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@Komitsuki: They are rather similar. I see that Wikimandia added a link in the Scottish section, and ThoughtIdRetired removed it. More recently, I added one in the "See also" section, and ThoughtIdRetired also deleted that - any mention of the word on this page is too much for them, even to clarify the difference between the terms. Moreover, ThoughtIdRetired notes in their edit summary that even dictionaries cannot be trusted, so don't go trying to add sources that suggest an overlap. - 129.242.128.145 (talk) 14:16, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Some points to make on this conversation.
Firstly, Wikipedia is based on reliable sources WP:RS. Whatever you put in an article should be supported by a reliable source. The statement above "they are rather similar" is not much use for article content without an RS. Given that, particularly in the Scottish situation, this is a historical subject (yes, I know that there are still crofters, but the cottar is largely an extinct class of person in Scotland), WP:HISTRS is relevant. (i.e. academic sources needed/preferred).
Secondly, picking up on the "they are rather similar comment", looking particularly at the Scottish situation, let me explain the difference. In the Highlands, before the Highland clearances, farming tenants rented land in the baile. Some of these farming tenants sub-let a small part of their land to cottars. The rent could be in the form of labour or other services. Therefore the cottar was the lowest stratum of person holding any land. Their occupation of this land was extremely unlikely to be recognised by any sort of lease. After the Clearances, many of the former farming tenants of the baile became crofters. There was a definite loss of status in this transition. However, they still were tenants of a small amount of agricultural land. Where a crofter sub-let some of his land to another person, that person was a cottar. Again, these people are the lowest layer of land-occupying person, without a lease to regularise their land-holding. In the Lowlands, cottars were tenants of larger farmers and often paid their rent by doing work for those farmers, usually on a seasonal basis. Note that these larger farmers were tenants who had leases from the landowner. When the Lowland clearances happened, the vast bulk of these cottars either were evicted or became farm labourers. This was essentially an extinction of the Lowland cottar - a class of person who was once the commonest sort of resident of the rural Scottish Lowlands. The key principle in all this is that cottars were the bottom of the ladder of the occupiers of land: "sub-let" is the key word in this. Any confusion between crofter and cottar would appear laughable (and probably insulting) to the people you are discussing. Furthermore, in a social history context, these are technical terms and should not be confused. If you wish a fuller understanding, I suggest you look at Devine, T M (2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600–1900. London: Allen Lane. ISBN978-0241304105ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 18:54, 26 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
