Introduction

Land disturbances at Scaristaveg, which began in 1926 and lasted for at least three years, was just one of the over 500 separate incidents of protest which took place in the Scottish Highlands after 1914. These took a hitherto un-recognised variety of forms, ranging from the simple and individual written (but rarely anonymous) threat to take action through to complex and mass acts of land seizure and beyond. Together, this was the final, successful and sadly much neglected, act of the Highland Land Wars which began in 1914 and lasted until at least 1939, albeit

with significantly decreasing intensity. Occurring in a greater diversity of places and far more frequently than has been previously recognised these events had a significant impact on the Highland landscape, particularly in the Outer Hebrides, on the nature of land-holding in the region and on the tri-partite relationship between landlords, tenantry and agencies of government which developed over the course of the first two decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, written into Highland land agitation were tensions and conflict within the tenantry which also demand greater attention than they have been given hitherto and which played a shaping role in protests’ performances.