Talk:Highland Clearances/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions about Highland Clearances. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Return under another name

I'm not fully across the copious dialogue above involving User:WyndingHeadland so am not here to address the specifics of the debate but thought it worthwhile to note that their style of expression, apparent disregard for reliable sourcing and uncooperative manner of engagement would indicate the return to this article under another guise of User:Baglessingazump. The archives contain details. Similar traits are being exhibited at a newly created and somewhat problematic article, Scots Gaels. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:54, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

It seems the user is happy with being disruptive on one page at a time. WyndingHeadland (talk) 12:44, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

User:WyndingHeadland can you confirm whether you are the same user as User:Baglessingazump? At the very least it would mean that we don't have to go over the same issues again. Camerojo (talk) 20:52, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

This seems like a sockpuppetry accusation. If so, and you have sufficient evidence, why not make a checkuser report? Catrìona (talk) 21:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

It isn't a sockpuppet account. It's as simple as that. WyndingHeadland (talk) 22:21, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

My eye: WP:QUACK. A cursory look at the highly distinctive, idiosyncratic and often barely comprehensible modes of expression and engagement and the matching interests and POVs stretch the notion of the two identities being distinct well past credibility. As an example of highly unlikely coincidence, User:Baglessingazump's early edits at this article promoted OR notions about the Clearances being the "forced displacement of Scottish Gaels", discussed in the archives here; that a new account, User:WyndingHeadland, is campaigning at length at this article and has also created an OR essay article, Scots Gaels, is telling to say the least. What's more, when I first made mention that the user identities were clearly linked, WH made no remark let alone refutation in intervening posts. Not until I spelled out the seriousness of the matter with a sock tag on their user page did they react, and by demanding proof rather than denying the matter. Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I've only just clocked this recent belter above. We're being asked to believe that this is from a different author from that of the tour de force post here beginning "That would be ideal"? Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:36, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Again: it isn't a sockpuppet account. It is as simple as that. WyndingHeadland (talk) 06:14, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay, let's not play with words: are you responsible for both accounts, yes or no? Mutt Lunker (talk) 07:55, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

This is the account that my responsibility is for.WyndingHeadland (talk) 09:31, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

This certainly seems like the same user. Thanks for the suggestion Catrìona. Here are some guidelines Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. Mutt Lunker probably is in the best position to take this further. Camerojo (talk) 10:16, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:QUACK it's absolutely plain as day. As User:WyndingHeadland's latest answer is as transparently evasive as ever, I'll give them another chance to give a straight answer and come clean. Obviously the person editing as User:WyndingHeadland is responsible for the edits made under that account (this is neither news to us WH, nor the question being posed, as you well know); WH, are you also responsible for the edits made by User:Baglessingazump, yes or no? Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:40, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not replying yes or no to your questions. What is the overlap between the accounts? WyndingHeadland (talk) 10:44, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

You, evidently. Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:48, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Bring it to an administrator if there has been an offence. WyndingHeadland (talk) 11:19, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

As requested. Mutt Lunker (talk) 16:56, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

What is the offence?WyndingHeadland (talk) 17:41, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Quoting Wikipedia policy: "The use of multiple Wikipedia user accounts for an improper purpose is called sock puppetry (or simply socking). Improper purposes include attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, evade blocks, or otherwise violate community standards and policies. Mediatech492 (talk) 23:50, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, to make the form of my question better, because the definition of sockpuppetry isn't what my question was looking for, what is the specific offence? WyndingHeadland (talk) 09:38, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Your question, for once, was perfectly clear; as was the answer. Mutt Lunker (talk) 15:54, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

What is improper? WyndingHeadland (talk) 23:24, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

What is improper is anything not described here: Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry#Legitimate_uses. Mutt Lunker (talk) 08:37, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Good. So it wasn't improper. WyndingHeadland (talk) 18:56, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Really? In which case you'd better stipulate what on the list of legitmate uses does apply to you. Mutt Lunker (talk) 20:42, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

It's obvious. WyndingHeadland (talk) 22:41, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, obvious that you can't. Mutt Lunker (talk) 23:43, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Witch is it? WyndingHeadland (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Religion

I have reinstated the paragraph on religious discrimination to the one previously agreed on the talk page. This might be a point to consider if there is adequate coverage (without the section being over-long and so altering the balance of the article).

Also I am concerned about the possible need to cover discrimination against non-juring Episcopalians - and now cannot track down the reference that I had on this. Of course, this could be classed as prejudice against Jacobite supporters.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:46, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

That's the end of facts?

That's the question for both users pursuing me with POV problems on Scots Gaels and Highland Clearances. Shall be referring both editors to the guide on templates, sources, and deletion on a topic by topic platform. Would ask that the users cease their malicious intent, whilst correctly seeking outside opinion on cases where they are deleting directly quoted reliable sources that contradict their non-neutral POV problems. They won't harass this account. WyndingHeadland (talk) 16:37, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Reversion of edit 816815946

I have reverted edit 816815946[[1]] because:

(1) The cited reference for this sentence does not say anything about migration to England.

(2) I cannot readily find any other reliable source that discusses the migration of (specifically) Highlanders to England as a result of clearance. The closest I can find is Devine in To the Ends of the Earth, where he says:

.....the migration from Scotland to England before 1900. For the period 1841 to 1911, according to one estimate, about 600,000 Scots-born persons moved to England and Wales. This was around half of the total net emigration from Scotland in the nineteenth century and was not paralleled by any similar significant movement from the south to the north. .... from the 1870s, many Scots who moved to England were skilled and increasingly settled in the mining and heavy industrial areas of England and Wales.

It is of note that this applies to all Scots, not just Highlanders. The comment about skilled persons suggests that the largely agricultural nature of cleared highlanders excludes them from this group. I suggest that this ref is not sufficient to include the word "England" in this part of the article - so I believe we need an additional ref for its inclusion.^[1]

(3) The whole sentence:

The Clearances resulted in significant emigration of Highlanders to the coast, the Scottish Lowlands, and further afield to North America and Australasia

has concerning aspects:
(a) resettlement to the coast is surely "migration" not "emigration"
(b) many historians do not see a direct link between clearance and emigration. This will seem counter-intuitive to many people (and this sort of dispute is discussed in the preface to the 2000 edition of James Hunter's "The Making of the Crofting Community", particularly page 25). In short, whilst those historians (particularly Richards) would no doubt accept that some who were cleared immediately emigrated, they see the bulk of emigrants being richer tenants who see better opportunities in the New World. Here you see examples of chain migration and, as Hunter discusses on page 25 of The Making of the Crofting Community" (2000 edn.), emigration can be viewed as a rejection of the social changes underway in the Highlands.
(c) More Highland emigration occurred after the end of the period in which most of the clearances happened.
(d) The problem sentence does not mention those who moved to neighbouring estates, such as those cleared from the Sutherland estate, particularly in 1818 and 1819 under the factorship of Frances Suther, who went to, for example, Caithness.^[2]^{: 206, 211}

As it stands, this sentence has a risk of misleading the reader - emigration is a complex part of the whole story and ranges from those who simply wanted to make their fortunes in the New World, through those fed up with the constraints and social changes in the Highlands to those who were destitute and had an "assisted passage" provided by a clearing landlord.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 00:05, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

References

^ Divine, T M (2011). To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010. London: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-7139-9744-6.
^ Richards, Eric (2000). The Highland Clearances People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (2013 ed.). Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. ISBN 978-1-78027-165-1.

Forfeited Estates & Acts of Attainder

There isn't any mention of the financial situation of the many clan chiefs who had their estates forfeited during the Jacobite Risings by Acts of Attainder.

