Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean

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Christian Robertson (1780–1842) and a Highland network in the Caribbean: a study of complicity' in Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World: Social Networks and Identities (Edited by Chris Dalglish, Karly Kehoe, Annie Tindley), EUP 2023.

Hugh Miller (ed. Michael Shortland), Hugh Miller’s Memoir: From Stonemason to Geologist (Edinburgh, 1995), 107. Compare this with his account in Hugh Miller, My Schools and Schoolmaster (Edinburgh,1993), 134, first published 1854. Mr Macwhirter seems set on making some point about a contrast between Scottish and English involvement in slavery or responses to racism. And so he tells us that “most working class Scots… were being ruthlessly exploited themselves”.

Scottish Slave-owners in Suriname: 1651–1863’, Northern Scotland, 9 (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) And at the same time they were appearing in the new British colonies of Grenada, Tobago and St Vincent in similar, disproportionately high numbers. In this case it can only feed in the myths which still circulate about Scottish slave-ownership – that Scots did not engage in the slave trade, that Scots were enslaved in the colonies, that Scots are “innately” more egalitarian.

I research the role of Highland Scots in the slave plantations of the Caribbean, especially Guyana, before emancipation in 1834. I am one of the first Scottish historians to draw attention to the prominent role of Scots in the slave trade and the plantation economies of the Caribbean. And because Scots were so disproportionately present on the plantations, if we want to make comparisons between Scotland and England, then this was much more – not less – of an issue in Scotland. The great historian Tony Judt, born in the working-class Jewish East End of London, once said: “The job of the historian is to make it clear that a certain event happened. Christian Robertson (1780–1842) and a Highland Network in the Caribbean: A Study of Complicity' inChris Dalglish, Karly Kehoe & Annie Tindley (eds.), Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World: Social Networks and Identities (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) Flat people’ as E M Foster called them, were those who had only one dimension to their lives. He preferred rounded people. I would now call them portfolio people, the sort of people who, when you ask them what they do, reply, ‘It will take a while to tell you it all, which bit would you like?’ Sooner or later, thanks to the re-shaping of organisations, we shall all be portfolio people. It is good news.While Mr Macwhirter rightly rejects the notion that the British Empire was “essentially English”, he takes the line that Scots were junior partners in the Empire, and while wealthy Scots were implicated in the slave trade he claims “it is not clear how many ordinary Scots benefited from colonial wealth”. Nor did the “S”-word appear in a whole section called The Spirit of the Age, which emphasised the positive role of Enlightenment ideas, influential at home and spread by Scots who travelled abroad. Just what is the contrast here supposed to be? Were English, or Welsh, or Irish workers not exploited? But civic Scotland still had a lot of catching up to do in establishing the truths about its involvement with slavery. So the notion that Scottish involvement is less important for Scots being a “junior partner” holds no water.

Non-executive director of the Board of NHS Highland, 2003–11 and 2013–2016. Board Chair 2016 - 2019 The Guyana Maroons, 1796–1834: Persistent and Resilient until the End of Slavery' in Slavery & Abolition (2023) at https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2023.2165065 Post Graduate Certificate in Education (with distinction) [St Mary's College, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1981]David Alstonis a Historian and Independent Researcher. He is the author of Ross & Cromarty: A Historical Guide (1997) and My Little Town of Cromarty: The History of a Northern Scottish Town (2006). He was a Highland Councillor and from 1991–2003 was curator/manager of Cromarty Courthouse Museum. He has published articles on the Highlands and Slavery including ‘Very Rapid and Splendid Fortunes: Highland Scots in Berbice (Guyana) in the early nineteenth century’, in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, (2007) and wrote a chapter in the T.D. Devine edited collection ‘ Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past’ (EUP, 2015). Trustee of Nigg Old Trust (a body dedicated to preserving the old parish church of Nigg and its Pictish cross-slab), 1998–2018. In profound parts, as painful as it is plaintive, Dr Alston’s dedicated work offers powerful glimpses of the victims and perpetrators of widespread abuses, the bloody terror and casual horror of everyday estate life and the brutally suppressed revolts. My colleague Donald Morrison and I have called on the Scottish Government to ensure the return of this slavery-derived wealth to Jamaica. Our campaign has the support of Professor Verene Shepherd, who heads the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies By the late 1820s Miller’s hand, which had held the knife, wielded a stonemason’s chisel. His lungs had been damaged by stone dust and he had left off labouring in quarries for the less demanding but skilled trade of carving gravestones. Two of his elegant inscriptions referred to the West Indies. One stone in Cromarty was erected by ‘JOHN MUNRO ESQ late of Demerara’ to the memory of his father, who died in 1825; the other was a memorial to ‘DANIEL ROSS of Berbice’, who died in 1827. I had heard of Demerara, on the north coast of South America, but not of neighbouring Berbice, both now part of Guyana.

The example is given of Sheriff Donald Macleod of Geanies, portrayed along with some of his silver and described as “a highly respected local figure, typical of those whose adoption of Enlightenment ideas influenced life all over Scotland”. David Alston is one of those most valuable people: a historian committed to local history and the possessor of a startling intellect, most of which has been devoted to the town . . . His enthusiasm for Cromarty fills the room as soon as he walks in.

Member of the University of the Highlands and Islands Foundation, 1997–2001 and of the University Court 2013–2017 And listen here to a 28 minute radio documentary revealingScotland's legacy of slavery andsex on theplantations of Guyana. The programme shows thatas a consequence there were, in proportion, more mixed-racechildrenin 19th-century Inverness then there are today. Reported by Daniyal Harris-Vajda, Produced by Chris Diamond for BBC Good Morning Scotland, developed by Arlen Harris. Transmitted in March 2019.