Black Lives Matter campaign prompts calls for open discussion on Highland links to slavery
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As the Black Lives Matter campaign continues historians have spoken of the area’s almost hidden slavery roots.
Wealth accumulated via opium, coffee, sugar and slavery is known to have funded buildings in Inverness including the University of the Highlands and Islands executive office in Ness Walk as well as schools across the region.
Black Isle historian David Alston, who has carried out extensive research into the subject, said that by the late 1820s it was increasingly difficult for people with African ancestry to feel accepted in Scotland and black people disappeared from school records.
He believes it is the fabric of the Highlands and time for us all to recognise the past.
“To its credit, the university has placed a plaque on its headquarters indicating that the money for the building came in part from the slave plantations of the Caribbean,” he said.
“We need a wider debate about how we acknowledge this history in our public buildings, public institutions and public spaces. Black Lives Matter has provided the impetus. It is up to us all to make sure that it happens.”
Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Highlanders clamoured to travel for five or six weeks from the Clyde across the seas to destinations such as Jamaica to “pick up gold”. In turn, they would prove their new-found wealth by making donations to improve the Highlands.
In some cases, when they returned home they would bring their illegitimate children and slaves back to Inverness to be educated, and to live and work.
Alison Mason, an archivist for High Life Highland, said: “Men believed that if they could go abroad they could make their fortune. All walks of life, from lawyers, doctors, bankers and even tradesmen believed they would become wealthy if they set out for the Caribbean.
“In some cases this was true, but others suffered illness and quite often died thousands of miles from home in poverty.
“But a large portion of the bricks and mortar of the Highlands were built on slavery. The records we hold at Highland Archive Centre show that there was a multi-level network of Highlanders in the Caribbean who were sending money back to invest in significant large institutional buildings such as the Royal Northern Infirmary and schools as well as to make improvements to many Highland estates.
“All of this was possible because of their involvement in the slave trade.
“Slaves were a commodity for their owners. In our archives, documents show the value of each slave on one page, and on the next page the cattle are also given a value. The death of slaves is recorded as a loss, while the birth of new slaves adds some money to the balance sheet.”
In 1804, 10 per cent of the school roll at Inverness Royal Academy was Caribbean, five students were from Canada and one was from Calcutta.
Inverness MP Drew Hendry and city councillor Emma Roddick have written a joint letter to Highland Council leader Margaret Davidson calling for her to commission a report “examining how we can do better to educate our communities and enthuse our young people to stand against intolerance and injustice”.
It comes after dozens of anti-racism and Black Lives Matter signs were removed from Ness Bridge on Tuesday.
The messages appeared over the weekend and were prompted by the death of African-American George Floyd (46), while in police custody in the USA. They will be taken to Eden Court to go on show there next week.
Earlier this week Councillor Davidson said: “There is no place for racism in the Highlands, or indeed elsewhere.”
Related: BLM placards to go on display at Highland venue