The national archives have documents pertaining to both 1715 and 1745 [[2]] and there are multiple references in the literature including complete books themselves devoted to it. Shall be adding information in the near future. WyndingHeadland (talk) 17:21, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Not just due to the uprisings of the 1700s but beginning in the 1600s with the efforts to crush the power of the Lord of the Isles. The consolidation of the crowns gave the king the needed powers to consolidate the authority of the Monarchy in the 1600s and began the first of the clashes that would see large numbers of persons displaced. C. W. Gilmore (talk) 15:27, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Relevance of Swing Riots, Enclosures and the British Agricultural Revolution

@Mutt Lunker: I note with confusion that you have removed the links I have made to the Enclosure, Swing Riots and British Agricultural Revolution wiki pages; why have you done so? Alssa1 (talk) 16:03, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

The Swing Riots appear to have little, if any, pertinence, hence my removal. The enclosures in England are arguably more pertinent, if in a tangential way but as they are prominently linked in the first paragraph of the lede, again in the first sentence of the next section and a third time, per MOS:ALSO one "should not repeat links that appear in the article's body". On that same basis, I should have removed, but did not, the link to British Agricultural Revolution, already in the body of the article (I'll address that). Mutt Lunker (talk) 17:29, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Sutherland Clearances and other potential changes

I have deleted and replaced the text covering the Sutherland clearances. In doing this, I am prompted by the latest book by T M Devine: The Scottish Clearances: a History of the Dispossessed. (ISBN 978 0 241 30410 5, publ. Penguin 2018). This is yet another book that confirms the modern scholarly views on the clearances. In it he clearly questions the "Prebble driven" view of the clearances and points out the large amount of research that has been done to produce a proper analysis by professional historians. Based on the portfolio of modern historical work that there is to go on, it is, I feel, time to bring this article up to date. I have not chosen the worst part of the existing article to begin this process, but it does involve the removal of 2 prominent quotes from primary sources. For those who have any particular attachment to the account by Donald Mcleod, there might be a place for this in a section on the historiography of the subject.

The substitute text is probably over-long and could do with a precis. However, it seems appropriate to put it in the article and see what response there is.

Another particular target for change are the sections on Changes in clan leadership and Repression of Jacobitism. The first needs proper, referenced mention of the Statutes of Iona. The second should really not be there, as it is an outdated idea. It is interesting to see that Devine's view of Jacobitism (and also the English Civil War) is that these external political considerations slowed the ongoing process of change from chief to landlord by re-establishing a need for the war-making capabilities of clans. So, when all was lost in the '45, what appeared to be an acceleration of the collapse of clanship was simply catch-up for the long-term process.(p 46 of Devine's new book mentioned above) So some mention is needed of Jacobitism, but not its own section.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:05, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Ethnic cleansing and displacement rather than emigration

Why are all words and concepts used so "nice". Is it a faux pas to use hard words for historic events in the British isles?

If I read about the clearances, I do not think about emigration, but forced displacement and evictions. Ethnic cleansing could be used for displacing a population with a different culture and language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jochum (talk • contribs) 09:04, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

This is an article about a historical event. Therefore source selection should be guided by WP:HISTRS. I suspect that the academic books and papers are somewhat less damning than the material that you have been reading. (There are plenty of sensationalist books on the Highland Clearances out there.) The article does cover, in an amount that was carefully considered to comply with WP:DUE, the discrimination against Gaels. However, the consensus among historians is that the primary driver of clearance was, in the first phase, a wish for greater profit from the land and, in the second phase, a desperate need to get rid of the excess population that could not be supported after the collapse of the few industries that had supported them (coupled with the potato famine).

Whilst there are some sensationalist writers who have used the words "ethnic cleansing" to apply to the clearances, historians, generally, have not. Historians would point to the rising population in Highland areas at the time of the clearances (it is a complex situation, but this generalisation is true). Furthermore, the term "ethnic cleansing" has the implication in its definition of people being deliberately killed. That is not part of this story. The article should follow the lead of the historians who have studied the subject and avoid labelling the clearances as ethnic cleansing.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:25, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

It may be worth adding that some emigration is seen by some historians (Eric Richards is an example) as the better off highlanders resisting the changes that their landlords sought to impose upon them by emigrating - so this is not forced displacement, this is people choosing not to participate in social change by emigrating.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:29, 22 August 2018 (UTC)

I cannot disagree with the person who wrote the first comments. After all, the definition of ethnic cleansing is "systematic forced removal of ethnic or racial groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous". It is fair to say the Highland Clearances can be similarly described as a process of forced removal and displacement of the Gaelic ethnicity and system of life by a powerful and embittered British supremacy who already took over Scotland in 1707 after the failure of Scotland's Darien scheme and won the last battle against the Christians and the Jacobites at Culloden in 1746.

ICE77 (talk) 06:03, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

What is your reliable source for this theory? "the last battle against the Christians and the Jacobites"?! Mutt Lunker (talk) 11:36, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Comments on the article

1. The "social engineering" section is not well written and it's not very clear either.

2. "After partial crop failures in 1836 and 1837 ...".

Where did this happen since the sentence follows with "arrived in Scotland in 1846"?

3. The "The Sutherland Clearances" section is way too long. At a minimum it should be reduced to half the size.

4. The section "political responses" should end with a complete sentence. As it is, it's hanging.

5. The article does not explain under what laws the Highland Clearances were carried out. It's not clear to me how the British government could legally kick out people wihout a process that was fair and in line with the concept of ownership. The article either fails to explain the issue or does not explain it at all.

6. I read this article several months ago and I printed it. I can tell that since then lots of sections have been removed or rewritten. Apparently, the major additions/removals happened starting mid September 2018, most of them initiated by User:ThoughtIdRetired.

The missing sections are "Repression of Jacobitism" and the entire account of Donald McLeod, the Sutherland stonemason under "Examples of individual clearances".

In addition, the image of Alexander Ranaldson MacDonnel of Glengarry of 1812 has been removed. I brough it back.

Finally, the in section about "literature", under "poetry", there were 4 lines of text written by Ewen Henderson, both in Gaelic and English. They have been completely wiped out (actually, they are well hidded as a foot note).

It does look to me somebody made some major Highland Clearances to this article.

ICE77 (talk) 06:10, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

To answer some of your comments:

Generally the "old" article, as it existed a little over a year ago had some very serious deficiencies. It very much followed the ideas of John Prebble, the English/Canadian journalist who wrote the Highland Clearances in 1963. This treatment of the subject is totally rejected by Historians - to pick out one thread of criticism: "Most of the documentation in the book relies on these earlier works with little evidence of original research by the author. Almost all of this passionate oeuvre was produced at the height of Victorian controversies about clearances between the 1840s and the 1880s.." (Devine, T. M.. The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900 (p. 5). Penguin Books Ltd.) (Devine says quite a bit more about those who adhere to Prebble's thinking, but you might find it offensive if I quoted it to you here.) There has been a substantial body of historical work on the subject since then, by academic historians such as Eric Richards, Robert Dodgshon, Tom Devine, Allan Macinnes and James Hunter. All of these have spent a large part of successful academic careers working on this subject. The job of the Wikipedia editor is to reflect the consensus among academic historians on the subject of the article. Hence the need for changes. These changes are ongoing, and it is a slow process, because behind each edit there is a substantial amount of reading. To go into detail on your points:

(1) Please state which bits of the Social engineering section are not clear.

(2) This part of the article probably follows the source too closely. The source states that there were partial crop failures in the 2 years shown, but is not clear if this was due to blight. Since the occurrence of blight in Europe was such a pivotal event, it is my presumption that these partial failures were due to something else. I plan to take a look at Devine's book on the Highland Potato Famine to see if this makes this point any clearer. The key fact is that potato blight arrived in the Highlands one year later than in Ireland.

(3) Yes, the section on the Sutherland Clearances is way too long. An outstanding job is to create a separate article for this (as was suggested by another editor on the talk page some while ago) and leave a shorter version here. The thinking was that replacing the relatively uninformative section that was there before with the overlong text was the lesser of two evils.

