Scotland and the Caribbean, c.1740-1833 - Atlantic Archipelagos (Hardcover)

This book participates in the recovery of the long-obscured memory of relations between Scotland and the Caribbean. Scottish connections with slavery remain an uncomfortable area for a nation that prides itself on ideals of liberty and democracy. However, post-devolution (post-independence?) Scotland is currently undertaking a wide-scale re-assessment of its place in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Therefore, an honest re-examination of the imperial past plays a vital role in the present.

Situated between historical and literary studies, this book offers a "cultural history" that explores two main avenues. Firstly, it develops the suggestion that the Caribbean represents a forgotten lieu de memoire (Pierre Nora) where Scotland might reconsider its national narratives that evade issues of empire, race and slavery. Accordingly, this book re-examines texts from the Enlightenment to Romantic eras in their historical context and maps them into world-literature perspectives of the Atlantic world. This includes critical analyses of pastoral and georgic modes in Enlightenment discourses of "improvement" and "gradual amelioration" across both Scotland and the Caribbean. Secondly, it advances the re-conceptualisation of the "British Isles and Ireland" as "NOWA"- the North Western Atlantic Archipelago. It argues that the discussion of cultural fusion articulated in Caribbean theories of creolisation provide a suggestive model for the future of NOWA. The relations between both Atlantic archipelagos the Caribbean and NOWA are then explored from a transnational Atlantic perspective. This both illuminates discussions of "Mulatto-Scots" from the Caribbean, and reconsiders the relationship between enslaved and free labourers in the Atlantic world that serves a politics of emancipation. "

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