Imaging the Scottish Highlands

Illustrations of 18th-, 19th-, and early-20th-century settlements and people in the Highlands of Scotland structure images of rural life in these areas. Published illustrations often emphasize the poverty, isolation, and hardship of Highland rural life, and these themes are mirrored in many historical and archaeological accounts of the period. Popular literature, in particular literature about the Highland clearances, also emphasizes hardship and powerlessness. These photographs, documents, and accounts interact in constructing a particular kind of Highland past, and a simplified set of power relations, that may not adequately examine the complexities of rural life. By integrating an analytical study of images with a study of reminiscences and of archaeological remains, the historical relationships that produced them may be better understood.