Additionally, other major clearance events need to be shown, but also with the caveat made by, in particular, Eric Richards: the contested clearances get an over-representation in newspapers and history books whilst the majority were met with sullen acquiescence.

(4) The Political responses section should really be deleted. It has little relevance to the topic. It might have some minor relevance to the article on Karl Marx - but I don't think the subject influenced Marx's political theories in any way.

(5) I think you have missed the point about the status of those who were cleared. They were tenants. Therefore the applicable law is that of tenancy. This is Scottish law, which is different from English and Welsh law. I think you also misunderstand who was carrying out the evictions. It was not the British Government.The evictions were carried out by the landowners. On re-reading the article, it specifically says this in the second sentence. Do you feel the article needs to be clearer still on this point?

(6) See the general points made above.

(7) Repression of Jacobitism. In order to follow the thinking of academic historians, this section was deleted and replaced with the last paragraph of the Clanship section. This gives appropriate weight to the subject, matching the views of these historians. (WP:DUE)

(8) The account by Donald MacLeod is a primary source (WP:PRIMARY). Furthermore he has been labelled by at least one historian as someone who frequently employed hyperbole for passionate emphasis (Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances) In order to convey the same message as MacLeod's account, the article states: ".... used fire to destroy cleared houses. This came after a spell of dry weather, in which the turf and stone walls of the houses had dried out, so that even the turf in the walls ignited, adding to the blaze of the thatch and roof timbers. Multiplied over the large number of properties that were cleared, this made a horrific impression on those who observed it. The public relations disaster that Loch had wished to avoid now followed, with the Observer newspaper running the headline: "the Devastation of Sutherland". 1819 became known as "the year of the burnings"..." This has James Hunter as the WP:RS in his book Set Adrift Upon the World: the Sutherland Clearances. We therefore replace a primary source with something based on a source written by a history professor (I think now emeritus) at the University of the Highlands and Islands. There is more one could say to criticise Donald MacLeod's appropriateness as a source, but I don't think any more is needed.

(9) The poetry section is outside my area of expertise - so any comment on this would have to come from others.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:14, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

the iceman

--51.9.204.15 (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2019 (UTC)Bold text--51.9.204.15 (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2019 (UTC)--51.9.204.15 (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2019 (UTC)--51.9.204.15 (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2019 (UTC)dbfcjndxmi;wojdkc'pewmcouedn

Reversion of 07:11, 13 April 2019‎ edit

Whilst the involvement of Scottish and Highland emigrants is an important part of the colonial history of Australia, I don't think the article on the Highland Clearances is the place for any extensive mention of this. Beyond being off-topic, reasons include:

(1) Australia was not the only place that incoming Highlanders had a harmful impact on the indigenous population. There are well documented examples in Canada, and the involvement of Scots in running slave plantations in the Caribbean is a subject dodged by many (Robert Burns nearly became someone integral to the running of a slave-based enterprise - see also Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection (editor and contributor Tom Devine, Edinburgh University Press, 2015)). To cover just the Australian situation in an article about the Highland Clearances would provide improper balance; to cover the impact of all emigrant Scots on the receiving countries would take up too much space and worsen the "off-topic" problem.

(2) As as been made clear by a good number of historians, many of those who emigrated from the Highlands were "voluntary" emigrants. (I have put this word in quotes as there is a sliding scale of how "voluntary" their departure was, from speculative adventurers who hoped to make their fortune in the wider world, through to those who decided to go before they were evicted. Where you put the cut-off point on "voluntary" is a matter of personal judgement.) Look, for instance, at the closing words of the preface to After the Hector: The Scottish Pioneers of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, 1773-1852 by Lucille Campey .

The fact remains that most emigration was voluntary and self-financed. Emigration became an unstoppable force. This combination of push and pull factors brought thousands of Scots to the province. They laid down a rich and deep seam of Scottish culture which continues to flourish in eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton to this day.

Whilst the Australian emigration was later and somewhat different from that to Canada, there is still an unknown but significant number of self-financed voluntary emigrants from the Highlands to Australia - and they were largely trying to escape famine. See the references in the Highland Clearances, particularly those at the end of the Famine subsection, for more on this.

(3) There is a tendency among Scottish emigrant communities to latch on to any hint of Highland lineage in their past and make the presumption that this includes eviction and clearance. It is particularly dangerous to muddle the actions of Lowland and Highland emigrants - so putting discussion in an article specifically about the Highlands would be wrong. The presumptions made by descendants of Scottish emigrants is forthrightly addressed in The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900 by Tom Devine - see page 11 for his discussion of how Americans have developed the myths of their Scottish origins. To further similar presumptions about Australia would be unhelpful.

I suggest that the subject matter that has been removed would be better placed in Scottish Diaspora or Scottish Australians.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:18, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Reply: The first of you three reasons you give for my contribution being "off-topic" is that Australia wasn't the only place Highlanders had a negative impact on Indigenous people. This suggests instead of deleting my post, another post on dispossession of those in the area now known as Nova Scotia etc. should be added. The second reason is that some were voluntary, yet Angus McMillan (as a example) in his memoirs gives undeniable evidence that he and other members of his family were forced to emigrate. Your third reason implies that the Highland Clearances may not have occured at all. None of your reasons are close to legitimate in negating commenting on the legacy of the Highland Clearances on British colonialism and the consequent effects upon Indigenous peoples. (Dippiljemmy (talk) 09:35, 13 April 2019 (UTC))

I am sorry if you did not find my explanation clear enough. I did not give any reasons why the actions of Scots in Australia was "off topic" as I felt it was pretty obvious. The points I made added to the off-topic argument.

The Highland Clearances article is already at a size where one needs to be careful about adding to it, to stop it being over-long. You are trying to introduce material about the consequences of the clearances, not the clearances themselves. It is also clear that the actions in Australia that you wish to include involves Scots who may or may not have been Highlanders and may or may not have been cleared from a tenancy in the Highlands.

I have given you arguments that your material would be better placed in other articles. However, instead of posting on the talk page and waiting for a discussion to develop a consensus, you have simply reinstated and added to the material in question. You may want to reconsider your actions, self revert your most recent edits and see what discussion develops on this talk page.

I note, in passing, that Angus McMillan is a primary source (WP:PRIMARY) and your reliance on such could be interpreted as WP:OR. I also note that historians who specialise in Highland history have developed the historiography of their subject by not relying on anecdotal "sound-bite" sources, but with a broad analysis of all available sources. You will particularly find this approach in many of the more recent cited sources in this article.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:26, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

In absence of any engagement in discussion by Dippiljemmy, I have again removed the off-topic text. Given the length of this article, I do not think there is room to cover the actions of Scot in the countries to which they emigrated - especially since in many cases the actions of Highlanders cannot reliably be separated from those of other Scots. A briefer mention of the subject might have a place in the section titled Demographics, so that Australian content would then sit alongside Canadian and USA material. However, it is important that proper balance is maintained, so conciseness is key. This is why it would be a lot easier to simply cover the subject in a different article on Scots in Australia.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:29, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Ethnic cleansing cite needed

The lead seemed to be promoting Devine's comments on Prebble, and insinuating that Prebble's book "led to the popular misconceptions that the Highland clearances were a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing" and/or "that British authorities in London played a major, persistent role in carrying them out." This certainly isn't my reading of Prebble's book, as the back page blurb puts it "the Highlanders suffered at the hands of their own chiefs." Does Devine cite passages that support his description, and/or relevant page numbers in Prebble's book? . . . dave souza, talk 22:35, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

What the text in the article is trying to convey is the sort of popular view that was instigated by Prebble's book. Regardless of what he said, (and most of that is taken directly from the highly political campaign material of those involved in the crofter's war), the interpretation that is applied by those who just read this work goes a long way.

You say that you have read Prebble. Have you read the referenced work by Devine? This is where the "ethnic cleansing" comment comes from.

