Talk:Highland Clearances

Whitewashing the Highland Clearances

I have problems with the denial to call the Highland Clearances ethnic cleansing. One can discuss long and broad the case of what where the reasons for the clearances. One can discus the motivations. Was the aim to clean out the highlanders and the argument is made for pure economics.

One can not discuss the result. A minority population in Britain, having a different culture, speaking a different language, adhering to a different church, was removed from their ancestral lands. Jochum (talk) 12:02, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

What was happening in the highlands was no different to what was happening all over Britain at the time. For example between 1770 and 1830, about 6 million acres of common land in England was enclosed. For centuries the poor of the countryside had the rights to graze their animals and grow their own produce on common land. With the removal of the common land many starved, were shipped to the colonies or migrated to the new industrial cities to provide cheap labour for the industrial revolution.The enclosed land was divided up among the large local landowners. Enclosure is a far less emotive word than clearance however the results were pretty much the same. Most of the land owners had inherited their land since the Norman conquest. The overwhelming majority of the poor did not have a Norman ancesters. If anything the blood ties between the landowners and their tenants in Scotland were stronger than their counterparts in England so I do not think you can call it ethnic cleansing. There is much discussion on this subject, whether it was good or bad most academics seem to conclude that clearing people off the land enriched the land owners. I think that in modern times the state and trade unions provide some protection to people, but if a company does not have any use for someone it fires them, so things have not changed as much as you think? Wilfridselsey (talk) 14:59, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Welcome back, User:Jochum. The answer to this question is pretty much as before . This article is about a historic event. Therefore the article content should reflect what the WP:RSs say. Per WP:HISTRS, those reliable sources should, in the main, be the works of academic historians. They do not characterise the Highland Clearances as ethnic cleansing. Therefore the article should not either.

I hope you find that the article makes clear that in the first phase of the Clearances, those who emigrated did so with the disapproval of their former landlords. Most landowners sought to retain displaced tenants on their land as people were then regarded as an asset. Those who emigrated were going against the landowner's wishes. In the second phase of the clearances, there were emigrants who were destitute because their method of making a living was no longer viable. The landowners paid the costs of that emigration in many cases. Throughout both of these phases, the overall population of the Highlands increased or stayed largely constant. The net fall in the Highland population came long after the clearances, in the early 20th century.

All this is against the background of the urban poor in Britain who also had no security of tenure in their lodgings. They too could be, and were, evicted on the whim of a landlord. User:Wilfridselsey's points on the fate of many other rural dwellers/workers is well made. As a modern-day equivalent, I used to live in a village where the largest landowner decided to move out of dairy farming, going over to beef. He therefore needed a smaller workforce. The head cowman was very upset to lose his job and his tied cottage. There was no way he could afford to live in the same community, even if another job was available. So he and his family had to move elsewhere. Those evicted in the Sutherland clearances fared better than this modern-day example, as they were offered homes in the same county with other members of their community moving to the same place.

If we are looking for ethnic cleansing, there was no attempt to eradicate the Gaelic-speaking population of the Highlands, or if there was it was a dramatic failure. We can see this from the census figures with the overall Highland population remaining consistent until the big falls in the 20th century. If we were to be respectful of those who went through the horrors of the break-up of Yugoslavia, when "ethnic cleansing" became more common in our vocabulary, it would seem sensible to restrict the term to situations that clearly fit the definition. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 19:14, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is terrible to use this term for things that happened in British history and every proper British historian will cringe to apply it to Britain and fight that to his death.

It does not matter if the numbers for the whole of Scotland increased, they were moved from where they lived and put on reservations, where they later starved.

People were moved from their ancestral lands, by people that followed a different culture. You do not need to kill them to call it ethnic cleansing. Jochum (talk) 18:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if there is any evidence that people were being forced from Germany or the Scottish Lowlands or England, from their land and being encouraged to go on boats that were full of disease, to places in North America that they had no special resources, father's sake of evicting them to put up sheep farms. And if that did happen, it is marvelous at the Highlanders remembered that story for the sake of those people as well. The story of the hailing Terrence is a very important story for us all to know. And what about that 1970s group that went around Scotland telling everybody about it the in schools and stuff, that was very important to spreading the story about the horrors of this thing. It is a good model tail to remember the horrors of this story, and I don't believe it is neutral to be neutral on this, any more than it is neutral to be neutral on evicting people during the communization of Ukraine or Russia. 2A00:23C8:A012:FD01:7C23:C611:DD37:2503 (talk) 20:08, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

You can also say that the big landowners stole the land. Yes it happened in most European countries. In Germany it was often called "Bauern legen" were the small farmer lost his lands, or a group of farmers lost their common. But because it happened everywhere, one does not have to have nice words around it. I regards to laws, the persons taking the land, were the people who made the laws around it.

Anyway Europeans like to use strong words for what happens in other areas of the world, but we like to look at our own history very benigne, even if what happened was horrible. Jochum (talk) 19:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Whitewashed in favor of the Tofts 97.118.78.85 (talk) 17:52, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I would say most academic sources do not support ethnic cleansing as a term applied to the clearances. An emotive subject for sure and certainly great hardship and suffering to those families at the time. However, a deliberate policy to exterminate an entire ethnic group in the context of what we have seen in the 20th century is hard to apply to the facts of the Scottish highlands, islands and of course the lowland clearances too. Coldupnorth (talk) 23:26, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Most British academics do not support ethnic cleansing as a term applied to the clearances. It is not a nice term for something that happened in your home country. But that it what happened, if you keep to the definition of ethnic cleansing. Jochum (talk) 18:36, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

It is clear that you do understand that historians working in Scottish history do not apply the term "ethnic cleansing" to the Highland clearances. I presume that you also understand that the article should be based, in the main part, on the work of academic historians. Yet you persist in arguing that the article should describe the clearances as ethnic cleansing. That isn't going to happen.

The only way that you could change that would be to train in Scottish history, gain some experience as a working historian (ideally being published in a peer-reviewed journal) and then present your ideas for publication in one of those peer-reviewed journals. That way you will be making your arguments to support the validity of your opinions to the people whose acceptance (or otherwise) of those opinions is what counts for the article. Keeping pushing ideas here that are not supported by reliable sources is a waste of both your time and that of other editors. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 20:03, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

But surely there that is loads of evidence that there was a bit of ethnic cleansing going on. I mean it was the highland emigration society, not the every single part of Britain emigration society. 2A00:23C8:A012:FD01:7C23:C611:DD37:2503 (talk) 19:56, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Not sure if you are referring to ‘The Transatlantic Emigration Society’, (Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances (p. 251).), which was regarded by landlords as something of a resistance movement when they were trying to retain tenants, or to Highland and Island Emigration Society which was a response to the Highland potato famine. Neither of these can be typified as ethnic cleansing; the first because the people leaving Scotland were doing so of their own volition and the latter as it was a response to an intractable famine. The famine was localised, and so was the response to it. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 23:32, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

After the defeat of the Highlanders at Battle of Culloden, the British government forced the private-property system on to the Highlanders. This made the clan chiefs landowners. It was the clan chiefs who realized that they could make themselves rich by driving out the clansfolk and letting the land to lowland farmers and lowland sheep. Bards of the time complained about the lairds making money by replacing their clansman with lowlanders. This definitely was not ethnic cleansing. It was similar to the effects of capitalism of today. For example, if we take your assertions; Amazon laying off staff would be described as "Ethnic Cleansing"? If not why not?Wilfridselsey (talk) 15:39, 4 February 2026 (UTC)