Scotland’s association with the cry ‘Freedom!’ does not start with a Mel Gibson movie. We have to go back nearly 700 years to the Declaration of Arbroath, ‘It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself’. This noble sentiment is part of a letter sent by a committee of Scottish nobles to the Pope in 1320. The letter, signed in Arbroath Abbey, asked His Holiness to persuade Edward, or any other English king, to keep off their backs. The statement itself is an admirable one. Many Scots have stood by it, at home and across the world.
We cannot assert that Scots have universally stood for peace and equality. There is little doubt that Scottish soldiers, men and officers were essential in the establishment and maintenance of the British Empire. Little doubt that Scottish pioneers, engineers and administrators made that empire work. Little doubt that Scottish settlers were notably hard on the natives that stood in their way.
It is equally true that Scots have been at the forefront of struggles against oppression and battles for freedom across the world.
In 2007 there was a reappraisal of a conveniently forgotten chapter in Scottish history – its part in the slave trade.
Marking the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, exhibitions, events and tours revealed that Glasgow’s key industries, tobacco, sugar and cotton were inextricably linked to slave labour.
‘The Slave Trade Act’, passed by the British Government, only applied to the British Empire and did not in fact ban slavery. The Act banned trading in slaves. It would not be until ‘The Abolition of Slavery Act’ twenty-six years later that slavery would be officially ended. Nevertheless, the Royal Navy’s West Africa squadron seized many slave ships and freed over 100,000 Africans. It was 1865 before the Thirteenth Amendment finally ended slavery in America.
In the early eighteenth century Glasgow established itself as the premier Scottish port in transatlantic trade. By the middle of the century Glasgow dominated the highly lucrative tobacco trade. Merchants shipped tobacco from the slave-driven plantations home, and then redistributed it throughout Europe. The wealth generated went into prestigious buildings in the city. The key players in the business are celebrated in the streets of Glasgow: William Cunninghame built a mansion which is now the Gallery of Modern Art; Glassford, Buchanan, Ingram and Oswald have streets named after them. There are also Jamaica Street, Tobago Street and the Kingston Bridge to remind us of the West India connection. Bishop Pococke, a visitor to Glasgow in 1760, remarked that, ‘the city has above all others felt the advantages of the union in the West Indian trade which is very great, especially in tobacco, indigoes and sugar’.
People in Scotland were mostly at arm’s length from the realities of slavery, but there were many Scots who travelled across the Atlantic and did get their hands dirty as plantation owners or as factors on the tobacco and sugar estates. By 1770 a quarter of Jamaica’s population was Scottish; there were 100 Africans with the surname of MacDonald (Sir Trevor MacDonald being a descendant) and there was an equally strong contingent of Campbells. Plantation names in Jamaica included Aberdeen, Dalvey, Monymusk, Hermitage, Hampden, Glasgow, Argyle, Glen Islay, Dundee, Fort William, Montrose, Roxbro, Dumbarton, Old Monklands and Mount Stewart.
Scots were also active in the North American plantations. It is an eternal shame that Scots, in later years, were heavily involved in the Ku Klux Klan. The infamous ‘Fiery Cross’ was a Highland emblem.
Slavery was to come to an end but its contribution to the development of Scottish industry was important. It is positive that 2007 saw a recognition of the contribution to, and an admission of, Scotland’s role in that barbaric chapter in history.
It is strange but true that while Glasgow was benefiting from the slavery-related industries, Scots were at the forefront of the movement to have slavery abolished.
In the same year that 13,000 Glasgow residents put their name to a petition to abolish slavery, Robert Burns, who at one point planned to go to Jamaica, published the ‘The Slave’s Lament’:
The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
In the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O;
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
He was not alone in his concern for the Africans. Abolitionism can justifiably be described as the first human rights campaign in history. Large numbers of people were involved in protests, petitions, boycotts and the production of propaganda. Many wore badges or wristbands to show their support, and many carried the image of a kneeling slave and the slogan ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’
Lots of Scots were outspoken. Many societies were formed such as The Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society, Glasgow Ladies’ Emancipation Society, Glasgow New Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and the Glasgow Emancipation Society. The Abolitionist Committee in Edinburgh was thought to be the third strongest in Britain after those of London and Manchester.