I don't think that the article is trying to "insinuate" anything about Prebble. It is trying to state that though his work was pivotal in bringing the subject to attention, its content was not researched with anything approaching the proper academic rigour that one would expect of a historian. (To be fair to Prebble he never claimed to be a historian.) This is a demonstrable fact and a good quality reference is cited to support that. Devine goes on to discuss how many interpret Prebble. (Remember, the phrase "ethnic cleansing" had not been coined when the book was written.) Devine's remarks are not some throw-away comment - they are based on a study of how people obtain their views of Highland/Scottish history.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:15, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

That's why I asked for detail of what Devine wrote. Fortunately the pages in question are on Google books and contradict the inaccurate insinuations I was questioning:
Devine doesn't label Prebble a journalist, but does describe "the popular appeal of the biggest selling Scottish history book of all time, John Prebble's The Highland Clearances, published for the first time in 1963. Since then it has achieved worldwide sales of more than a quarter of a million copies and remains to this day the most widely read".T. M. Devine (4 October 2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. Penguin Books Limited. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-14-198594-7.
Devine goes on to say "Since Prebble wrote, others have followed his lead and sometimes gone even further in the intensity of their rhetoric. Clearances in some texts have taken on a modern meaning as harbingers of twentieth-century ethnic cleansing while others even claim in works published over the last few decades that a genocide had been committed in the Highlands...."T. M. Devine (4 October 2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. Penguin Books Limited. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-14-198594-7.
He makes good points about longstanding popular publications on the topic, both in 19th century political agitation for land reform, and in early 20th century fiction, so I've added that, while clarifying that it was other unnamed authors who wrote of ethnic cleansing etc. . . dave souza, talk 11:55, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Noted, but I hope that the limitations of quotes in Google books did not give you too abbreviated a version of Devine's comments. The page range I gave for the reference is the first 14 pages of the source, but there is also annex A, which gives some of the more bizarre and extreme characterisations of the events of the clearances (and, to be clear, none of them penned by Prebble). The intent was always to have an entire section in the article on the view of the clearances in popular culture and how that conflicts with the very firmly established views of academic historians - but that is an outstanding task. Hence the section of the article that you are criticising would probably look a lot better if it were summarising the yet-to-be-written section. There are other references that one could use for such a section - including a (rather tedious to read) book on how Americans view their Scottish heritage.

The fact that Prebble was a journalist comes from the many obituaries available of him. Note that Devine makes clear that Prebble called himself a historical writer (page 8 of the cited source), choosing not to adopt the phrase "popular historian" (my inference of Devine saying "Prebble himself never claimed to be a historian" - also page 8).

The danger for the article is that if you say to much about Prebble in the lead, you will give his views a level of validity to the casual reader that does not reflect the position of academic historians. (Those wrapped up in Wikipedia protocols would go on about "balance".) The article is already over-long - so I doubt that many who consult Wikipedia read anything approaching the whole thing.

I think it is a serious mistake to try and deal with the likes of Alexander Mackenzie in the lead - especially since he was not writing at the time of the clearances, but more than 20 years after, and as part of a political campaign. His works are particularly warned of as being only for cautious use by Eric Richards. The contemporary criticism of the clearances was mainly in newspapers, and much of that was also part of the very adept political campaigning by people who were presumed not to be capable of running a PR campaign.

Generally, much of the changes you have introduced may have a place in the main body of the article, but not in the lead. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:32, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

I was able to read Devine's introduction up to the point where he rather remarkably says that [pre 1967] kilts were "favoured almost exclusively by the county set and Scottish military", my mum made my kilt in early 60s Leith where it was not that uncommon, and also standard scout parade kit, certainly not county set and not very military.
Agree these are points to be expanded in the body of the article, it's valid that the lead should note "substantial distance between the understanding of the Highland clearances held by historians and the popular view of these events", while making it clear that popular views go back to the outset and were significant in late 18th century politics, remaining part of literature and the arts. Devine makes a strong point of Prebble's significance in expanding interest in the topic and alerting historians.
Don't know if we really need the stuff about "ethnic cleansing", there doesn't seem to be anything in the body of the article. Maybe the "legacy" section needs expanded. Unsurprising that scholarship has advanced in the last fifty years, Prebble seems to have got quite a lot of it right but don't think this article is the place for a detailed critique of his very readable book. Worth being cautious about all histories, on television Devine evoked the [unhistorical] past presence of slaves in the Greenock sugar shed which was only built in the 1880s, but I'm glad to see the introductory section of his book is much more reasonable. . . dave souza, talk 20:07, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

reversion of Hunter's "Set Adrift Upon the World" in Further reading section

I have reverted the addition of Hunter's Set Adrift Upon the World to the Further reading section for several reasons:
(1) The Further Reading section should be limited in size (Wikipedia:Further reading)
(2) The existing list was carefully chosen out of a number of candidates to provide works that would broadly cover the subject, with some selected additions with warning notes about their interpretation. Hunter already has one work in that list; adding another would shift the balance of the list.
(3) Further reading should not simply replicate the references already listed for the article (and Set Adrift Upon the World is in that list of references - so this work would be apparent to the reader). There are already some works that are general references and in the Further reading section, but their inclusion in this section is due to their importance in covering the subject matter of the article.
(4) It is hard to see what special quality Set Adrift Upon the World adds to the subject. It is a worthwhile book, written by an academic historian who works in this subject area. However, it's influence is minimal compared to the example of Hunter's work that has made it into this section.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:44, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

ethnic cleansing.

Even in the article it is accepted that some look at the highland clearances as ethnic cleansing. But the authors of this article discount that. They build on other works, that deny that ethnic cleansing happened.

The problem here for me is, that what happened in the highlands ticks quite a few of the boxes that define ethnic cleansing. I see a tendency in the Wikipedia to often follow the mildest view of history in regards to most of the mainly white English speaking countries.

There was a population with a different culture, definitively looked upon as inferior by there English speaking countrymen. It is no question, that the population of the highlands were living in a different culture. The clan system the highlanders were used was not of landowner tenant, but leader to clan member.

A population with a different language. The highland population were Gaelic speakers.

The people were evicted from their ancestral lands, having lived there for centuries. Quite a few were evicted by force. Houses were burned or otherwise destroyed. Some people were killed. Quite a few people lost their livelihoods, as the areas, or the ideas of new industries were no able to sustain them. Some people were forced to emigrate. Yes, some left voluntarily, but was there an option?

To point to the legality of the clearances is a bit hypocritical, as it was the purpose of those laws to change the clan chief to land owner and the clan member to tenant. It is also unquestionable that the aim of those laws was the eradication of the clan system.

The above are facts, that are mainly undisputed. How has the decision come about who's views are followed here.Jochum (talk) 21:36, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

The answer to this criticism is probably best summed up by WP:HISTRS. The Highland Clearances were a historical event. Any article should be based largely on the interpretation of those events by academic historians. The sources for the article are where you will find, for instance, the Scottish historian with (arguably) the greatest reputation, Tom Devine, mentioning the extrapolation of the position taken by John Prebble. That reported extrapolation is where you will find Devine briefly use the words "ethnic cleansing". Since Prebble's thesis in his the Highland Clearances is pretty much demolished by Devine, it is quite clear that any extension of those ideas is equally unacceptable from an academic historical viewpoint. You will find this, and the broader subject of the popular versus academic view of the subject in the introduction to Devine's The Scottish Clearances, a History of the Dispossessed. Overall, Devine is highly critical of the "popular" interpretation of the clearances, which, based on research, he is able to say is derived from Prebble's work and a bit of fiction, and absolutely no properly conducted historical work.

