Talk:Highland Clearances/Archive 7

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Final sentence of lede

The final sentence of the article should be about the Crofters Act as that was a significant outcome of the clearances. The sentence about academic coverage is out of place and self reverential in my view, Atlantic306 (talk) 07:15, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Point taken about the Crofters Act, which I have stuck in the info box as an interim measure.

The academic coverage in the lead is really a stop-gap mention of the subject – there really should be a section titled "Historiography and view in popular culture" (or a more concise title if possible). Then the coverage in the lead can be trimmed down. However, it should still make clear that there is a large disparity between what historians think and the popular view of the clearances. This is a big feature of the subject I am pushed for time right now to think more on this.

Overall, the lead is at risk of becoming over-long and it certainly breaks the rule of only covering things in the main body of the article. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 11:14, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Pro-landlord bias in introduction

The topic of the Highland Clearances is a contentious issue . The tone of the Wikipedia page clearly picks a side: it downplays the atrocities of the clearances, as well as the responsibilities of the landlords who carried out the clearances. In the following I list some examples which demonstrate this bias from the first few paragraphs of the article.

• In the second paragraph it is stated that the clearances were "driven by the need for landlords to increase their income", rather than "driven by the desire for landlords to increase their income", deflecting responsibility from the landlords. Both options surely occurred.
• The choice of the passive voice for "much higher rents were paid" in the same paragraph, rather than "much higher rents were extracted", again deflects responsibility.
• Two paragraphs later, the sentence "Some did try to delay or limit evictions, often to their financial cost." is decidedly apologetic. The reference backing up this claim is the quote "... a mistaken feeling of compassion to the small farmers", which suggests to me that small farmers were considered to be definitively lesser beings. One could imagine similar apologies being made about "benevolent" slave owners, who were said to foolishly spare the whip by contemporaries.
• Following this the Sutherland clearances are mentioned as an example of the actions of landlords. However, while the whimsical benevolence of the Countess of Sutherland is discussed, she "genuinely believed her plans were advantageous for those resettled in crofting communities and could not understand why tenants complained", the atrocities committed by the Sutherlands are not mentioned: the evictions of thousands of people, and the burning of their cottages .

--Og113 (talk) 19:46, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

User:Og113, the article is largely based, as it should be, on the work of academic historians. The appropriate guidance is in WP:HISTRS and WP:RS. If you look at the more common references, you will find:
Eric Richards [1], who until his recent death was an emeritus professor of history at Flinders University and specialised in emigration;
Tom Devine who, among other things, is noted for The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century which was based on detailed work on the Highland Potato Famine that provided some significant myth-busting and was the model for a new quality of historiographical research;
James Hunter (historian) who is probably the historian with the closest emotional bond to the interests of those cleared from their tenancies - but he still acknowledges (in the preface to the second edition of his highly influential The Making of the Crofting Community) that Devine's research on the behaviour of landlords at the time of the potato famine over-rides his earlier work.
There are a good number of other academic historians in the references - these are just a sample.

Against these academic sources, you cite:
A history website that has a page on the Highland Clearances that has not been updated since (probably) 2007 and whose text is easy to criticise based on its own recommended reading under "most recent books" and some notable works published after the date of the last listed. There is probably a case of WP:AGE MATTERS here - I suspect the bulk of the text was written some time before 2007.
An Encylopaedia Britannica entry written by "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." No hint of any academic historian in his profile, so not really an RS.

To address your detailed criticisms: "driven by the need for landlords to increase their income". I am not sure that you have followed the article on this point. Bankruptcy was a huge (and perplexing) part of the story. The origins of debt went back, in some instances, to the Statutes of Iona. Your alternative text suggests that the landlords simply wanted more money, whereas the real situation was that the vast majority of them needed more money. The financial incompetence of the Highland landowners is astounding, but that does not alter the correct description of what happened. I am not going to explain it more here, as the article does that, as also do the sources, which I would encourage you to read.

"much higher rents were paid" The sheep farmers were happy to pay higher rents because they wanted the land on which to raise sheep. These prices were usually determined by auctions. It would be entirely misleading to use your suggested language, because if nobody bid to rent the land at a higher rent, the old tenants would probably have remained at the old rent. Yes, there were tenants who simply had rent increases imposed, but the sentence is comparing the sheep farmers with the previous tenants.

