James Hunter 
The Making of the Crofting Community 

This book has been seminal in bringing to the fore the injustices that have been inflicted on the Highlands in the name of government and landlord – injustices often lost in the name of dry statistics and academic balance.
Written by a man who has gone on to become both an award-winning historian of the Highlands and a leading figure in the public life of the region,  The Making of the Crofting Community has attracted praise, inspired debate, and provoked outrage and controversy over the years. This book remains necessary to challenge standard academic interpretations of the Highland past. Having long been one of the classics of Birlinn’s John Donald list, this revised and updated new edition includes a substantial new preface and an extensive reworking of the existing text.

About the author

James Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands. He has written extensively about the north of Scotland and about the region’s worldwide diaspora. In the course of a varied career Hunter has been, among other things, director of the Scottish Crofters Union, chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and an award-winning journalist. His book Set Adrift upon the World (Birlinn 2016) was Saltire History Book of the Year in 2016.