularly extensive thesis stems from textual analysis of complex and wide-ranging primary sources such as An Gaidheal, the bilingual magazine of An Comunn Gaidhealach (the Highland Association), political pamphlets and Government records. Close reading of key literary texts and papers in the extensive archival deposits of Neil Gunn, Naomi Mitchison and Tom MacDonald was also conducted over a lengthy period of data collection.