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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 isn't a sockpuppet account. It's as simple as that. WyndingHeadland ( talk) 22:21, 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)
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 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)
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
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)
@ 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)
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)
The Further reading section of this article does not seem to comply with the advice in Wikipedia:Further reading
I suggest the following actions:
Add the following
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:
ThoughtIdRetired (
talk)
17:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
-- 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
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))
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
...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:
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 views and justifications of the landlordsis 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.)
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)
it has not been thoroughly vetted by the communityand
[it may] represent minority viewpoints. The Scotsman is a right wing newspaper, if anything it would favour the views of the landlords.
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)
...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)
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)
This is an archive of past discussions. 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 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 |
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 isn't a sockpuppet account. It's as simple as that. WyndingHeadland ( talk) 22:21, 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)
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 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)
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
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)
@ 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)
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)
The Further reading section of this article does not seem to comply with the advice in Wikipedia:Further reading
I suggest the following actions:
Add the following
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:
ThoughtIdRetired (
talk)
17:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
-- 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
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))
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
...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:
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)
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)
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)
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)
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 views and justifications of the landlordsis 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.)
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)
it has not been thoroughly vetted by the communityand
[it may] represent minority viewpoints. The Scotsman is a right wing newspaper, if anything it would favour the views of the landlords.
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)
...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)
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)