In this slim but substantial volume, Daniel Maudlin sets out to answer a question that he says vexes US tourists, who are thrilled by the grandeur of the Highland scenery but disappointed by the absence of the kind of folksy historic buildings they expect to find.

Raised on movies such as Brigadoon, they hope to see traditional blackhouses and thatched cottages. What they find is a landscape punctuated by what Maudlin describes as regular boxes, covered in harling and painted an aseptic white.

Based on a systematic study of the buildings of the Highlands, the former Historic Scotland inspector who teaches at the University of Plymouth explains that the distinctive built environment that leaves Americans underwhelmed was a little-noted consequence of the clearances of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

These involved human tragedies that Maudlin notes have been well documented by the likes of Tom Devine. He satisfies himself with some telling contemporary statistical summaries of a process that involved clearing people from land farmed in small strips and turning it over to big estates reserved for vast flocks of sheep.

In Kildonan in Sutherland the population was cut from 1440 in the late 18th century to 257 by 1831 as smallholdings and cattle grazing lands gave way to Cheviot sheep. The people affected had to choose between crofting marginal lands, moving to new villages and leaving the Highlands. A corollary was that the aristocratic landowners who wanted to increase agricultural efficiency decided that the housing on their estates needed improved. Their solution was to adopt a type of house that was developed according to the classical ideas that were the norm in the late 18th century.

Tenants on the big new estates had to accept that they would live in a two-storey farmhouse of regular proportions with two or three bays at the front, rectangular sash and case windows and slate roofs. The white-painted exteriors made them highly visible. Inside they featured large, high-ceilinged rooms. Landlords wanted to demonstrate their membership of a modern British society whose values their aspiring tenants were happy to adopt. There was no place for the native blackhouse – a single-storey structure made of mud, stone and thatch.

The process was facilitated by economic developments that meant Highlanders could get hold of products like iron gratings from distant places. The surveyors who designed houses drew on new architectural pattern books, published in places like Edinburgh. The result was a surge in house-building that was concentrated between 1775 and 1815. More than 300 farmhouses from the era are protected by Historic Scotland.

Today’s environmentalists may take as dim a view of the results as visitors from the USA. “The primary function of the new farmhouse was social display, not thermal efficiency,” notes Maudlin drily. The hard-to-heat new homes required lots of imported products. By contrast, blackhouses were made from materials that could be gathered locally in a style that had evolved to suit local conditions.

The powerful, however, were satisfied enough to require that the classical form was adopted for the manses and inns that were built on their lands. Estate workers got standard two-roomed cottages designed along classical lines.

The improvement process is also evident in the many villages developed in the same period in place of the small transient groups of houses – clachans – in which people had lived. The improvers wanted bigger settlements to provide permanent homes for former estate residents, who staffed the new industries that landlords introduced to supplement their income. They were encouraged by the government to help ensure supplies of important materials and potential recruits for the army.

Grantown-on-Spey typifies the textile villages established by the Grants in north-east Scotland. The 5th Duke of Argyll chaired the new British Fisheries Society, a semi-official national scheme to provide work for refugees from the clearances, which developed Ullapool and Tobermory in 1788. Some 34 villages were built up to the mid-19th century following the society’s grid plan – 22 for fishing and 12 for textiles. Only the Pultneytown area of Wick, planned by the engineer Thomas Telford, thrived in the long term. The effects on the landscape, however, have endured.

While Maudlin’s account is informed by rigorous statistical analysis, some readers may prefer a more anecdotal approach. Glimpses of characters like the pub-loving dukes of Argyll whet the appetite. However, in an age obsessed with property values, this is a valuable account of how changing social and economic patterns can leave a lasting impact on the land.