Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean

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Non-executive director of the Board of NHS Highland, 2003–11 and 2013–2016. Board Chair 2016 - 2019

And at the same time they were appearing in the new British colonies of Grenada, Tobago and St Vincent in similar, disproportionately high numbers. 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. 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. 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. 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: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”. 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. 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

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?Part of the perniciousness of slavery was the way in which it permeated society and drew in otherwise well-intentioned young men, leading them into the systematic and casual brutalities which were essential to the running of a slave plantation.