Thank you for the very thorough glimpse into this piece of Scottish history. My great grandfather was 9 when he came with his family, their relatives, friends and neighbors from the very southern tip of South Uist (Sound of Eriskay) to Ontario, Canada. As brutal as the clearances were, where they were living was, indeed, very poor ground. Their future prospects on the Long Island were not good. Through determination and hard work they raised their families on good farm land. My great grandfather and several other South Uist families moved to Michigan where they continued to thrive. I have walked that part of South Uist, it is more rock than dirt.
Thank you for the documentary. Truly history is the mother of all sciences. Through it we can find inspiration to do great things and warnings to correct our lower selves.
I came upon this most interesting video by chance… I was actually searching for the Cluny museum of mediaeval art in Paris… When this documentary popped up… I did know about the Highland clearances but not about the slavery on the plantations of the Caribbean… Many thanks for posting this
Hard to know how you missed slavery in the Caribbean! But we are all learning every day. so welcome to the club fellow human, and let's all just be better in our own behaviors - knowledge of those who suffered in olden times helps us to make this a better world. God Bless them, and all of us!
What a vile excuse for a human being, If I was a descendant of his I'd change my last name from Gordon to Smith. Great video and extremely well presented.
Wayne I’m not sure that that would necessarily be a good thing .There were 492 slave owners with the surname Smith who received compensation awards from the British Government and 212 with the surname Gordon! You do however raise an important issue of how our generation deals with the legacies of victimisation carried out by our ancestors. This is an important ,emotive and complicated topic but I don’t think that anyone descended from 18th century slave-owners should feel that they are personally tainted with ‘the sins of the fathers.’