William Dickson from Moffat had worked as the Governor’s Secretary in Barbados where he had seen the slave system first hand. When he returned to Scotland he campaigned relentlessly, travelling the country and encouraging the signing of petitions. All kinds of groups from all over Scotland, including churches, universities and town burghs, sent petitions to Parliament. In four years, 185 were sent.
Zachary MacAulay had also seen slavery with his own eyes in Jamaica. He became Governor of Sierra Leone, a colony set up as a refuge for ex-slaves. He took the huge risk of travelling on a slave ship to gather evidence. He wrote his notes in classical Greek to avoid detection of his motives by the crew.
Women, such the Quaker Jane Smeal, from Glasgow, and Eliza Wigham, from Edinburgh, were very active in creating a precedent for the suffragette campaigns to come.
Given that most people in Scotland had never seen an African and that the gruesome realities were far away, they were hardly aware of their countrymen’s involvement. It is gratifying that today you can step off Buchanan Street into Nelson Mandela Place.
By the way, the first Africans were probably seen in Scotland in the ninth century. Viking ships returned from raiding Morocco, bringing black slaves back with them.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century the Court of Session in Edinburgh was asked to judge on the legality of slavery in Scotland. Two cases failed to make it to court as one or other of the protagonists died, however in 1778 the case of Knight versus Wedderburn was heard.
Joseph Knight (named after the captain of his slave ship) was captured in Guinea, West Africa, while still a child. Transported to Jamaica, he was purchased by John Wedderburn and taken to his plantation called Culloden. Wedderburn was a survivor of the battle. It seems that he took a shine to the boy and employed him as a house slave. Wedderburn later admitted that a life in the sugar fields would probably have killed him. Joseph was allowed to learn to read and write alongside his master’s children and was even baptised – which was uncommon for an African at that time.
In 1769 Wedderburn returned to Scotland, settling on his estate of Ballindean in Perthshire and bringing Joseph with him. Joseph stayed with the servants and was even allowed to learn a trade as a barber. For an African he was relatively well off, but received no wages. He was still a slave.
Joseph was growing up; he began a relationship with a house servant called Annie, and when she became pregnant Wedderburn dismissed her upon which she moved to Dundee. Although the baby died, Joseph maintained the relationship and Annie fell pregnant again. He approached Wedderburn and asked for a cottage or at least wages so he could support the woman and child. Wedderburn refused and Joseph left.
Now Wedderburn turned to the court. The Justices of the Peace in Perth upheld his rights of property. Joseph was arrested and returned to Ballindean.
In 1774 Joseph Knight’s lawyer, MacLaurin, appealed to the Sheriff of Perth claiming that the act of landing in Scotland freed Joseph from perpetual servitude, as slavery was not recognised in Scotland. The Sheriff found that, ‘the state of slavery is not recognised by the laws of this kingdom, and is inconsistent with the principles thereof: That the regulations in Jamaica, concerning slaves, do not extend to this kingdom; and repelled the defender’s claim to a perpetual service’.
Wedderburn was not satisfied and took the case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh. He argued that, even though Knight was not recognised as a slave, he was still bound to provide perpetual service in the same manner as an indentured servant or an apprenticed artisan. Joseph delivered a forty-page address (some of it in French) dealing with his life from his enslavement in Africa, through the horrors of the plantations, to his new family in Scotland.
Lord Auchinleck (father of James Boswell), one of the judges on the panel, said, ‘Although in the plantations they have laid hold of the poor blacks, and made slaves of them, yet I do not think that is agreeable to humanity, not to say to our Christian religion. Is a man a slave because he is black? No. He is our brother; and he is a man, although not of our colour; he is in a land of liberty, with his wife and child, let him remain there.’
