It seems that our history goes back further than you thought. From David Lyons' coffee-table book "Scotland", p. 184, reproduced as printed, but for the elisions:
...the event which most shaped Highlanders were the Highland Clearances, which started in the late 18th and continued into the early 19th century...this was when ambitious landowners cleared the land of people in favor of sheep farming...the upshot was that thousands of poor framers...were thrown off their ancestral lands or out of their townships to fend for themselves with little or no resources to help them. Tout ca change, if you're on a Mac. Graeme Forbes
