Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean

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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.

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. Trustee of Nigg Old Trust (a body dedicated to preserving the old parish church of Nigg and its Pictish cross-slab), 1998–2018. Founder member of and part-time volunteer with Play Workshop, St Katherine’s Community Centre, Aberdeen 1973–76. 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”. 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.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.

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. But civic Scotland still had a lot of catching up to do in establishing the truths about its involvement with slavery. 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) Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) – Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year 2022.The truth is that Scots, in proportion to their population, punched well above their weight in the Empire. When the new Museum of Scotland opened its doors in 1998, to “tell the country’s history from earliest times to the present day”, there was not a single mention of slavery.

So it was not only the wealthy who were involved in or benefited from slavery and “ordinary Scots” were there in large numbers. What about more recent times? 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”. Convener of Management Committee of Highlands and Islands Forum, 1987–1990. An organisation promoting an integrated approach to conservation and development in the Highlands and Islands.

This 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. Non-executive director of the Board of NHS Highland, 2003–11 and 2013–2016. Board Chair 2016 - 2019 Member of the University of the Highlands and Islands Foundation, 1997–2001 and of the University Court 2013–2017

A Forgotten Diaspora: The Children of Enslaved and ‘Free Coloured’ Women and Highland Scots in Guyana Before Emancipation' in Northern Scotland, Volume 6, Issue 1 (2015) Very rapid and splendid fortunes’? Highland Scots in Berbice (Guyana) in the early nineteenth century' in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness (2006) 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.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. And at the same time they were appearing in the new British colonies of Grenada, Tobago and St Vincent in similar, disproportionately high numbers. Post Graduate Certificate in Education (with distinction) [St Mary's College, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1981]