Critical Perspectives on Accounting (2003) 14, 813–853 doi:10.1016/S1045-2354(02)00191-0 AGENTS OF DISPOSSESSION AND ACCULTURATION. EDINBURGHACCOUNTANTS AND THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES STEPHEN P. WALKER† Cardiff Business School, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3Eu, Wales, UK The widespread eviction and emigration of Highland Gaels during the 18th and 19th centuries retains a central place in Scottish history. The role of accountants in these events has seldom been recognised. The paper reveals that in their ca- pacity as trustees on insolvent estates eminent Edinburgh accountants ordered some of the most notorious clearances of the mid-19th century. Accountants dis- possessed substantial numbers of crofters on grounds of economic rationality and the need to assimilate a backward ‘race’ into the capitalist economy. While their decision-making resulted in suffering among those evicted, accountants amassed substantial economic and social capital from their service to the landed class and their creditors, and did so during a key period in their professionalisation. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction This paper concerns the way in which the practitioners of accounting plied their craft in a manner which assisted the dislocation of a social group with a distinc- tive cultural tradition, and which was considered by some contemporaries to be a separate ‘race’ (Fenyo ´´, 2000, pp. 55–77). The paper examines the role of eminent Edinburgh accountants in the clearance of Highland Gaels from landed properties during the mid-19th century. The study attempts to reveal how public accountants made life-changing decisions about crofting families on the basis of economic im- peratives and arrived at judgements about a ‘backward’ local population founded on prevailing assumptions about morality, work discipline, and the need to ‘improve’ the Highland population through their assimilation into the urban–industrial economy. These ‘superior’ values were drawn from the lowland, metropolitan and bourgeois society which was mid-century Edinburgh. The paper illustrates how accountants from the capital city of Scotland were agents in the dispossession and acculturation of sections of the Highland and Island population. † E-mail: s.walker@ed.ac.uk Received 8 May 2002 813 1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.