...decidedly apologetic. The reference backing up this claim... Firstly what you appear to be calling a reference is actually a footnote. If you read it in that way you will see that you are criticising the article giving an example of the advice given to a landowner, which they ignored as they felt loyal to their tenants. Why do you want this part of the story censored? Why do you want to conceal the sort of advice that you (and others) think is bad behaviour? To remove it would alter the balance of the article so that it no longer matched the sources. Please do read further into the article to see some of the attitudes that existed at the time.

...the atrocities committed by the Sutherlands are not mentioned: the evictions of thousands of people, and the burning of their cottages The article covers the Sutherland Clearances at some great length. You might not like the fact that the Countess of Sutherland was not able to identify with why her tenants objected to being cleared, but it is part of the story. Your use of the word atrocities is something I would question. I think we should reserve that for much worse behaviour - of which we are seeing all too much in the world at present.

Certainly the article does not follow the one-sided (and largely unresearched) content of Prebble's book - but nor should it, because that is not the work of an academic historian. I worry that you are looking for Wikipedia to present the history of this event in a partisan way that is not supported by the large body of academic historical work on the subject. Please do read the sources on which the article is based. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

@ThoughtIdRetired, thank you very much for your comprehensive reply, and for the suggested reading. I agree with you on a number of the points you have raised, for example, I absolutely don't wish to censor parts of the story. Nevertheless, despite your rebuttals, I believe that the core of my criticism still holds. Let me briefly sum up my position: Eviction is inherently traumatic, and I think that the tone of the Wikipedia article doesn't adequately acknowledge this. Og113 (talk) 21:42, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. The tone of the article has been set by a number of considerations.
(1) The MOS warns against editorialising (MOS:EDITORIAL). Whilst this does not specifically address the point raised, it mentions the need for verifiability for interpretation, and states "Wikipedia does not try to steer the reader to a particular interpretation or conclusion".
(2) The sources used in the article are taken as a guide on the interpretation of events. Those sources that give a historian's account of various clearances do not make much of any blanket appraisal of the emotional reaction to eviction. (Richards makes one generalisation: that clearance was most usually met with sullen acceptance.) There is comment in sources that in the second phase of the clearances, it was the most destitute of tenants who were most unwilling to accept an assisted passage to a new life overseas. But that is just one part of a complex story. At the other extreme were more wealthy tenants who left in the first phase of the clearances, keen to escape the social engineering of their landlord. There is even an account of children being cleared during the Sutherland clearances assisting the clearance parties in setting fire to their own homes. (We know about this because at the time of the Napier Commission, some of these gave evidence to the enquiry and deeply regretted their actions - but that regret might be derived from the political agitation that gave rise to the Commission. I do not have a reference to hand on this point, but could probably find it in a search of sources.)
(3) One should remember that eviction also meant a change in the way the tenant made their living. There may have been more focus at the time on that. So any interpretation has to take that into account - without an RS that clearly covers that point, it is better for the article to avoid it. Note that when Patrick Sellar was tried, one of the charges was arson. The modern reader presumes that this was the burning of houses. The tenants who were cleared were more concerned about the burning of the grazing (that is a land management technique to control the amount of heather) - which was done at the wrong time of year to allow their cattle to have enough to eat and before the new tenancies came into effect. So the arson may well have related to the economic effect of having cattle that had to be sold but were in very poor condition.

If the article can be expanded to cover more of the individual stories of clearance, it would be possible to mention the hardship and upset to the people involved in some instances where an RS gives a clear account of that. However, any blanket editorialising to sympathise with those evicted is (a) not supported in sources (b) not the correct thing to have in a Wikipedia article (c) would be a gross oversimplification of the wide range of circumstance in which tenants left their holdings as a result of the clearances. I think it is reasonable to presume that a Wikipedia reader has some understanding of what eviction is (the article of that name is not ideal, so it is not linked). Given the dispassionately explained facts, I feel it is up to the reader to reach their own conclusions on what is good or bad in the history, without being nudged in any particular direction. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:55, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm not buying into the bias argument, I just moved excess detail from the intro into the body of the article. I think it is at least readable now.--Sid rumpo (talk) 07:10, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

