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The Highland margin of Scotland, c. 1770–1860

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Peasant Petitions

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Abstract

The large body of petitions that survives in the Breadalbane papers was the result of tight managerial structures on an estate which underwent two major changes within a generation. One was a reorganisation of the eastern part in the interests of agricultural ‘improvement’, the other a drive to recruit troops for the defence of the realm during the French Revolutionary Wars. Both produced a flood of petitions, which cast light not only on relations that the owner and his deputies had with those who worked the land, but also on the dynamics of family and community life along the Highland margin. This chapter focuses mostly on petitions from the quarter century after 1770, but it also compares them with the letters that owners received in the mid nineteenth century, better to understand the changing nature of petitioning that took place in the decades after 1800.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of St Andrews, Scotland

    R. A. Houston (Professor of Early Modern History)

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© 2014 Robert Allan Houston

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Houston, R.A. (2014). The Highland margin of Scotland, c. 1770–1860. In: Peasant Petitions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394095_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394095_15

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48379-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39409-5

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