Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- List of the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- map
- Introduction: Scotland and Transatlantic Slavery
- 1 Lost to History
- 2 Yonder Awa: Slavery and Distancing Strategies in Scottish Literature
- 3 Early Scottish Sugar Planters in the Leeward Islands, c. 1660–1740
- 4 The Scots Penetration of the Jamaican Plantation Business
- 5 ‘The habits of these creatures in clinging one to the other’: Enslaved Africans, Scots and the Plantations of Guyana
- 6 The Great Glasgow West India House of John Campbell, senior, & Co.
- 7 Scottish Surgeons in the Liverpool Slave Trade in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 8 Scotland and Colonial Slave Ownership: The Evidence of the Slave Compensation Records
- 9 ‘The Upas Tree, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes and all virtue dies’: Scottish Public Perceptions of the Slave Trade and Slavery, 1756–1833
- 10 ‘The most unbending Conservative in Britain’: Archibald Alison and Pro-slavery Discourse
- 11 Did Slavery make Scotia Great? A Question Revisited
- Conclusion: History, Scotland and Slavery 246
- Index
2 - Yonder Awa: Slavery and Distancing Strategies in Scottish Literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- List of the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- map
- Introduction: Scotland and Transatlantic Slavery
- 1 Lost to History
- 2 Yonder Awa: Slavery and Distancing Strategies in Scottish Literature
- 3 Early Scottish Sugar Planters in the Leeward Islands, c. 1660–1740
- 4 The Scots Penetration of the Jamaican Plantation Business
- 5 ‘The habits of these creatures in clinging one to the other’: Enslaved Africans, Scots and the Plantations of Guyana
- 6 The Great Glasgow West India House of John Campbell, senior, & Co.
- 7 Scottish Surgeons in the Liverpool Slave Trade in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries
- 8 Scotland and Colonial Slave Ownership: The Evidence of the Slave Compensation Records
- 9 ‘The Upas Tree, beneath whose pestiferous shade all intellect languishes and all virtue dies’: Scottish Public Perceptions of the Slave Trade and Slavery, 1756–1833
- 10 ‘The most unbending Conservative in Britain’: Archibald Alison and Pro-slavery Discourse
- 11 Did Slavery make Scotia Great? A Question Revisited
- Conclusion: History, Scotland and Slavery 246
- Index
Summary
When the cloth was removed, Mr Jarvie compounded with his own hands a very small bowl of brandy-punch, the first which I had ever the fortune to see. ‘The limes,’ he assured us, ‘were from his own little farm yonder-awa’ (indicating the West Indies with a knowing shrug of his shoulders).
Walter Scott, Rob Roy, 1817so it was that the rum came to be from yonder awa awa, and the black ants lifting heavy load in that heathen land became yonder awa awa. Til your memory grew awa awa … and the land had broad back – you forget, and the land dash you awa – you forget … look how you can't run awa awa from truth. look how you cant back chat this one awa awa.
Malika Booker, yonder awa awa, 2014WALTER SCOTT'S HISTORICAL FICTION Rob Roy, written in 1817, is set around the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The century between the time of action and the time of writing had seen the city of Glasgow become a major Atlantic port, the flourishing of the Enlightenment, the defeat of the Jacobite claim to the throne, the solidification of an apparently enduring political union with England, the expansion of the empire to west and east, and the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 which brought an apparently conclusive victory to almost constant war with an imperial rival. During this time, Britain became the leading slavetrading nation from Africa to the Americas, before latterly abolishing the trade; a feature intimately intertwined with the more familiar ‘national story’ in ways that are only beginning to be fully recognised. In the novel's narrative present, the union of 1707 still struggles for credibility, the restoration of the House of Stuart over the Hanoverian usurpers seems both achievable and urgent, and the rule of state law carries little weight over large areas where glamorous brigands like Rob Roy roam. Into this landscape, the arrival of limes signifies a fresh new beginning. The ‘exotic’ green Caribbean citrus fruit mixes in the punch bowl with classical European brandy (not rum) creating a zesty transatlantic cocktail suggestive of the kinds of delights that the Union and Empire can bring to Scotland. The drinkers ‘found the liquor exceedingly palatable’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery PastThe Caribbean Connection, pp. 41 - 61Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015