It's about time this article had a bit of a tidy up (as carried out in the edit mentioned immediately above). A few points, though:
1. Surely the paragraph that was moved from the lead and starts "Agriculture in the Highlands had always been marginal..." belongs in the "Economic and social context" section, rather than heading up the "Causes" section.
2. I question removing any mention of the huge debt problems of landlords from the lead. This is covered by both Richards and Devine as something that is integral to the story (and in more than one way). We should remember that most/many consultations of Wikipedia involve reading only the lead. If this article does not cover debt there, it is a significant deficiency.
3. Putting the sentence "However, many landlords displayed complete lack of concern for evicted tenants" at the end of the lead is a incorrect. The problem is the inserted "many". The research done by Devine, and written up in his The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century, specifically busts the myth of the brutal landlord. This is even acknowledged in the preface to the 2000 edition of The Making of the Crofting Community (James Hunter). I don't think we can ignore ground-breaking research by a leading Scottish historian, especially when it is acknowledged by the historian whose work it is demolishing. The point is that there were some landlords who behaved despicably, but the majority did care for their people and did try to do their best, even if we might question some of their decisions (as we would on the Sutherland Estate). ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:48, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

As someone who is reading this article as my first introduction to the clearances, I agree it has a pro-landlord skew. The language in use is not as neutral as the comment above about editorializing thinks it is. Compared to similar Wikipedia articles about diasporic injustices in other global communities, this article seems almost glib about the systematic subjugation of renter-class highlanders. One area that hasn't already been mentioned is in the "Economic and social context" section, the second paragraph also rings as biased. What is the measure we're using to say that agriculture was improved? It certainly wasn't an improvement for the many displaced tenants. I'm guessing (because it isn't clear in the article and I am not an expert on this topic, so the best I can do is guess) that the word "improvement" is being used as a positive description about a rise in food production. A more neutral, clear, and accurate description would note something about increased agricultural output. In addition to removing a pro-clearance bias, noting the additional food output directly as an increase, rather than an improvement, would also more adequately address the concerns from the first paragraph about increasing demands for food. BisTechHydro (talk) 17:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Not sure how reading this article as my first introduction to the clearances fits with making a judgement of whether or not the article treats the subject fairly. Have you read any of the sources listed for the article? Do you feel the article represents the views expressed in those sources? Do you have any arguments against use of those sources, as per WP:RS? Are you aware of the retraction in the preface to the second edition of The Making of the Crofting Community, following Devine's work, The Great Highland Famine? Have you read academic reviews of The Great Highland Famine - the book (and the work behind it) sets new standards in historiography. This is a big subject and there is some difference between the academic historians view of it and the opinion in popular culture. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:43, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

As an academic historian myself, I know that each of those authors make their own arguments. Historians have never been objective, and each uses language to skew the information to support their specific case. Those arguments and inflected language use are inappropriate in a Wikipedia article. (Or at the very least those arguments should be explained, so that everyday folks can, as others have mentioned, come to their own conclusions.) BisTechHydro (talk) 18:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Firstly, User:BisTechHydro, welcome to Wikipedia. The foundation of this encyclopaedia is that it is based on its sources. This is one of the few fundamentals. Take a look at WP:HISTRS for the guidance on this. I don't know if I understand you correctly, but you seem to be suggesting that the historians cited by the article are wrong. Yet you will find many of the cited sources for the article in the reading lists for undergraduate courses in the relevant part of Scottish history. There is even a textbook specifically designed for those courses (Debating the Highland Clearances) that is a source for the article, and the author of that work (Eric Richards) has other books making up a significant part of the basis of the article. If you have other sources with the same authority as those used here, then say what they are and what they say. Tom Devine points out that there have been, from 1980 onwards, 50 or more "research-based books" published on Highland History since the 18th century.. After this surge of publication on the clearances, academic historians seem largely to have decided that the subject is "done" and moved on to other aspects.

Looking at the precise complaint that you raise, the summary description of pre-clearance Highland agriculture and the agricultural problems that it created are explained in the second paragraph of the Economic and Social Context section. I don't know if you have an agricultural background, but the simple facts given in the article are basic principles of agriculture/agricultural history. One could paraphrase this by making clear that the tenants were trapped in an agriculturally inefficient system, but then the editor who does that my be accused of WP:SYNTH. If you wanted to delve deeper into the precise changes in the agricultural economy of the pre and post clearance Highlands, I would very much recommend Dodgshon, Robert A. (1998). From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493–1820. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0 7486 1034 0 This is a highly illuminating work which tackles the economics of agriculture in the region. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Incidentally, per WP:THREAD, please indent any new comment appropriately. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Edits not supported by cited sources.

