Land cultivation in the Highlands up until 1800 was based around the crofting system, where a family worked a small piece of land. Experiments with sheep breeding had created sheep breeds that thrived in the landscape, so the landowners, many of whom were hereditary clan chiefs (often living in London), evicted their tenants in favour of the much more profitable sheep. Often they provided transport to ship evicted tenants to America, Canada, or Australia. In Canada there are still pockets of Gaelic speaking descendants of cleared tenants.

A name that will regularly crop up during discussion of the clearances is that of George Leveson-Gower, the 1st Duke of Sutherland.

Instrumental in clearing thousands of tenant farmers from their homes, his factor (the man in charge of day to day operation of the estate) was tried for the murder of one old tenant after he allegedly set the house on fire from which she refused to leave.

The factor was acquitted of the charge and went on to run one of the Dukes large sheep farms...