Talk:Scottish Agricultural Revolution

Hay making
I have tagged "Haymaking was introduced along with the English plough and...." as dubious. Whilst there is comment on the rarity of hay-making specifically in the Hebrides before the 1760s, that suggests it was a usual practice elsewhere in Scotland - see Dodgshon, From Chiefs to Landlords, p 209. Does this part of the article derive from a misreading of a source? Is this a new method being introduced rather than the whole practice? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:54, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I have deleted the dubious text. This is particularly as a result of reading about rents provided as service which consisted of, among other activities, hay making. This applies to Highland areas - for instance tenants of Campbell of Barcaldine. This convinces me that the now-deleted text is nonsense. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:13, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Name dropping?
"The traditional system of agriculture in Lowland Scotland had existed unchanged for hundreds of years, the land being worked by the cottars on the centuries-old runrig system of subsistence farming." (extract from the lead) Subsistence farming, certainly in a historical context, means that there is no surplus production that is sold to obtain items manufactured by specialists. Given that the towns and cities of Scotland have historically been fed by agriculture in the surrounding area, that is clearly not the case. I think the word "subsistence" has been used in the article without considering the definition of the term.

The usage of run rig throughout the article has the impression of name-dropping - repeatedly using a technical term just to impress. It is therefore unfortunate that the partial description of how it works does not really fit with current thinking. This research is usefully summarised in From Chiefs to Landlords, by Robert Dodgshon. There is a misconception that run rig was invariably communal farming. In summary, in the majority of cases, it was only communal when this was unavoidable (such as shared use of a plough and plough team) - otherwise the operation was individual. I don't know if specific studies of Lowland farming shows a different result.

The use of "cottars" in the lead is inconsistent with the rest of the article, and is a further example of dropping in a technical term without any real thought on what it means. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:01, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

questionable text
In the section on the 19th century, I question the part of the following that is shown in bold text: "A handful of powerful families, typified by the dukes of Argyll, Atholl, Buccleuch, and Sutherland, owned the best lands and controlled local political, legal and economic affairs...."

The estates of the Highland landowners in the list of examples were notable for being large in area, but not for being good quality agricultural land - in fact they owned some of the worst land in Britain. The only reason they controlled the small amount of good quality land in the Highlands is because they owned such a large proportion of the region. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:07, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Was it really a revolution?
While some refer to it as being a revolution, it was actually a long process over several decades if not century. As the pamphlet at the top of the page says, it was a "Society of Improvers", should the article not be renamed Scottish Agricultural Improvement? 2A02:C7F:8ECF:9900:F9C1:9F6D:2D5B:F0C (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * "Agricultural revolution" is a techical term used by economic and social historians. Whether or not those historians are right is not a point to be debated here. Wikipedia must follow the consensus view as given in appropriate reliable sources (WP:RS, also WP:HISTRS).ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:30, 8 June 2020 (UTC)