User:Peacefulrelations has made a number of edits which are not supported by or even misrepresent the references included in these edits. These edits, in total, represent the second paragraph of the article (version [2] ). Individually, they are:
[3], [4], [5], with some revision of the references at [6].

The misrepresentations of the sources are as follows:

A supposed quote from John Prebble is given: "vast and brutal exercise in social engineering". The term "social engineering" does not appear anywhere in John Prebble's The Highland Clearances; nor does the phrase "vast and brutal". (This is based on searches of an electronic copy). It is hard to know whether this is an error or a deliberate invention. Making the presumption that the wrong work has been cited, I have searched for the quote on google books, but cannot find it.

James Hunter's A Dance Called America is suggested to have said that the clearances were a "form of cultural genocide". He does use this term in this book, but he is referring to the treatment of indigenous Canadians (i.e. First Nation peoples). The term is not applied to the clearances. Similarly, any mention of "violence" or "violent" in Hunter's book refers to events outside Scotland – for instance violence by Scottish emigrants against Canadian First Nation people, or a violent strike in Australia. The edits by User:Peacefulrelations state that Hunter's book referred to violence associated with the clearances.

Eric Richards is suggested as saying, in his 2013 Highland Clearances, that people were violently cleared – this is not the account that Richards gives at all. The overwhelming proportion of the violence, in his account, comes from those at risk of eviction. Richards is well known for describing the usual response to eviction as "sullen acceptance" (something that Devine does not totally accept). Performing an electronic search of this book reveals no language that supports the article text produced by these edits. Nor do I have any recollection of Richards saying anything along these lines when I last read his book. Again, this is a misrepresentation of sources. The only mitigation I can think of is that Richard's writing style is often to lay out someone else's belief or thesis, and then argue against it. So a partial reading might find something that misrepresents his views. But, I suggest, even this would be detected by word searches.

Richards is also quoted from his biography of Patrick Sellar. This book can in no way be considered to have an emphasis on the "violent and traumatic nature of the eviction process". The book seeks to establish the known facts about Sellar's life and to try and rationalise some of his behaviour. Sellar is presented, among other things, as someone with poor interpersonal skills and a very strict interpretation of the law. The eviction process is described, but not in the way now stated in the article. Again, this is misrepresentation of sources.

The use of Tom Devine's work to support an earlier misrepresentation of sources has already been dealt with in the edit summary of this reversion[7]

I suggest that User:Peacefulrelations' edits are of no value to the article and should be removed. Whether or not the misrepresentation of sources is deliberate or not is another matter – but these recent edits have no place in Wikipedia. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:25, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

It is not deliberate, I am going off notes from my friend studying it at Chicago university. I understand I got the first reference incorrect. Let me check and ill get back to you. However the forced eviction of over 200,000 of my ancestors definetly sounds like ethnic cleansing. Peacefulrelations (talk) 22:06, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Although I am still waiting on my friend getting back to me. I have found this information which is from around the Eviction of The Gaels Era:

Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 this basically took rights away from the clans and made it easier to evict them

Act of Proscription (Scotland) 1746 this basically destroyed all their culture

Then I am pretty sure we watched a historian on youtube go into accounts of those evicted at the time and apparently it was horrific and violent.

200,000 people forcibly removed with their rights taken away and their culture and language outlawed would be considered ethnic cleansing over here. Peacefulrelations (talk) 22:46, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

You can help us find out more from historians. If I have to remove what I added, I will still add the Acts, thats more important than a historian. Those laws... with 200,000 forced evictions from their land, that considered ethnic cleansing anywhere else. Peacefulrelations (talk) 22:49, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

OK, but as a general principle, you should read the references that you are citing yourself.(WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT) Otherwise the Wikipedia principle of verifiability (WP:V) degenerates into a game of Chinese whispers.

Your second sentence is concerning: sounds like ethnic cleansing suggests you are editing based on your own opinion (WP:NPOV) rather than the reliable sources (WP:RS) on which article content should be based. (You might also want to consider WP:HISTRS for a historical subject like this one.) And I am not sure where you get the figure of 200,000 Highlanders being evicted. The whole population of the Highland and Island region was never more than 300,000 – and nobody seems to have a good figure on how many emigrated due to clearance. The majority of those who left Scotland did so after the clearances, and many of them were lowlanders.

