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And the Scots doing the dirty work were doing it because they wanted to become part of the English establishment. They were well rewarded, just like the Scots who went to Ireland and laid the groundwork for a famine years by throwing Irishmen off the land where they were essentially self-sufficient so that large profitable estates could be established.

Divide and conquer has long been the English way of ruling their colonies and the fact that they could get one faction to slaughter another doesn't change the fact that it was the English who set the policy and enabled the slaughter.

Nice try, but that's no different than saying that since the majority of the Army that slaughtered villages full of nothing but women and children on the US Plains was made up of Irish and other immigrants it's really immigrants who were responsible for the slaughter, not the Army policy and attitude that, "nits make lice".

Oh dear. You've obviously imbibed the myths in a big way.

Until recently it was difficult to find accessible, objective histories of the Clearances because so much writing on the subject was polemical. But for a recent, scholarly but highly readable account, which among other things explains the economic background which made Highland depopulation (although not the methods) inevitable, I'd recommend Eric Richards' book simply titled 'The Highland Clearances', published by Birlinn. I somehow doubt you'll take up that suggestion, which would be a pity.

(No, Scotland has never been an 'English Colony' and no, there never was a 'policy' for the Clearances devised by anybody, let alone the English, who were barely aware they were happening until they were well under way - at which point it was English public opinion, as well as enlightened Scots public opinion, which drove the reaction eventually leading to the Napier Commission and the 1886 Crofting Act. The only charge that can be laid at the door of the English is that the new, highly profitable sheep farming techniques, which the Highland landlords sought to import as a means to avoid rapidly encroaching insolvency, originated in England).

Scotland has never been part of England, we joined the UK in 1707 BECAUSE England could never conquer us.

As to Ireland, whilst it was England that from the 12thc has conquered Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster happened under a Scottish king of all Britain (James VI of Scotland/James I of England).

James encouraged Scottish settlement because English and Welsh people wouldn’t settle in Ireland. And do you know why many Lowland Scots moved?. Because of FAMINES in early 17th C Scotland, esp in the Lowlands. You didn’t think only Ireland got famines, did you?. Scotland and Ireland have had as many famines in their history as Ireland. England in fact more!.

James wanted the hard working Scots as buffers between the Catholic Irish and the small group of English settlers. That’s why NI today is so Scottish/Ulster Scottish, as opposed to English.