Suchergebnisse

This important book assesses the size and nature of Caribbean slavery's economic impact in British society. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy, a grouping of West India merchants and planters, became active before the emancipation of chattel slavery in the British West Indies in 1834. Many acquired nationally significant fortunes, and their investments percolated into the Scottish economy and wider society. At its core, the book traces the development of merchant capital and poses several interrelated questions during an era of rapid transformation, namely, what impact the private investments of West India merchants and colonial adventurers had on metropolitan society and the economy, as well as the wider effects of such commerce on industrial and agricultural development. The book also examines the fortunes of temporary Scottish economic migrants who travelled to some of the wealthiest of the Caribbean islands, presenting the first large-scale survey of repatriated slavery fortunes via case studies of Scots in Jamaica, Grenada and Trinidad before emancipation in 1834. It therefore takes a new approach to illuminate the world of individuals who acquired West India fortunes and ultimately explores, in an Atlantic frame, the interconnections between the colonies and metropole in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

On 16 September 2018, the University of Glasgow released the report 'Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow'. This acknowledged that slave-owners, merchants and planters with connections to New World slavery – and their descendants – donated capital between 1697 and 1937 that influenced the development of the institution. In producing this report, the institution became the first British university to declare historical income derived from transatlantic slavery. In response, a nine-point programme reported as reparative justice was launched, the first British university to launch a project on such a scale. This article traces both the methodological approach undertaken in the study and the historical evidence related to the University of Glasgow. This provides insights into the process of collecting and analysing the evidence on which the report and strategy was based. Current understandings about British universities and transatlantic slavery are shaped by the institutional relationship with owners of enslaved people. This article underlines the importance of merchant capital – in this case, mainly via West India commerce – to the development of one institution.

AbstractOver the last three decades, a major shift has taken place in Scottish nationalist understandings of Scotland's colonial past. During the second half of the twentieth century, independence supporters viewed Scotland's relationship with England in colonial terms. Since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, nationalists have increasingly recognised Scots' role in Atlantic slavery. This paper explores this change within the Scottish National Party (SNP) using archival sources, published material and Scottish Parliamentary records. It demonstrates that a maturing historiography has drawn attention to Scotland's slavery past. History has become politically relevant in transatlantic deliberations over racial injustice, which have grown in intensity since the international Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. SNP ministers and parliamentarians have responded to this context by incorporating addressing Scotland's role in Atlantic slavery within a case for independence that is styled as progressive and contrasts with the more recalcitrant attitudes, which predominate at UK level.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations and Tables -- The Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- Introduction. Scotland and Transatlantic Slavery -- 1. Lost to History -- 2. Yonder Awa: Slavery and Distancing Strategies in Scottish Literature -- 3. Early Scottish Sugar Planters in the Leeward Islands, c. 1660-1740 -- 4. The Scots Penetration of the Jamaican Plantation Business -- 5. 'The habits of these creatures in clinging one to the other': Enslaved Africans, Scots and the Plantations of Guyana -- 6. The Great Glasgow West India House of John Campbell, senior, & Co. -- 7. Scottish Surgeons in the Liverpool Slave Trade in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries -- 8. Scotland and Colonial Slave Ownership: The Evidence of the Slave Compensation Records -- 9. 'The Upas Tree, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes and all virtue dies': Scottish Public Perceptions of the Slave Trade and Slavery, 1756-1833 -- 10. 'The most unbending Conservative in Britain': Archibald Alison and Pro-slavery Discourse -- 11. Did Slavery make Scotia Great? A Question Revisited -- Conclusion: History, Scotland and Slavery -- Index