Given your admission that you are not working from the actual sources, I suggest the correct thing to do is to revert your edits and settle down to reading the sources – this would be a fairly lengthy task. There may be other appropriate courses of action, but this is the only one that occurs to me. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

A historian on youtube is unlikely to be an WP:RS. I also recommend that you are careful with any acts that you list, as otherwise you will fall foul of WP:NOR. Any article content on the intent, effects, etc. of a piece of legislation needs to come from an RS. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but those Acts clearly describe what would be considered ethnic cleansing in any other region of the world. Deporting the native population, prohibiting their language and culture, taking away their rights. Those laws themselves definitely constitute an ethnic cleansing combined with the forced evictions. If another nation deported an ethnic group and banned their language and customs while drafting laws that took away their rights.. thats ethnic cleansing.

Undiscoveredscotland.co.uk states this:

"Reasonable estimates suggest that during the first stages of the Highland Clearances, from 1760 to 1800, over 70,000 Highlanders and Islanders emigrated, with perhaps a similar number following in the years from 1800 to 1860. Meanwhile, during the entire period of the Clearances, some 150,000 Highlanders and Islanders were cleared from their ancestral lands. To give a sense of the scale of this relative to the overall population, the total number of people living in 1801 in what are now the council areas of Highland, Western Isles, and Argyll & Bute was 260,000. "

The books dont mention a number but this is what historians I have listened to state it to be. I think I got confused with the total population sorry. Peacefulrelations (talk) 00:24, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I will add the laws to the page and also go over the books. The laws that were put in place, combined with the deportations clearly constitute an ethnic cleansing. Just because it didnt happen to millions of people doesn't mean it doesn't constitute an ethnic cleansing. Anywhere else in the world, this would be an ethnic cleansing. Imagine the Russians started doing this in Ukraine, it is similar to an extent since Russia considers Ukraine their ancestral homeland. Imagine they took control and banned the Ukrainian language and deported them all to the west. Come on dude, ethnic cleansing, 100%. Peacefulrelations (talk) 00:44, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you are getting this. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia based on its sources. In this instance, the article is on a historical subject, so those sources should be, in the main, academic historians. Those historians do not classify the Highland clearances as ethnic cleansing – they give reasoned and researched arguments to support that. You will even find some (Devine) showing some ridicule towards views that originate from Prebble or demonstrate a highly deficient understanding of the subject.

You might have concluded that the clearances represent ethnic cleansing. That is irrelevant to the article content. It is only the views of reliable sources that matter.

If I understand you correctly, you have not actually read any of the sources you have provided as references. Instead, you rely on what a friend has told you. This bears no similarity to the definition of an WP:RS. I hope that you do understand that these blue links will take you to the policies and guidance that are the basis of how Wikipedia works.

I recommend that you start doing some reading: (a) the policies and guidance on how wikipedia works; (b) some reliable sources on which you might base your editing. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Okay I have cleared my edits will come back to it after I have done more research. But I dont understand how you guys dont have the laws that were enacted in 1746 listed at all on the page. Thats like the most important part. You guys dont even know your own history, the Act of Proscription (Scotland) 1746 and Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 are quite relevant.

Give me some more time to do some more research and for my friend to finish his paper. I have changed it back to its previous state for the time being though. Peacefulrelations (talk) 08:30, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the changes. As far as the legislation goes, it is actually a complex subject that really does need the interpretation of historians. You could include the Passenger Vessels Act 1803 among the list of pieces of relevant legislation – its purpose was to make emigration difficult. This is mentioned in the article, as are the Statutes of Iona. The Act of Proscription was repealed before the clearances started. Its actual impact is debated, but is generally thought to have less effect than is generally presumed. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act was just one part of the long process in which traditional government of the Highlands changed – and is mentioned in the article (though only named in the link). I would recommend that you look at page 58 of Devine's Scottish Clearances, among other comment on the Acts you list.

