Euan Healey

When Highland landlords forced Gaelic-speaking farmers to migrate from inland glens to barren and rocky coastal plots insufficient for subsistence, many were coerced into becoming fishers. How did this rapid upheaval and coerced change impact the way they experienced their work? This interdisciplinary project will engage with a wide array of historical and archaeological sources to explore labouring lives and societies connected to fishing and assosciated industries across Gaelic-speaking Scotland in the long nineteenth century. Engaging with the recent spatial turn of labour history, this thesis will consider the importance of spatiality to work in fishing communities, from the compact space of planned fishing villages to the vastness of the open ocean. This research will speak into a lacuna within Highland and wider Scottish history which has, to date, ignored work, and particualrly fishing work, within Highland Clearance and Improvement-era society and economy.