Slaves and Highlanders : : Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean / / David Alston.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Alston, David,
• MitwirkendeR: Cox-Westmaas, Juanita,; Westmaas, Rod,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (400 p.) :; 14 B/W illustrations

Explores the prominent role of Highland Scots in the exploitation of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the cotton, sugar and coffee plantations of the 18th and 19th centuriesWe are reprinting! In the meantime, please check your local shop or online.Pays special attention to the new colonies of the southern Caribbean, including Grenada and Guyana, and to Suriname in the years to 1863Contributes to the debate on reparation by reappraising the idea of Scots complicity in the slave tradeIncludes a short foreword by Rod Westmaas and Juanita Cox-Westmaas, co-founders of Guyana Speaks, an organisation for the Guyanese diaspora in LondonScots were involved in every stage of the slave trade: from captaining slaving ships to auctioning captured Africans in the colonies and hunting down those who escaped from bondage. This book focuses on the Scottish Highlanders who engaged in or benefitted from these crimes against humanity in the Caribbean Islands and Guyana, some reluctantly but many with enthusiasm and without remorse. Their voices are clearly heard in the archives, while in the same sources their victims’ stories are silenced – reduced to numbers and listed as property. David Alston gives voice not only to these Scots but to enslaved Africans and their descendants – to those who reclaimed their freedom, to free women of colour, to the Black Caribs of St Vincent, to house servants, and to children of mixed race who found themselves in the increasingly racist society of Britain in the mid-1800s.As Scots recover and grapple with their past, this vital history lays bare the enormous wealth generated in the Highlands by slavery and emancipation compensation schemes. This legacy, entwined with so many of our contemporary institutions, must be reckoned with.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures, Tables and Maps -- Standard Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- 1 Jumbies -- PART 1 The African Slave Trade, the English ‘Sugar Islands’ and Scots in the Expanding Empire -- 2 The Slave Trade -- 3 Jamaica– ‘ As much gold as will fill a flagon’ -- 4 The Ceded Islands– Grenada -- 5 A Family of Highland Carpenters in the Ceded Islands -- PART 2 Northern Scots in Guyana on the ‘Last Frontier’ of Empire -- INTRODUCTION -- 6 Guyana– A Last Frontier -- 7 Guyana– Voices of the Enslaved -- 8 Guyana– The ‘Free Coloured’ Moment -- 9 Guyana– The Merchant Houses -- PART 3 Entangled Histories– Legacies of Slavery in the North of Scotland -- 10 Northern Scotland– Investments -- 11 Landowners, Caribbean Wealth and Highland Identities -- 12 Enslaved Blacks and Black Servants -- 13 Children of Colour -- PART 4 Reckonings -- 14 ‘It is always easier to remember victims than to cope with the difficult issue of perpetrators’ -- Afterword Ghosts in our Blood -- Notes -- Index