Wild Scots?

[Raingeanach]

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/41460.html

[Scottish_Republican]

Except it didn't start with Prebble. Look at contemporary accounts. Even Karl Marx mentions it in his (in)famous tome.

[aNonnyMoose]

Michael Fry is just another Unionist revisionist prat.

[Scottish_Republican]

Originally posted by aNonnyMoose
Michael Fry is just another Unionist revisionist prat.

Oh pshaw. There's no such thing as Unionist historians with hidden agendas.

[TheScottishEconomist]

Actually it’s the unionist historians who got in there first, and it was nationalist historians who later challenged the orthodoxy that the unionists had originally established. Of course that was a good thing, as is Fry’s challenge to the current orthodoxy of the Clearances. It is absurd that someone like John Prebble should be regarded as the writer of the standard text on this subject.

Of course those who regard the orthodoxy about the Clearances as convenient in justifying their view of Scotland as a victim nation are - not surprisingly - up in arms about it. They would clearly prefer the subject not to be researched at all, but their attempts to compare Fry with David Irvine merely smack of desperation. That’s not surprising, anybody who has studied economic history of Scotland knows Prebble’s work is nonsense.

In following the controversy over this book I have noticed that most critics - with the exception of fools like Brian Wilson - don’t seem to regard Fry as someone who tells lies, but someone who isn’t writing with due sensitivity, and that is quite interesting, "ignoring his responsibility as a historian to honour those who had endured trauma and suffering" is how one person put it.

I read the first review of the book in yesterdays Herald by TC Smout (not a nationalist historian if you are wondering) who surmises that “Michael Fry denies the Highland Clearances happened, but fails to make his case”. This passage is interesting: “Above all, like all too many books on Highland history, it is written to further a contemporary agenda”, he goes on to say Fry “inhales the dizzying vapours of the new right and whoops up the virtues of the untrammelled free market. He is a little at odds with Michael Fry the historian of Dundas, sympathising with Old Tory private paternalists trying to cushion Highlanders from the market.”

I hope this book might stimulate a serious and mature debate on the subject, though I must admit I am not hopeful.

[Scottish_Republican]

Originally posted by TheScottishEconomist
That’s not surprising, anybody who has studied economic history of Scotland knows Prebble’s work is nonsense.

Your ideas of "economic theory" come off like a right wing version of Marxism. (No offence).

[TheScottishEconomist]

None taken. It should however be remembered that Adam Smith had a significant influence on Marx and other socialist thinkers, and perhaps the differences are not as great as might be assumed.