One particular development in the historiography of the clearances was the publication of The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century. This was the result of some very detailed work that debunked the idea that Highland landlords were all unconcerned for the welfare of their tenants. (No one disputes that a very small number of landlords behaved despicably.) Devine's book is discussed by James Hunter in the preface to the 2000 edition of his The Making of the Crofting Community. He acknowledges that a major thesis of his book is demolished by Devine's diligent research – though he does not go so far as to alter the original text in the book. Consequently, that preface is often on the reading list of students of Scottish history at Scottish universities. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:51, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Recent edits

A number of recent edits have some problems:

First edit[8] The eviction of tenants, particularly en masse.... The addition of "particularly en masse" does not follow the source and is misleading. The eviction of a single tenant could be seen to go against dùthchas.
...and that the land belonged to the whole clan and had never been the personal property of Scottish clan chiefs. This goes further than the way the cited source and other sources describe dùthchas. Devine's description focusses more on the custodianship of the land by the clan chief. There is no implication that the clan members had any ownership, more just a right to rent land there. Without a full discussion of a complex subject, this part of the edit is seriously misleading.
...the increasingly Anglicised Chiefs and their families, who began to think of themselves simply as landlords for profit, rather than as the father-figures, leaders, and protectors of their clansmen "Anglicisation" – this is not a term applied by the cited source, and the narrative of that source makes clear that it was the process of compulsorily finding themselves alongside Lowland landowners that helped change the thinking of clan chiefs. Anglicisation has very little to do with things. "Landlords for profit" rather conceals the disastrous financial situation of Highland landowners. Most were heavily indebted as soon as they became exposed to life in Edinburgh. See page 41 of Devine's The Scottish Clearances for this. The word "profit" suggests that these lands were being run in a way that left a surplus. In the vast majority of cases, they were not. "father-figures, leaders, and protectors of" – isn't this achieved more concisely with the word "patriarch"?.
...could not understand why her tenants complained – technically they were her husband's tenants, so the word "her" is incorrect.

Next edit[9] that the Gaels had an inalienable right to live in their clan's territory – "the Gaels" does not seem a reasonable substitution for clan members as it introduces an unnecessary level of complexity for the reader who will then have to discover what a gael is. It also makes less clear, at an early point of the sentence, that we are talking about clan members here; all other gaels are irrelevant. ...to live in... No, clan members were always tenants. They paid rent with military service and in kind. This should be totally clear.
According to Roger Hutchinson, a major influence upon the change... (1) Roger Hutchinson is not an RS under the provisions of WP:HISTRS. His own publisher describes him as a journalist at a radical newspaper. He makes no claim to be an academic historian; we must suspect that he is not committed to producing a balanced account of the clearances. (2) The article already mentions the effect of Adam Smith. (3) The supposition that adherents to the Catholic faith were major part of the story of the clearances is a common misconception. The talk page archive includes detailed discussion on the subject of religious discrimination and the way the article addressed that was a result of a consensus that sought to provide appropriate balance to the subject. Looking at recent sources such as Devine, we find he makes little mention of discrimination against Catholics in the Scottish Highlands at the time of the Clearances (though gives ample mention, by comparison, of this happening in Ireland) and makes clear that religious support for the preceding Jacobean revolts involved Episcopalians more than Catholics. He even gives the account of protestant support for Catholic communities during the Highland Potato Famine with "The Free Church’s relief operation was also free of any sectarian bias. Grateful thanks for supplies of grain were received from the Catholic areas of Arisaig and Moidart." The Scottish Clearances (p. 308). The content derived from Hutchison's book would unbalance a previously agreed consensus on balance and is not derived from an RS. Therefore it should not be included. Incidentally, the full title of the book is not given in the reference.

Next edit[10] ...even though just as many Protestant Gaels were similarly evicted... – no, the relative numbers of Catholics and Protestants who were evicted were in broad reflection of the proportion that these religious groups had of the overall population. Catholics were in a significant minority. Devine twice attaches the adjective "tiny" to the few mentions of Catholicism in the Highlands in his The Scottish Clearances, and uses "small" on one occasion. This added content seems to be the result of not using an RS.

Next edit[11] The inclusion of Walter Frederick Campbell in the main article text, rather than putting in the footnote with other examples, unbalances the article on his importance of this instance. The lead is not the place for this extra text.

Next edit[12] Ironically, the... is editorialising which does not fit with Wikipedia's objective of WP:NPOV, or more particularly [WP:VOICE]].
...infamously brutal mass evictions were mutually advantageous... is an even worse example of failing to observe NPOV. The main historians of the clearances do not describe these evictions in this way. Eric Richards even makes the point that the Sutherlands were more supportive of their evicted tenants when compared to the neighbouring estates. ("In this sense the Sutherland estate was, despite its reputation, in strong and positive contrast to most other clearing proprietors." Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances (p. 258).) The key point about the Sutherland clearances were their scale, which was a function of the size of the estate. Devine's use of the word "brutal" is almost entirely confined to events other than the clearances, and, with one exception, not to the Sutherland clearances. This single use is to report the allegations made against Patrick Sellar. We know, of course, that Sellar was acquitted. More importantly, this edit completely alters what the sentence is trying to say: that Elizabeth Sutherland believed the estate's actions to be wise and benevolent. It is for the reader to infer (or not) that this demonstrates how out of touch the decision-makers were on the processes they had started. It is not for Wikipedia to label them as infamous or brutal.

