White Settlers

Book excerpt: First Published in 1996. Feelings about the repopulation of remote rural areas are nowadays expressed in rather alarming terms, so that in the word of a Skye land-owner: 'the filling of empty glens with people, regardless of origin, is dangerous...because it can destroy the ancient culture which is so precious'. Yet it is remarkable that the depopulation which characterized the previous centuries was greeted with virtually the same reaction. The repopulation of rural Scotland, which since the beginning of the century, has been wished for as the solution to the great problem of rural depopulation, has provoked an ambiguous response. This book describes the local experience of recent population changes and addresses the 'problem' of repopulation. It analyses the paradoxes, ironies and ambiguities that form a complex structure of feelings, much of which is only partially evident at any one time.