The article relies on other historians as sources. James Hunter is perhaps the one who is perhaps most in touch with the history of the clearances from the point of view of those evicted. Neither his Last of the Free nor Set Adrift Upon the World: the Sutherland Clearances use the term ethnic cleansing. Many other historians have been read and studied in the compilation of the article. The late Eric Richards was an academic who worked on both the clearances (very extensively) and emigration generally. He did not label the clearances as ethnic cleansing. A standard textbook on Scottish history, Tom Lynch's Scotland: a New History does not use the term. The list is longer than this - look at all the references for the article and every one of them has been checked for their overall view of the clearances. There is an extensive representation of academic historians in the references to the article. If you do no like the guidance given in WP:HISTRS, you should consider that a link to this essay is found in WP:RS, where you will also find WP:SCHOLARSHIP.

The overall subject of the Highland Clearances has a huge amount of non-academic material written about it. Many things that are stated as facts in those non-academic sources can be demonstrated to be wrong, over-statements/misinterpretations, politically motivated assumptions or other distortions. These have no place in this encyclopaedia.

There is no hypocrisy in the article stating the legal position that affected clearance. The laws may well be hypocritical, but the statement of what those laws said is not. (And, it is worth adding, the problem laws were Scottish, not English - and they are essentially still in existence today, so causing unfair treatment of Scottish farmers in the 21st century.)

How has the decision come about who's views are followed here. The answer: this is how Wikipedia works, an encyclopaedia based on reliable sources. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:23, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

It takes some time reading sources,to answer your statement fully. But on one point you are in complete error. The laws that aloud the clearances to happen do not exist in the same way today. The crofters act from 1886 changed the situation quite a bit. Furthermore I did not ask about the working of the Wikipedia, I am well aware of that and how certain posters fight vigorous for their own view accepting certain sources, but not other sources. I asked who did make the decisions what view to follow. Your answer is quite beside the point. And in regards to academic historians, you sound pretty naive, as if they often do not have their own knife to grind. We have heard many news about the Armenian genocide by the Turks, but you do not find Turkish historians calling it a genocide. Local historians do not like their own country being called out.80.248.23.250 (talk) 23:57, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

(1) Scottish farmers under threat of eviction from the same laws as governed the clearances:[3] and this one (fortunately ceased due to publicity affecting the landlord's decision)[4]. The crofter's legislation only refers to crofts in the "crofting region" and crofts have to be of a small size to qualify for inclusion in the rules.
(2) Some of the references have American authors, 1 set of references is written by an English expat living in Australia. There is a broad level of consensus among historians on the subject - though of course with the expected level of differences on some of the detail.
(3) Turkey is not a country where someone can safely express views on high profile political subjects without those views aligning with the government - are you suggesting that situation applies in Scotland?
(4) Take a look at the political views of James Hunter [5] and then compare with what he says when talking about the clearances, for instance [6]. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:29, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

No, I do not expect somebody to get into trouble for expressing different views in Scotland. Yes I do believe that local historians are biased against looking at their own History to harsh. Having Scotts having done it to Scots makes it just more of a problem. You see it in a wider context. Ask for example an traditional Icelandic historian about the farming society in Iceland until about 1908, one of the worst examples of how long the remnants of the institution called serfdom hang around. If you have different views of that time you are harshly called out.

The point here is, the indigenous people living in the Highlands of Scotland were removed from their ancestral lands, their language mainly disappeared, their culture vanished. One has to present good arguments not to call it ethnic cleansing to view it the other way around. And I have no problem finding literature that call it that.Jochum (talk) 08:52, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

If you believe that Scottish historians do not represent reliable sources for this article, you are going against the Wikipedia consensus on how history articles should be edited, as laid out in WP:HISTRS and other Wikipedia content guidelines as mentioned above. If you want to argue about how Wikipedia works, I suggest that the talk page of a single article is not the place to do it. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:14, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

You clearly want to have it both ways. Regarding my example regarding the Armenian genocide you argue against Turkish historians, in the case of the clearances you argue that the Wikipedia does not allow to argue against local historians. You have to decide what of those 180° opposing argument you want to use.Jochum (talk) 17:14, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I am very sorry that you do not understand the arguments laid out above. Let's go through them one more time.
(1) How Wikipedia works. It is an encyclopaedia based on reliable sources (WP:RS). For articles that cover history, WP:HISTRS is the appropriate guidance. That means that the majority of the sources should ideally be academic historians specialising in the subject of the article. That is who the sources of the article are.
(2) You seem to think that there is some sort of biased conspiracy among Scottish historians to distort their account of events. The sources used in the article include: Eric Richards, who was Welsh by birth, but after graduating spent his working career at Flinders University in Australia working mostly on the history of emigration around the world; Tom Devine - if you follow the link you will learn all about him; as a more minor reference, Marianne McLean, a Canadian; and many more - all fully qualified historians and the majority of them with very distinguished careers and highly acknowledged publications. I don't know if you are targeting the ethnicity of the historians concerned, or the precise field that they work in, but a broad brush accusation, with absolutely no evidence, is completely meaningless. I have pointed out to you the feelings of historian James Hunter on the clearances - he clearly has the position of the evicted gaels and the remaining crofters close to his heart. But his historical work is aligned with the other sources used in the article (with the expected differences of opinion on some aspects). There is a consensus among historians on the overall story of the clearances.
(3) Your comparison of the Highland Clearances with the Armenian Genocide is potentially very offensive to those affected by the latter. Many, many Armenians died in the latter event. Many were deliberately killed. In the Highlands, I am not aware of a single instance of anyone being shot during clearance activity - and if I have missed any account of such an incident, it is still extremely rare. A similar chasm of difference exist between the freedom of expression allowed in Turkey on the Armenian genocide and that allowed in the UK on the Highland clearances.
(4) I think you have to ask yourself if your repeated comments on this subject are part of an effort to make a better encyclopaedia (in line with Wikipedia's stated aims and methods), or whether you are just simply airing your own opinions. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:49, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

I know very well how how the Wikipedia works. You seem to know that your arguments do not stand up so you denigrate somebody who has a different opinion. Wikipedia has no strict system whose historical accounts to choose.

Black marks on the Scottish or British history are not acceptable, we see it widely in the Wikipedia were the events in the British history are white washed. Here is an historical event, the removal of the Gaelic Highland population from the Scottish highlands. We have a book like Prepple's book and that throws a bad light on the Scottish history. So "serious" historians went to clean up the black mark.

The article talks about: "However, a large body of thoroughly researched academic work now exists on the subject, differing significantly from the accounts of Prebble and his successors—to the extent that there is even an argument that the balance of work in Scottish history is now excessively tilted toward the Highlands." There are two things insinuated. Prebble´s account was not well researched and the new historical accounts paint a true picture.

Authors writing in the Wikipedia have to choose what writings to believe, if there are conflicting accounts. Newer books and younger historians do not replace older books and older historians per se. Prebble´s view on this historical event has not disappeared. What stands is, that a population different in language and culture from the ruling class was removed from the area they had settled for hundreds of years. If it was "legal" at that time does not really matters, as legality does not make an unjust event just.Jochum (talk) 13:31, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

There are some important and basic points to address here:
...two things insinuated. Prebble´s account was not well researched... Firstly, Prebble never claimed to be a historian. By profession he was a journalist. He described himself as a "historical writer". Where his methods of working have been looked at, the conclusion reached is that his work was not well researched. For examples, a leading Scottish historian:
"Prebble’s perspective on clearances had been fashioned by almost a century of polemic, political and fictional writing which stretched back into the Victorian era. Most of the documentation in the book relies on these earlier works with little evidence of original research by the author. Almost all of this passionate oeuvre was produced at the height of Victorian controversies about clearances between the 1840s and the 1880s. It was deeply sympathetic to the people who had been displaced, strongly supportive of the vital need for land reform and bitterly hostile to what was seen as oppressive and brutal landlordism. However, there was one significant and salient gap in the genre. No academic history of clearance based on original sources was published until the second half of the twentieth century." (Devine, T. M.. The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900 (p. 5). Penguin Books Ltd.) In short, Prebble was simply recycling the political propaganda that was put out at the time of the crofter's war. I appreciate that you are operating on a theory that Scottish historians are wrong, but see below.

