The Making of the Crofting Community

Reframes Highland injustices, revealing how government and landlords shaped crofting history and its lasting consequences.

This book has been seminal in bringing to the fore the injustices that have been inflicted on the Highlands in the name of government and landlord – injustices often lost in the name of dry statistics and academic balance.

Written by a man who has gone on to become both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and a leading figure in the public life of the region, The Making of the Crofting Community has attracted praise, inspired debate, and provoked outrage and controversy over the years. This book remains necessary to challenge standard academic interpretations of the Highland past. Having long been one of the classics of Birlinn’s John Donald list, this revised and updated new edition includes a substantial new preface and an extensive reworking of the existing text.

James Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands and was its first Director of the Centre forHistory. He is the author of the award-winning Set Adrift Upon the World (Saltire Society History Book of the Year, 2016).

James Hunter is an award-winning historian. His other books include Glencoe and the Indians, Last of the Free: A Millenial History of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, A Dance Called America: Scottish Highlands, the United States and Canada, Culloden and the Last Clansmen and many more.