The court ruled that, ‘the Dominion assumed over this Negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country to any extent: That, therefore, the defender had no right to the Negro’s service for any space of time, nor to send him out of the country against his consent: That the Negro was likewise protected under the act 1701, from being sent out of the country against his consent.’
It was thus confirmed in Scottish Law that slavery was not and had never been legal in Scotland and that any slave could get protection from the court if they chose to leave service or were being forced to leave the country. Joseph’s life was fictionalised by James Robertson in the 2004 book Joseph Knight.
Certainly Scots have supported freedom causes by military means; Admiral Cochrane’s stature as a national hero in Peru, Chile and Greece are an example, as we have seen. Scots have also proved themselves as relentless and effective campaigners.
David Livingstone from Blantyre was known to many Africans as ‘the first African freedom fighter’. This was due to his tireless campaigning against slavery.
Unlike many other explorers, Livingstone did not have the benefit of a wealthy background to support his activities. Livingstone’s family had left the Hebrides in search of work and settled in Blantyre. Living in a tenement, they eked out a living. He recalls in the introduction to Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, ‘The earliest recollection of my mother recalls a picture so often seen among the Scottish poor — that of the anxious housewife striving to make both ends meet. At the age of ten I was put into the factory [Blantyre Cotton Works] as a ‘piecer’ to aid by my earnings in lessening her anxiety’. In the same passage he reveals the determination that was to see him become one of the most famous Scots of his generation, ‘With a part of my first week’s wages I purchased Ruddiman’s Rudiments of Latin.’
His father, a staunch Presbyterian, was suspicious of the books of science and other subjects, feeling that his son should only be reading authorised books on theology. David’s search for self-education was relentless. In 1836 he was admitted to Anderson’s College in Glasgow, now the University of Strathclyde. He studied medicine alongside divinity with the intention of becoming a medical missionary. In due course he was accepted by the London Missionary Society for further training.
China was his initial goal, but a meeting with Robert Moffat, who was on leave from a mission in South Africa, convinced him otherwise. He made his way to Africa and found himself in ‘Bakwain country’, Bechuanaland. It is typical of the man that he cut himself off from all European contacts for months so as to better learn the language and customs of the natives.
In his book, Livingstone recounts in detail how a tartan jacket saved his life. A pride of lions had been taking livestock. The natives, fearing the lions were bewitched, were reluctant to tackle the animals. Livingstone led a hunting party into the field. He fired both barrels into a lion, but while he was reloading, the lion, in ‘his paroxysm of dying rage’, leapt, catching him on the shoulder then pinning him to the ground with its paw on his head. A second man distracted the lion and was also injured. The animal injured a third man before falling dead. Livingstone’s shoulder wound left him with a partly disabled arm, but it was fortunate that it did not become infected. He put this down to the tartan jacket he was wearing, believing that it had cleaned the virus from the lion’s teeth as they penetrated.
After a brief return to Scotland (he stayed in Hamilton) Livingstone was back in Africa. He was taken to a holy site known as Mosi-oa-Tunya (‘the smoke that thunders’). He was the first European to see it:
The most wonderful sight I had seen in Africa … In looking down into the fissure one sees nothing but a dense white cloud which … had two rainbows in it. From this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapour, exactly like steam … condensing, it changed its hue to that of dark smoke and came back in a constant shower which wetted us to the skin.
He named the spectacular waterfall Victoria Falls. He points out that this was the only feature in Africa to which he gave an English name.
He did also leave behind the name of the town, Blantyre, in Malawi. It is a huge mark of the esteem he holds to this day that the name has not been changed in the way most other colonial place names have – likewise the fact that his statue still stands proud, by Mosi-ao-Tunya (formerly Victoria Falls), in the black African country of Zimbabwe. Stranger still is that when its removal was proposed in 2003, the proposal was by another black African state, Zambia, who wanted it erected on their side of the river. David Livingstone’s reputation remains powerful.
