Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean

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I have studied full-time at the Universities of Aberdeen (1970-77), Oxford (1977-80) and Newcastle (1980-81), and part time at the Universities of Leicester and Dundee. 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) Post Graduate Certificate in Education (with distinction) [St Mary's College, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1981]

Non-executive director of the Board of NHS Highland, 2003–11 and 2013–2016. Board Chair 2016 - 2019This Portfolio is based on a model suggested by the late Professor Charles Handy, formerly of the London School of Economics. It is an attempt to describe how the different parts of my life fit together to form what is, I hope, a balanced whole.

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”. For links to my transcripts of parts of the extensive correspondence of the Robertson family (part of the Traill Papers in the National Library of Scotland) follow these links: No mention of his slave plantation in Guyana. Tea, taverns and music displayed a sugar box, sugar tongs, and snuff boxes – but makes no link; and the gallery devoted to powering the textile trade has little mention of cotton and none of slavery. 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. 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.

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. With Caroline Vawdrey: East Church, Cromarty: A Guide (Scottish Redundant Churches Trust, 2012) and The Port of Cromarty Firth: the first forty years (CFPA, 2014) Mr Macwhirter rightly praised some examples of Scottish civic response to racism, such as Glasgow’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle and its granting of the Freedom to the City to Nelson Mandela in 1981. 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”. Very rapid and splendid fortunes’? Highland Scots in Berbice (Guyana) in the early nineteenth century' in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness (2006)

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. Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) – Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year 2022. Just what is the contrast here supposed to be? Were English, or Welsh, or Irish workers not exploited? 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. When I think what museum experiences have been special to me in recent years, then I recollect not the big museums, but the small scale and the individual, the Museum of Cromarty based in an old courthouse . . . or the Inverness Miners’ Museum in Inverness, Nova Scotia . . . They have preserved a sense of integrity in what they do and communicate effectively the meaning and experience of life in the past just as powerfully as they do information about it.

The truth is that Scots, in proportion to their population, punched well above their weight in the Empire. And at the same time they were appearing in the new British colonies of Grenada, Tobago and St Vincent in similar, disproportionately high numbers. All of them are ‘work’– if by that is meant things to which I have devoted serious and sustained effort.