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3 - Scots in Empire

‘Good Fishing in Muddy Waters’: Claud Alexander in Calcutta and Catrine

from Part I - Beyond Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2019

Viccy Coltman
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Summary

The statistical picture for Scots in Empire is well known: they were disproportionately represented in the many professions, the army, medicine, administration that served the imperial project. The chapter begins in early 1772 with a twenty-year-old Scot from Ayrshire, Claud Alexander, being appointed to the East India Company. Working first as an assistant in the Account’s Office at Calcutta and later as Paymaster-General for the East India Company in Bengal, Alexander maintains a global correspondence with his family and friends which reveals his multiple epistolary identities as a colonial servant, a private trader, a European in Bengal and a Scot with many personal and professional links with fellow Scots in India, including David Alexander and George Bogle. His epistolary identities are juxtaposed with his visual identity as imaged in a large portrait by Johann Zoffany in which he is shown with his brother Boyd and an Indian servant. The chapter ends with the purchase of a house and estate at Ballochmyle in Ayrshire prior to his return to Scotland in 1786, when eschewing the identity of nabob for laird, he established a cotton manufacturing village at nearby Catrine.

Type
Chapter
Information
Art and Identity in Scotland
A Cultural History from the Jacobite Rising of 1745 to Walter Scott
, pp. 104 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Scots in Empire
  • Viccy Coltman, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Art and Identity in Scotland
  • Online publication: 14 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108278133.004
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  • Scots in Empire
  • Viccy Coltman, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Art and Identity in Scotland
  • Online publication: 14 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108278133.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Scots in Empire
  • Viccy Coltman, University of Edinburgh
  • Book: Art and Identity in Scotland
  • Online publication: 14 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108278133.004
Available formats
×