This article re-evaluates Robert Burns’s ‘To a Haggis’—arguably, the most globally recited food poem in world literature—by situating it within a long-overlooked tradition of Scottish food patriotism. Drawing on literary antecedents from John Barbour and William Dunbar to William Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay, Tobias Smollett, and Robert Fergusson, the authors show how Burns’s mock-heroic celebration of haggis synthesizes centuries of Scottish nationalist sentiment, theological dissent, and class-conscious gastronomy. More specifically, the study breaks new ground in evidencing Burns’s fusion of early modern Jacobite conviviality with Enlightenment-era critiques of Calvinist austerity and foreign culinary elitism—a complex recipe further complicated by tensions in Scotland’s post-union identity. By recovering the literary and political roots of ‘To a Haggis,’ this article offers an innovative model for understanding the intersections of class, nation, religion, and food in Scottish cultural production.
South-west Scotland benefited greatly from slavery in the West Indies, especially by the production of sugar and rum on the plantations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, much of the produce entered Scotland through smuggling rather than by merchant shipping, and the economy of Ayrshire became strongly influenced by this local delivery of rum. In response, the revenue cutter for south-west Scotland, based in Millport on the Isle of Cumbrae, prevented smuggling where possible, and, in the process, its crew earned ‘prize’ money that made the officers very wealthy. In particular, the cutter’s mate was able to take out a large bond with merchants who invested the money into slave plantations in Jamaica, boosting the production of sugar and rum. The mate’s children inherited the wealth, and his son was able to become a slave owner on a Trinidad sugar plantation. This cycle of events constituted a positive feedback loop, which promoted further slavery and enhanced the production of rum.
This article concerns the continuing controversies around the actions and reputation of the sheep farmer and factor Patrick Sellar. His involvement in the Sutherland clearances and his trial and acquittal in the High Court ensured his contemporary reputation as one of the most loathed figures in the highlands. The article examines the way in which this reputation has been sustained in the period since his death in 1851 and emphasizes the role of his large and distinguished family in their efforts to defend and protect his reputation. A further theme is the way in which the public understanding of the clearances shifted in a variety of historical contexts since the early nineteenth century.
Emigration was a process that was fundamentally defined by family. The decision to migrate was often made for the long-term well-being of the family, and travelling as a unit was a distinct experience to that of solo migrants. This article examines the transatlantic voyage and how, on the one hand, travelling in a family shaped the experience of shipboard life, psychologically and practically. On the other hand, the journey shaped family life, forcing change to their daily routines, their life events, and even their family make-up. Within the family unit, the onboard experiences of men, women, and children differed. Gender and age were just as significant as the variables of class and nationality, which have been assessed by historians to date. This article therefore reassesses the migrant voyage through the lens of family, demonstrating how voyage and family acted upon each other.
The history of lobster fishing in Beàrnaraigh na Hearadh (Berneray, Harris) reveals how Gaelic communities adapted to the socio-economic upheavals of the late nineteenth century, shaped by clearance, migration, and industrialization. This article explores the evolution of the lobster fishery from circa 1850 to 1930, drawing on under-utilized oral histories and Gaelic folklore from the Tobar an Dualchais online resource. These sources, often overlooked, provide valuable insight into the practices, challenges, and cultural significance of a localized, small-scale industry rooted in traditional ecological knowledge and skills. Unlike the industrialized fisheries of the time, the Beàrnaraigh lobster fishery began as a homegrown, small-scale enterprise using island-built boats powered by sail and oar. Fishermen relied on a sophisticated understanding of the marine environment, developed through experiential knowledge and honed by oral tradition. This intimate connection to the sea positioned the fishery as both an economic activity and a vital cultural expression. Technological advances, such as creels and marine engines and market systems gradually transformed the fishery, altering some traditional practices while demonstrating the community’s resilience and adaptability. By integrating oral history and historiography, the article deepens our understanding of the marine ecological heritage and cultural history of lobster fishing in Scotland’s Gàidhealtachd.
Starting in 1621, Sir William Alexander and his allies laid out a vision for a New Scotland on par with New Spain, New France, and New England. This vision was a transatlantic projection of the idea that Scotland was a sovereign kingdom equal in standing with the other kingdoms of Europe. It was of particular importance in relation to the 1603 Union of the Crowns as Scottish elites were concerned that the union may result in the loss of Scotland’s status and privileges. Scotland, it was feared, would be subsumed by the larger and wealthier England. Taken together, the legal, political, and symbolic characteristics of Nova Scotia, its charters, promotion, and mapping—plus the actions taken by its supporters to make the colony a reality—render it more significant than its brief existence has been taken to suggest. This article lays the foundations for greater appreciation of the colony’s importance to Scottish independence in the fraught Anglo-Scottish and Atlantic contexts of the seventeenth century.
This research note publishes and contextualises a Greek-language naval diploma issued in 1827. It was drafted in the context of the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire (1821–32), in which foreign volunteers also participated. The signatory of the document was Edward Masson, a Scot from Kincardineshire. Masson served as personal secretary to Thomas Cochrane, later 10th Earl of Dundonald, during the latter’s brief stint as admiral of the Greek navy. The recipient of the diploma was an American volunteer, George Brown. The note elaborates upon Masson’s little-known but extraordinary career in Greece, with a particular focus on his relationship to Cochrane, and analyses the hands and watermarks of the diploma.
This article argues that the Scottish industry recovered fairly quickly from the cotton famine but declined steeply in the late nineteenth century. The article analyses the wills and inventories of fifty Scottish cotton masters and sixty-one Glasgow West India merchants from 1783 to 1912—a total sample of 111. From the 1830s, Scottish cotton masters diversified their portfolios into iron and steel manufacturing, engineering, railways, chemicals, and shipping. Wills and inventories need to be supplemented by contemporary analysis, such as the posthumous memoirs of Archibald Alison, Margaret Irwin, and the Women’s Industries in Scotland, or contemporary biographies. Recent research by Sven Beckert, Maxine Berg, Pat Hudson and Giorgio Riello has emphasized globalization, increasing trading and financial links between Liverpool and New Orleans, and growing regional variations between Scotland and Lancashire. The decline of the Scottish cotton industry was rooted in cultural norms, social expectations, and religious behaviour, plus investment in more profitable industries developing in the west of Scotland.
This article focuses on the relationship of Westminster politicians to rectorial elections at Scottish universities between the first obviously ‘political’ contest at Glasgow in 1820 and Lloyd George’s triumph in Edinburgh in 1920. It argues that the widely reported return of Sir Robert Peel at the University of Glasgow in 1836 underlined the partisan political potential of the elections and established many of the features of the subsequent elections at Glasgow and elsewhere. After mid-century, such political contests – often fierce and bipartisan – were increasingly normal following the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858, and the article examines how rectorial contests functioned to offer parliamentarians and their supporters a range of opportunities. Finally, the article engages in a closer examination of two rectorial contests towards the end of the period to indicate how far these had become sites of professionalization and training grounds for aspiring politicians by the early twentieth century.