Newer books and younger historians do not replace older books and older historians... Take a look at WP:OLDSOURCES. Prebble's book was published in 1963. That is 57 years ago - just about enough time to fit in 2 generations of academic historians. Prebble was not a contemporary writer. Nor is he up-to-date. (And, as above, he never claimed to be a historian.) Please also read WP:HISTRS, where you will find the link: Wikipedia:Reliable source examples#History. In short, the guidance for Wikipedia historical articles is that newer works do replace older work. Note that these are academic works - published in peer reviewed articles or books written by historians with a substantial body of published peer-reviewed work.

..."serious" historians went to clean up the black mark... You appear to be suggesting that the entire body of historians who work on this period of Scottish history are involved in some sort of conspiracy to give an account of the Highland clearances that is untrue. If you were to delve a little more deeply into the subject, you would find that the courses taught on this bit of history at Scottish universities fully accepts the accounts of the leading historians who have written on the subject. You may find Prebble on the reading lists for some of these courses, but the purpose of that is to teach students how to assess the sources that they should use. Do not suggest that Scottish Universities are able to perpetrate some sort of academic fraud in isolation. Scottish history is taught elsewhere in the world. There is no outcry from academia outside Scotland about these views. If you want to take on the entire academic consensus on the Highland clearances, there is no point in you starting in Wikipedia. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:34, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

2 reverts with similar reasoning

I have reverted [7] and [8]. Both reverts are for very similar reasons - in short that the removed/questioned text recaps material elsewhere in the article so as to put the section in the appropriate context.

To expand on this: the section on discrimination is fairly lengthy and was developed through a process of dialogue with some other editors. The problem for this article is that many readers come to it with a number of preconceptions about the subject. You will find previous talk page comment about part of the historiography being the misapprehension of many non-historians - fed largely by a very limited reading list. Taking into account the fact that most consultations of Wikipedia articles are simply the reader dipping into a few sections, a lengthy article like this does need context for a section that may be focussed on in isolation. The economic drivers of clearance are covered in the second paragraph of the lead, in the subsection Clanship in Economic and Social Context (3rd paragraph) - also in Landlord debt in the section Causes. The Highland Potato Famine - discussed in the sub-section Famine - hopefully makes clear that the reason for paying assisted passages was to avoid the continuing costs of famine relief for a destitute population. So, this is not a "bold statement" - it is simply a recap of much of the rest of the article - and the recap is there for the reader who simply reads the discrimination sub-section.

The words "old-style" - referring to "peasant farming" are important because, technically, peasant farming existed before and after the clearances. As is explained in the article, the "old-style" run-rig and shared grazing based agriculture was very different from crofting. (And this touches on one of the common misconceptions on the subject. Peasant farming did not disappear with the clearances - it just got a new name: "crofting".) I feel the words have value as reinstated. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:10, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Peasant farming disappeared in the area were the clearances were done. It does not matter if you call it peasant farming or crofting or whatever. One point in the article is completely misleading. I would call it a falsehood. Population did not increase in the areas cleared. Population increased in certain areas, where the removed people moved to.Jochum (talk) 13:40, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Please cite an RS to support your assertion.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:39, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

rights of the people

One main point to the differences in the view of the clearances is, if one believes that the gaelic population of the highlands had a historical right to live in this area. The laws of that time did allow the owners of the land to remove the gaelic population. But how did this laws came to be? What allowed the government to take the common land from the population and gave the sole right of usage to the clan chiefs becoming lords and landowners?Jochum (talk) 13:51, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

WP:FORUM ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:45, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Removal of New Zealand from the info box

I have removed mention of New Zealand from the "outcomes" section of the info box. This is because:
(1) There is no mention of New Zealand anywhere else in the article.
(2) There is a recognised myth that many of those with Scottish heritage in New Zealand have some association with the Highland Clearances. This is part of the rather common romanticism of the subject and is rarely borne out in fact. Those who did emigrate from the Highlands to the colony generally did so after the Highland Clearances. Some arrivals in New Zealand were the result of clearance activity, but that was in Shetland: not part of the Highlands. This is well discussed in this thesis[9]. There were, of course, Highlanders who had witnessed clearance activity who went on to live in New Zealand - but there was a substantial period of time between the clearances and their emigration: any argument of a close connection is tenuous.
(3) Unless there is an authoritative academic source that indicates otherwise, New Zealand does not qualify as a place where cleared Highlanders emigrated to. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:48, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Revisionist

It seems one editor, @ThoughtIdRetired: has rewritten this article and changed it's point of view significantly from the 2018 version here so that the views and justifications of the landlords are given a much greater prominence. There have been many contradicting edits in the page history which the said editor has reverted. Most of the sources are offline but the Brittania Encyclopedia shows a very different interpetation, see here - the Brittanica article was recently revised by the manager of the history section. Atlantic306 (talk) 01:05, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

The biography of the manager of the history section of Brittanica reads as follows:
"Jeff Wallenfeldt, manager of Geography and History, has worked as an editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1992. Previously he wrote rock criticism for Cleveland’s Scene magazine, worked for study-abroad programs in England, and was an editor at CineBooks, publisher of The Motion Picture Guide."
There is no mention of him having any experience or academic qualifications in history.

By comparison, the sources on which the current article is base are largely written by academic historians of particular note. These include:

Tom Devine
Eric Richards [10][11]
Robert Dodgshon [12]
James Hunter
Michael Lynch

The intent of the article is to comply with WP:HISTRS. Here you will find "Historical articles on Wikipedia should use scholarly works where possible." The criticism of Atlantic306 that these sources are offline is not really relevant. (If everything that Wikipedia includes is available online, what is the point of Wikipedia?) The criticism does suggest that the complainant has not read any of the cited sources. The cited sources feature in all Scottish university undergraduate reading lists for courses that cover the relevant parts of history. The balance of the views and justifications of the landlords is intended to match the article's sources. It is a feature of the subject that the vast majority of the sources available to historians working in the subject are the records of landowners. That is why editors must rely on the interpretative skills of professional historians in dealing with these primary sources. You can find historians like Eric Richards (and, if I remember correctly, several others) discuss the challenges of interpretation by historians in these circumstances. James Hunter is a historian who, away from strict academic disciplines, is extremely sympathetic towards the views of those evicted in the clearances (see some of his older twitter posts, for instance), yet his academic work follows that of the others. (There is one caveat about Hunter's work - his ground-breaking The Making of the Crofting Community is, in its first edition, highly critical of landlords' uncaring behaviour in the Highland Potato Famine. The facts supporting this criticism were completely demolished by Devine's The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century - as is acknowledged by Hunter in the preface to later editions of The Making of the Crofting Community. This preface actually features in the reading lists of some Scottish university history departments as it is used in teaching students the interpretation of sources.)

This aspect of Scottish history is a highly emotive subject for some, and a huge volume of material has been written about it. Unfortunately much of that is specifically written for the non-academic audience of tourist bookshops (this is not my own interpretation - you can see an analysis of the collision between these works and proper historiography in The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600–1900). That is why the article does come under occasional attack from people who have read one of the books written for the tourist market. The job of Wikipedia is to treat this dispassionately as a historical subject.

