Talk:Highland Clearances/Archive 6

Archive 1

←

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.

(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.

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

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)

Further reading proposed changes

The Further reading section of this article does not seem to comply with the advice in Wikipedia:Further reading

I suggest the following actions:

• McKenzie, Alexander, An Overview of the Clearances, 1881. Consider deleting to take balance away from over-representing out-dated viewpoints - one of the items flagged thus should, however, be retained.
• Macleod, Donald, Gloomy Memories, 1857 (first-hand account of Sutherland clearances). Consider deleting to take balance away from over-representing out-dated viewpoints - one of the items flagged thus should, however, be retained. I suggest keeping this one, but with an expanded note, with "Macleod should be read with caution as he frequently employed hyperbole for passionate emphasis." (This is the view of Eric Richards.)
• McIntosh, Alastair, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, Aurum Press Ltd, 2004, ISBN 1-85410-802-6. Delete : does not cover the subject.
• Prebble, John, The Highland Clearances, Secker & Warburg, 1963 Keep, but with the note that "This is the seminal work that brought the subject to modern attention. Later historical work corrects and challenges many points in this book."
• Richards, Eric, The Highland Clearances, Birlinn Books, 2000.Retain.
• Richards, Eric, A History of the Highland Clearances. Vol.1, Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions 1746–1886, Croom Helm, c1982, 085664496X Whilst this is a definitive work on the subject, it is difficult to obtain a copy - many libraries have decided that it is "too old" to retain - therefore unsure of the value in listing.
• Grimble, Ian, The Strathnaver Trilogy, 3 vols: Chief of MacKay, The Trial of Patrick Sellar, and The World of Rob Donn. Consider deleting to take balance away from over-representing out-dated viewpoints - one of the items flagged thus should, however, be retained.
• McLean, Marianne, The People of Glengarry. Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820, McGill-Queen's University Press; 1993.Not sure that this is notable enough for inclusion, per the Further reading guidelines.
• Gebele, Hubert, Die Schottischen Clans im 18. Jahrhundert, Vom Wandel und Ende einer Hochlandgesellschaft am Rande Europas, A Personal Passion Play in Scottish History and Bibliography, Regensburg 2003. How does this fit the parameters of the guidance on further reading? Why is it important?
• Hunter, James, The Making of the Crofting Community, John Donald Publishers Ltd; 2nd Revised edition (27 Jun 2000). Keep.
• Marx, Karl, Das Kapital, Charles H. Kerr & Company; 1906, Volume I, Part VIII, Chapter XXVII. Delete: whilst it is perhaps interesting that Marx commented on the subject, he had limited knowledge and the remarks had little overall impact on his ideology.
• Statistical Accounts of ScotlandDelete. Whilst relevant, it does not meet the description of items to include per Wikipedia:Further reading
• Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, The Modern Library Classics, Complete and Unabridged, 2000, Book III, Chapter IV Delete. Whilst relevant, it does not meet the description of items to include per Wikipedia:Further reading

Add the following

• Devine, T M (1994). Clanship to Crofters' War: The social transformation of the Scottish Highlands (2013 ed.). Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-9076-9.

• Devine, T M (2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0241304105

• 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

• Macinnes, Allan I. (1996). Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stewart, 1603-1788. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. ISBN 1 898410 43 7

All these suggested additions, apart from the newly published 2018 work by Tom Devine, appear on the reading lists of university history courses that cover the Highland clearances. Devine's latest book gives a very useful overview of the whole subject - admittedly intertwining it with the Lowland clearances - but that would hopefully increase the understanding of the reader who is only looking to learn about what happened in the Highlands.

So this would then look like:

• Devine, T M (1994). Clanship to Crofters' War: The social transformation of the Scottish Highlands (2013 ed.). Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-9076-9.
• Devine, T M (2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0241304105
• 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
• Hunter, James, The Making of the Crofting Community, John Donald Publishers Ltd; 2nd Revised edition (27 Jun 2000).
• Macinnes, Allan I. (1996). Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stewart, 1603-1788. East Linton: Tuckwell Press. ISBN 1 898410 43 7
• Macleod, Donald, Gloomy Memories, 1857 (A first-hand account of Sutherland clearances. Macleod should be read with caution as he frequently employed hyperbole for passionate emphasis.)
• Prebble, John, The Highland Clearances, Secker & Warburg, 1963 (This is the seminal work that brought the subject to modern attention. Later historical work corrects and challenges many points in this book.)
• Richards, Eric, The Highland Clearances, Birlinn Books, 2000.

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Amended in article.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 19:23, 15 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)