From 1854 to 1856 Livingstone crossed the width of Africa, west to east, reaching the coast in Mozambique. No one had achieved the journey at that latitude. Unlike other expeditions which took small armies of armed guards and porters, Livingstone travelled light, with just a few Africans, and bartered for supplies along the way.
He became convinced that a proper exploration of the Zambezi was vital and returned to Britain to gather support and publish Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. The Zambezi expedition was riddled with problems from the start with trouble among the crew. They encountered unknown impassable rapids and had to abandon their boat. It was widely judged a failure, causing some decline in popularity at home and making it difficult to raise funds. However, he did set out in 1866 from Zanzibar to find the source of the Nile. He thought he had found a potential candidate in the River Lualaba, but consequently discovered that it ultimately flowed west into the Congo Basin.
By 1869 he was in bad shape. Overcome by disease he was rescued by Arab slave traders, but then kept for a time caged as a public spectacle. By 1871 he was reduced to writing his journal on a newspaper over the newsprint using ink he concocted from local berries. The journal survives and in it he records a horrendous massacre, which deeply affected him: ‘… two guns were fired and a general flight took place – firing on the helpless canoes took place – a long line heads oh heads in the water shewed the number that would perish – great numbers died – it was awful – terrible - a dreadful world this’.
Later that year Henry Morton Stanley of the New York Herald eventually found Livingstone and uttered the immortal words, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’, or perhaps he didn’t. The line was included in the editorial of the New York Herald and has been quoted faithfully in many publications since, but curiously the relevant page of Stanley’s diary was torn out.
Livingstone finally succumbed to disease in 1873 at the age of 60. His body was transported back to Britain and he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. In a curious echo of Robert the Bruce, his heart was buried in his beloved Africa.
It is incredible that a Scotsman born into a working-class family should be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, have statues in Edinburgh and Zambia and have a dedicated museum in his home town of Blantyre. It is especially incredible when you consider that both his Zambezi and Nile expeditions were failures and that in his role as a missionary it is said that he only converted one African to Christianity (a chief named Sechele, though even he was reluctant to give up his five wives).
It is perhaps for his unflinching opposition to the slave trade that he is best remembered. He provided vital first-hand evidence of the atrocities being committed in Africa, fuelling the abolitionist campaigns at home. In his 1871 journal he recounts many incidents of slaves, slave traders and slave captures – six years after slavery was officially abolished in America.
He never lost his love of Africa and its people. Shortly before his death he wrote of, ‘The glorious tropical vegetation in all its richness, beauty and majestic forms … beasts, lakes and rivers, and humanity in endless variety and of beautiful form.’
In general our view of Native Americans comes from Western movies and is appallingly flawed. In particular we have little understanding of the difference between the nations. Mention Cherokee and we are likely to think of a generic horse riding, tepee-living Indian with mesas and buttes in the background. This is far from the truth. When they were first encountered by Europeans, they were settled farmers and herdsmen living in what we would think of as the Deep South, east of the Mississippi.
The land was coveted by the white settlers and in 1829 the state of Georgia parcelled up the Cherokee territory on a map and sold lottery tickets to white settlers. The prizes were these plots, despite the fact that the natives were still living on their cherished land. Conflict ensued leading to the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ when the nation was forced to march to Arkansas, thousands of them dying along the way.
Their Principal Chief for much of this complicated period fought the white man not on the battlefield, but in the courts. He was dressed not in buckskin and beads, but much as we would expect any Victorian gentleman. His name was George Ross and he was Scottish. His father was from Sutherland, and his mother’s father from Inverness. Only his maternal great-grandmother was Cherokee. Most of the whites working and trading with the natives were Scots, mostly Highlanders.
While his first wife’s influence may have helped (Quatie Brown Henley was well-connected in the tribe), it was because of his strength of character and his personal abilities that John Ross rose to such prominence. He was called by some the Moses of his people. He fought tirelessly to stop the Cherokee from splitting up and being removed from their homeland. He was ultimately unsuccessful. The march of American ‘civilisation’ was unstoppable.