Whilst I accept that one editor has disputed the content of the article, I do not see that dispute has any real substance if we wish to comply with Wikipedia:Reliable source examples#History or WP:HISTRS. In absence of any arguments to support doing anything other than follow the cited sources of the article, I will, in due course, remove the "Disputed" template from the article (WP:WTRMT #3). ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Reading and comparing the difference article from 2018 and the article of now, I would agree the article has definitely been edited heavily towards a certain historical perspective. Also, potentially concerning is that the references have been reduced down from 67 to 51 in that time. It may be just cleanup but still I think it would warrant a closer look from some other editors with a better knowledge of the Clearances. As a general reader, I found the last paragraph of the lead almost anti-NPOV and have rewritten it slightly. I also observed the article is heavy on several references but no page numbers are given to support such a large body of cited text from a few sources. I have add the NPOV dispute template to the article as it is clear further discussion is needed. Coldupnorth (talk) 09:09, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

My reply coincided with the reply beforehand. ThoughtIdRetired, you should not remove the disputed template from the article please until a consensus has been reached as there are at least two editors who see issues here. Coldupnorth (talk) 09:12, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Coldupnorth:Please would you list the references that you feel should have page numbers? It is my impression that the sources that you do not like are the ones that all have page numbers. You will note that I have asked on User talk:Coldupnorth whether you have read any of the cited sources and how the article differs from what they say.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:25, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I neither like or dislike references, rather to ensure they are accurate, representative and appropriately cited. Looking back at the ownership of the article, I can see you have been attempting to own this article for years and reverted a lot of edits from others. It may be worth just taking a step back for a few days to see what others have to say. Coldupnorth (talk) 09:33, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Question carried across from User talk:Coldupnorth: how does reliance on NPOV support your edits? You have edited[13] an analysis, by a noted historian, of the difference between the historiography and the popular view of the subject? Wikipedia now has a different emphasis on the subject from the cited source. I would be grateful if you would answer some of these questions. I note your remark about ownership. At no point have genuine RSs been put forward to contradict the main points of the article - it is a subject that attracts emotive reaction (see cited sources for that). All I am looking for is strict adherence to the way Wikipedia expects a historical subject to be treated. "Ownership" is a common call by a generalist readers when another editor has taken the trouble to read the sources. It is not clear to me if you have read the article's sources, you certainly do not express an opinion on the credentials of those who have written them. Clear, reasoned, RS based criticism is very welcome. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:43, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

....and I have to go to work now. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both for your responses. I agree that more input from other editors is needed. Also I will raise the points at Brittanica (it is possible experts were consulted by the manager mentioned earlier) and will attempt to consult the Highland history societies, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 00:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. Looking at the article again, I feel balance would be improved if there was a section (under "individual events") that covered the actions of John Gordon of Cluny. He is the landlord whose callous behaviour stands out above all others. It should be clear that he was unusual, but he certainly was uncaring in the extreme. (It was always the intention of this editor to include this material - but just never got round to it.)

The other inclusion I have considered is material based on On the Crofter's Trail 978-1841584553 - this book is not written by an academic historian and I have not found any academics citing the main point of this work. However, it is the result of some interesting research, where the author went to visit the areas to which Highlanders emigrated to discover the local feelings about the clearances - especially trying to discover what the older generation and the generations before them had thought. The interesting discovery (as I recollect it - it is some while since I have read this book) is a universal view that emigration away from the Highlands was the best thing that happened to the family. This, of course, does not fit with the folklore of Highland families that remained in Scotland. On balance, I feel a section on On the Crofter's Trail does not meet the criteria for an RS for any part of the article - but it is nevertheless informative to any editor.

The other intention that was not followed through was to substantially reduce the amount of coverage of the Sutherland clearances. These might be by far the largest organised series of clearances, but there is too much detail which should be moved to a separate, new article. That is an idea that, if you look back through the talk page archive, was suggested by another editor - and I fully agree with the suggestion.

If you are looking for Highland History society input, something that is readily available, and is very close to what you are looking for is this[14] video of Eric Richards giving a talk in Bettyhill (the epicentre of the Sutherland clearances). (There is another talk of his on the Highland Estate Factor during the clearances[15] ) ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:35, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I've just spent a few evenings reading a few of the sources given here in detail. Firstly, I want to say that overall, ThoughtIdRetired, we may have done you a disservice here. My understanding of the Highland Clearances before reading this article and the sources was based more on the emotive work by the author John Prebble, as well as popular culture. I've just finished the book 'Debating the Highland Clearances' by Eric Richards and the general approach there, which appears balanced, agrees with the historical arguments given here specifically re overpopulation, economic change, landlord debt etc. I was genuinely surprised about the growth in population, despite the ongoing clearances at the time. I've checked a few of the Devine references and they are fairly attributed and also reflect the overall analysis. In honesty, I guess I had the preconception that this was landlords vs the people and that anything else was historical revisionism against social justice. While terrible tragedy and hardship was inflicted by those owners, I now agree that the overall analysis here is factually accurate, at least compared to a few of the major historical sources. However, I do think we need to work on improving the neutrality of the lead to better reflect the historiographical evolution of recent decades. Importantly we need to comment with sources that balance the need for the landlords who wished to improve their economic situation against the wider social and economic causes in the Highlands. I will look at a few minor changes to the lead to start to help with this using the Richards and Devine works among others. Coldupnorth (talk) 12:36, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment, Coldupnorth. Just a couple of points: (1) Debating the Highland Clearances is a teaching aid for university history courses. The actual course that it is used with would provide the final guidance for using any of the information in the work - there are one or two simple traps in it to catch the unwary student. (2) Eric Richard's writing style (in his other works) sometimes presents a range of views and then, ultimately, he gives his opinion on what he thinks is the correct one. Therefore it is very important to make sure you read his conclusions: he is not well adapted to the wikipedia editor looking for a quick quote.

Incidentally, as you have probably noticed I have removed the article's quality ratings as, if I understand the system correctly, this should trigger a re-rating. I have also stuck a note on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History

...and changes made to article are noted - ultimately the article should really have a "view in popular culture" or similar section. This could deal with the derision that some historians have for comparing the clearances to the holocaust and what the politicians say - but in the context of those who challenge the article, it may be a steep hill to climb. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:47, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning re Richards. I have added a few supported additions to the lead and the main body. If you think they have been interpreted incorrectly, please change accordingly or let me know. I think the additions to the lead help clarify the context of the rest of the article. Specifically, I think the emigration/agriculture paragraph needed a sentence to set the context and I also think the last paragraph needed some clearer wording. I wasn't even aware of the Lowland Clearances until reading this article. Your suggestion for the popular culture section is a good idea. Likewise, you could also consider an historiography section, explaining the context of the debate after the lead. I still think there is scope for additional sources but I also think my issues re neutrality/factuality do not warrant the templates now and from my perspective could be removed in time pending any further comments from Atlantic306 or other editors. Many thanks Coldupnorth (talk) 14:16, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I support the changes made and the proposed additions by ThoughtIdRetired and Coldupnorth and have removed the tags, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 01:10, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments/edits. I am deeply involved in the reading for another completely unrelated set of articles at the moment – more revisionism of misconceptions, but without the emotive element :) – plus lots of non-wikipedia stuff. I will get back into the subject of this article a.s.a.p. and give it some attention, especially the outstanding actions that have been ignored for so long.

On the matter of sources, I am reasonably confident that the major historians in the subject have been used in the article. It seems to me that the history departments of Scottish universities have decided that the Clearances have "been done" by others and they work in other (perhaps closely related) areas. For instance, on Factor (Scotland) you will see Annie Tindley cited. She is doing very similar work to Richards et al, sifting through the archives of Highland estates, yet working in a very slightly different period. I doubt that there will be further major works on the clearances, but having stuck my neck out on this, I will probably be proved wrong. It is interesting that the work done for Devine's book on the Highland Potato famine established a reinvention of historiographical methods - reliant on a number of researchers and an almost mathematical assessment of the findings. The whole thing became akin to scientific method. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:28, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Rather odd balance decisions made

Almost everyone I have met views the Highland Clearences as a unjustifiable tragedy that destroyed the lives of the tenants. You would not get that impression from this Wikipedia article. I definitely think that the comparison with Britanica is valid - Britanica has a long history of managing balance in their articles and employs people with this particular role. For a brief idea of what I mean, here is the starting description of the Highland Clearences from various sources:

Wikipedia
The Highland Clearances were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly from 1750 to 1860.