Next edit[13] Substitution of "vocally" for "overtly" gives rise to the ambiguity of the former. Many people would take OED meaning 1(a) to be what is intended: "With or by means of the voice; in spoken words, orally", when much of the criticism was written. No doubt meaning 4 is intended, but that is not clear. "Overtly" is, however, without any ambiguity.

Remaining edits simply expand on matters mentioned above or have a typo. The simplest solution is to revert back to the situation before any of the above edits were made, since the vast bulk of all the changes are unhelpful. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

The idea that Anglicisation was a motive behind the clearances is a conspiracy theory tantamount to the “Polocaust” myth. It is motivated by Celtic anxieties that try to present the Celtic nations as a unified people battling English imperialism, when the history of lowland Scotland post-1707 tells a *very* different story.

92.40.196.170 (talk) 10:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

recent edits by User:K1ngstowngalway1

There are many problems with the recent edits by K1ngstowngalway1. To summarise these points:

(1) Material based on Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest and other non RS references. Firstly, the material added focuses on a date which is outside the period of the clearances. Secondly this source and the others do not qualify as an RS for this sort of article. See WP:HISTRS. This has been dealt with in the post immediately aboveTalk:Highland Clearances/Archive 7#Recent edits, including the non-RS status of Roger Hutchinson. Trying to get this material back into the article without addressing the original concerns could be considered the early stages of disruptive editing.

(2) genuinely believed her plans were advantageous for those forcibly resettled in other crofting communities and could not understand why her tenants complained. "Forcibly" implies the use of force, which does not fit with the cited sources on which this part of the article is based. "other" suggests that they were being moved from one crofting community to another. This is a common misconception. In the first phase of the clearances, tenants were moved from farming townships to crofts – these are two entirely different agricultural systems. "her" – technically they were her husband's tenants.

(3) This was never considered a legitimate defense eviction under Scots property law. Dùthchas was also gradually rejected by those clan chiefs who began to think of themselves simply as commercial landlords What does the terms "legitimate defense [sic] eviction" add to the article? This is dressed up to appear as a formal legal term. I very much doubt that it is and even if it were, this is simply obfuscating the subject.

Therefore this sequence of edits has been reverted. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 12:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Debt and landlords

The words in the lead ..driven by the need for landlords to increase their income – many had substantial debts.. are a frequent target for alteration. However, these words are chosen very carefully, based on (1) the main body of the article (WP:MOSLEAD) and (2) the sources that support the whole article.

The main historians of the subject all pay significant attention to the indebtedness of Highland landlords. At risk of making too long a quotation, Eric Richards says, in one of several statements on the matter:
"One of the paradoxes of Highland landownership in the late eighteenth century and beyond was the accumulation of debt in so many families despite the rise of commodity prices and real income. Debt was a great spur to changes because clearances yielded a much higher rent." Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances (p. 127)
Richards is also the historian who coined the term "financial suicide" that is quoted in the article.

Tom Devine, who is known for his highly evidenced studies of Highland History, frequently mentions landlord debt in his The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. To pick (largely at random) just one example, we find:
"In fact, indebtedness had become a structural problem and now plagued most of the ruling families of Gaeldom." (p. 42)
Devine says a lot more on the subject, but I cannot quote all of it here.

The article covers debt and bankruptcy in some detail. Picking on just a few words in the lead without looking at the subject in the main body of the article is unhelpful – that is where fuller explanations are given and the references are found. The references show that debt is integral to the whole story, alongside the Highland Potato Famine, overpopulation and the appeal (to the more affluent tenants and the tacksmen) of emigration. Not mentioning landlord debt would be a disservice to the reader. Implying that landlords put up rents solely out of greed (a simple wish for more money) as opposed to necessity (avoiding foreclosure on their estates) would be a similar misrepresentation that should not be here. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 19:16, 12 June 2024 (UTC)