The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery
This lecture, based upon book of the same title published last year, illuminates the world of Glasgow West India merchants and planters in late-slavery era Great Britain, 1775-1838.
ARC Public
Date: Sunday 17 September 2023
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Venue: University of Glasgow, Advanced Research Centre (ARC), 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW
Category: Public lectures
These men were amongst the richest men in Great Britain, and invested widely in Scottish commerce, agriculture and industry. Secondly, the lecture assesses, in a comparative frame, Scots present across the British West Indies between 1775 and 1838. It seems very likely that many tens of thousands of Scots crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies, and this lecture focuses on the Scottish diaspora in three islands subsumed into the English/British Empire at different stages of colonization: Jamaica (1655), Grenada (1763) and Trinidad (1797/1802). This lecture reveals how Caribbean slavery remains a quotidian feature of life in modern Scotland and West India merchant capital continues to shape lives today.