Encyclopedia Britanica [16]
Highland Clearances, the forced eviction of inhabitants of the Highlands and western islands of Scotland, beginning in the mid-to-late 18th century and continuing intermittently into the mid-19th century.

BBC Bitesize [17]
The Highland Clearances was a time when people in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland were forced from their homes and had to find new places to live.

The Scotsman [18]
THE HIGHLAND Clearances are an infamous chapter in Scottish history, the cruel story of how the Highland people were dispossessed of their homes by their landlords.

I get that some editors dislike Britanica but when most other sources strike a very different tone, I would suggest that we look again at the article. ~ El D. (talk to me) 00:11, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi El D, please also see the previous discussion. I had similar concerns initially, as did another user. However, after reading a few different sources and some slight rewording, I actually think this reflects the published academic sources. I agree the language is a very different tone but if you read the last two paragraphs of the lead, it establishes why it is so. While Britannia is a good reference source, it is usually the work of mostly one person who has limited time to allocate to one article. As for the Scotsman, that is definitely a source which is far from balanced! I agree that the article could still benefit from further balance with additional sources but in accordance with Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Coldupnorth (talk) 11:26, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

To which I would add that "forced eviction" is tautology (What eviction is not forced? The word "forced" does not necessarily involve physical force, it could just as easily be some form of legal notice.)
The Scotsman's sweeping summary is shown as false by the correction included in the preface to the second edition of the Making of the Crofting Community. Here James Hunter (historian) states that the first edition's portrayal of the landlords carrying out evictions during the Highland Potato Famine as being universally callous, uncaring and brutal was, in general, incorrect. He had to do this as the balance of opinion among historians had swung completely behind the work of Tom Devine in The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century, where detailed analysis showed the actual behaviour of a large proportion of landlords in the famine area. (This is a highly influential piece of historical research - providing something akin to scientific method and thereby introducing new higher standards in historiography.) As the article states (and historians write) some landlords bankrupted themselves by providing famine relief for their tenants. Others paid substantial sums to feed their destitute tenants. This reality, of course, does not sell newspapers - but it is what history students are expected to discover from their course reading lists. Hunter's preface to the second edition of his book does also include a summary of the historiography of the clearances. He was asked to include this by his publisher - which in the circumstances seems like rubbing salt in the wounds of being proved wrong - but he settles to the task in a strict academic way. If you are going to read just one part of just one RS on this subject, this second-edition preface might be appropriate. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:29, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

The Scotsman, The BBC, and EB are RSes! WP:HISTRS is an essay, which means it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community and [it may] represent minority viewpoints. The Scotsman is a right wing newspaper, if anything it would favour the views of the landlords.

But I take your point on academic works being preferable, so let me add to the mix the blurb of Tom Devine's The Scottish Clearences:

Many of Scotland's people were subjected to coercive and sometimes violent change, as traditional ways of life were overturned by the 'rational' exploitation of land use. The Scottish Clearances is a superb and highly original account of this sometimes terrible process, which changed the Lowland countryside forever, as it also did, more infamously, the old society of the Highlands. ~ El D. (talk to me) 23:02, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

If you don't like essays (though WP:HISTRS is found as a link on WP:RS), WP:SOURCETYPES should be sufficient, in that it states "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources."

The blurb on Devines' The Scottish Clearances was probably written by his publisher - it's the content of the book that is important. This is where you will find much of the stuff that people who have not read the academic sources complain about in the article. That includes an explanation of why Prebble is a bad source, but explaining (?complaining about) the huge influence he has had on the popular view/misconceptions of the clearances. (pg 4 to 11) Devine does not pull any punches in criticising those with an incomplete understanding of this bit of Scottish History - especially targeting Americans who believe that their Scottish heritage is rooted in the Highlands, their ancestors leaving because of "force and coercion".... "The boring reality is that the vast majority left from the farms, towns and cities of the Lowlands and were mainly attracted to North America because they saw it as a fabled land of opportunity to achieve a better life."(p 11) Just picking out some random bits of this book of Devine's, in talking about the process of getting the most destitute Highlanders to emigrate during the potato famine, he says "There can be little doubt that racist dogma also scarred the history of this period." (p 355 - but read the rest of the page to see this in context.) This is specifically addressed in the article's section on discrimination. (based on references from James Hunter and Tom Devine in Clanship to Crofter's War). However, Clanship to Crofter's War is where you will find narrative about the Highlander's lack of value of their own language - because English was the "language of work". So this is an internal force that worked to destroy Highland culture, when all of that destruction is blamed by some on external forces. I am just trying to give some cameo views of where bits of the article have come from and how it has been put together. Way back in the talk page archive there is even a measure of the amount of coverage various historians have given to religious discrimination - and then relating that to the coverage in the article. That is why there is a concise piece about religious discrimination - the point being that this was rare, but it happened.

On The Scotsman, historically, they were very pro the landlord point of view, being particularly in favour of forced emigration during the potato famine (Devine 2018, pg 320), but it is reasonably clear from the quote provided above that they no longer hold that position. (Reading the whole article following the quote given above, it talks about "burning people out of their homes" - this is loose language that suggests houses were burnt whilst the inhabitants were inside. Apart from the possibility that Sellar's eviction party did this once, this is a huge misrepresentation of the facts. The roof timbers were burnt to stop the houses being rebuilt. Though, see the article for "the devastation of Sutherland" - which is something else the Scotsman gets wrong because they have used Prebble as a source.) I think the important thing for Wikipedia is to say what happened. Then the reader can work out for themselves that it is upsetting for someone to lose their home and their job at a time of the massive social change in the society to which they belonged - but to also understand that most Scottish emigration happened after the clearances and that most Scots who left were economic migrants. Wikipedia has no role in telling people what to think (a.k.a. "editorialising"). ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 00:21, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Look, I can't be bothered to read several academic books on a subject I only have a passing interest in because 'someone is wrong on the internet'. I have told you that the Wikipedia article is wildly out of line with public conception (atleast my feel for it in southern England) and non-academic RSes but you seem to be fine with that. I could say that maybe pointing out that people's ancestral houses were burnt down or that it contributed to the decline of a way of life, or that it went against dùthchas seem more important and should be placed before the paragraphs justifying the landlords actions as being because they had debts from famine relief or that Scotland's highlands population grew during the time of the clearences.

But you seem pretty happy that the article is how you want it and I don't think I could change your mind. So I've lodged my objection, I've done my bit, I'm going to go back to what I was doing. Thanks for reading my posts, best wishes ~ El D. (talk to me) 00:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

...Wikipedia article is wildly out of line with public conception. Wikipedia is not a record of public conception, but an encyclopaedia based on reliable sources - which in this case are the academic history books which you can't be bothered to read. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

reversion explanation

I have reverted this[19] edit, as I do not think the logic given in the edit summary is correct. The lead is not the place to try and cram in every fact in the article - it is a summary of the key points and the obvious course of action for the reader is to read more of the article if they wish to know more.

In this particular instance, the cited sources go to some trouble to explain the astounding level of debt among Highland landlords - we have Richards describing it as the "financial suicide" of an entire social class. Devine makes clear that over two thirds of Highland estates had changed hands (other than by inheritance) by the time of the second phase of the clearances. So, the key point is that debts were integral to the clearances - so this has to be in the lead. The reasons for the debts are complex and these reasons are not so fundamental to the subject of the article that they need to be in the lead. What affected clearance was the debt, not the reasons for the debt. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:59, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

[Divine_2011-1] Divine, T M (2011). To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010. London: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-7139-9744-6.

[Richards_2013-2] Richards, Eric (2000). The Highland Clearances People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (2013 ed.). Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. ISBN 978-1-78027-165-1.

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