| Surname | Sellar |
|---|
| Forename | Patrick |
|---|
| Occupation | Sheep-farmer and factor |
|---|
| Date of birth | 00-12-1780 |
|---|
| Place of birth | Elgin |
|---|
| Date of death | 28-10-1851 |
|---|
| Place of death | Maryhill, Elgin |
|---|
| Date of marriage | 00-11-1818 |
|---|
| Resided | Farr |
|---|
| Source | Various |
|---|
Probably the most hated man in Highland history and folklore, Sellar was the factor of the Sutherland estate and who carried out many of the evictions throughout the county. Not just a zealous employee, he benefited directly from the Strathnaver clearances of 1814 as he was the new tenant in waiting. Tried for murder as a result of these removals, a jury of 'twelve gentlemen from the Highlands' acquitted him and the interests he served. Partly driven by ideology, his statements display contempt for the Gael, his way of life and his language. A free-marketeer but keen to cry for protectionism when his own interests were threatened.
Petty, vindictive and odious as his quarrels with most of those with whom he came into contact reveal him to be, there is an element of unfairness in heaping all the blame for the policy of eviction onto him. This tendency probably dates from Donald MacLeod's Gloomy Reminiscences whose writer thought the Countess of Sutherland 'would shudder at the idea of taking ... a burning torch ... to the cottages of her tenants'. Several of the articles collected on this site show evictions to allow sheep farmers to take over the land taking place long before Sellar set foot in Sutherland.
Eric Richards' biography of Sellar talks of 'casualties in the long march of progress'; Ian Grimble, on the other hand, likens Sellar to Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of Jewish extermination in Eastern Europe. This Richards argues,
' is inappropriate. He was not involved in mass murder; he had not set about the killing of people in Strathnaver. There is no firm evidence he killed anyone.'
Perhaps we cannot lay the blame for all the deaths in emigrant ships at Sellar's door but he supported, and refined, as did Heydrig, 'the ideologies of their times' (Richards' phrase). Richards' analysis, that this was 'the inescapable price of progress', begs the question, "What progress - what long-term benefits were there to the Highlands, or to Scotland, generally, in large-scale sheep-farming at the expense of depopulation?". Personalising the process, so that the problems are the result of the overzealousness of one man, avoids messy questions about globalisation, 'the cool logic of the market' (another Richardsism) and the legacy of capitalism, which are even more pertinent today than they were two hundred years ago.
|
|