George Rosie personally explored John Ross’s story, recounted in his book Curious Scotland. He met with another John Ross, current chief of a Cherokee organisation, who told him:
John Ross was our greatest chief. Without him the Cherokee would have been scattered to the winds, the way that other tribes were. He fought for the Nation longer and harder than anyone … He was our great man. The Cherokee Nation, as we know it now, is John Ross’s creation.
John Ross lived, for a time, in a two-storey mansion called Rose Cottage. It was burned to the ground during the conflicts.
James Hunter’s book Glencoe and the Indians explains in detail the role of Scots in the early exploration of North America. Scots, particularly Highlanders, were more comfortable than most at heading off alone into what was thought of as the ‘wilderness’ and more comfortable than most at respecting the natives.
Working as trappers and traders it became common, even acceptable, for Scots to take a native wife. There were no white women within hundreds of miles. As the years progressed, with white women still in short supply, it was perfectly acceptable for a white man to marry a daughter of these mixed marriages. For a half-breed son there was no such social acceptance. For any of them to marry a European lady was unthinkable. The only option was to return to their mother’s nation where they were more welcome, taking their surname with them – hence the many Rosses, MacDonalds and MacIntoshes in the nations.
Allan Octavian Hume of the Home/Hume family in the Borders was the ‘Father of Indian Ornithology’. He published several books, established the journal Stray Feathers and amassed a huge collection of bird skins and eggs which were later donated to the British Natural History Museum. There were 82,000 specimens. He was devastated when he lost a huge part of his manuscripts (‘several hundredweights’ by his own description). They were stolen by a servant during his absence and sold as wastepaper.
His place in ornithology is secure. His part in Indian politics was more controversial. He came to India in 1849 at the age of 20 to serve in the British administration. Over a long career he served as a district officer, head of a central department and secretary to the government. He fought with distinction in the Indian Rebellion in 1857. Afterwards, through his tact and understanding, he was able to achieve peace in the region far quicker than elsewhere in the country.
Throughout his career he campaigned for agricultural and economic improvement. His sound ideas and enthusiasm were recognised at first and he was appointed as Secretary for Commerce, Agriculture & Revenue. He was not slow at pointing out where the problems lay, repeatedly criticising government policies. In the preface to his Agricultural Reform in India he wrote, ‘It is undeniable that in the tenures we have created, and the systems we have adopted, there have been grave errors’. He went so far as to claim that British land revenue policies were responsible for poverty in India. Not surprisingly, he lost his job.
He continued to campaign: ‘there was always a hope, that amid the vicissitudes to which public affairs are subject, some lucky turn of the wheel might bring more enlightened ideas on these subjects into vogue …’.
By 1872 he saw little hope of more enlightened thinking. He wrote in a letter, ‘studied and invariable disregard, if not actually contempt for the opinions and feelings of our subjects, is at the present day the leading characteristic of our government in every branch of the administration’.
His vision was that if a committee of educated Indians were to develop a clearly thought-out strategy then they could ultimately bring peaceful change to the country. He wrote an open letter to the graduates of the University of Calcutta seeking volunteers and opened the road that led to the formation of the Indian National Congress (he served as its first secretary), and ultimately to Indian independence.
Colin Cameron from Lanark moved to Nyasaland in 1957. As a lawyer he defended Africans who were detained under a state of emergency, and joined the African National Congress. In a stand against apartheid, he stood for election in 1961 at the request of Hastings K. Banda. He served as a minister throughout the transfer of British protectorate, Nyasaland, to the independent state of Malawi. When he became aware that Banda’s regime was becoming oppressive, he was forced to leave the country. He continued to support refugees and the cause of a just African freedom.
Nelson Mandela called Eleanor Kasrils from Kilmarnock ‘that genteel and elegant Scottish woman’. She was a quiet soul working in a bookshop in Durban in South Africa when the Sharpville massacre occurred in which sixty-nine anti-apartheid demonstrators were killed. Stunned and disgusted, she joined the Congress of Democrats, which was aligned to the African National Congress, and was one of the first women recruited into the ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe – Spear of the Nation’.