SCOTLAND’S role in the British Empire is being wrongly politicised in the modern day – and misunderstood by both sides of the constitutional debate, experts have told the Sunday National.
It comes after a YouGov poll conducted last week found that a plurality of Scots (40%) believe Scotland was “more of a subject country in the British Empire”, while 29% said it was “more of a partner”. One-third (31%) said they did not know either way.
More independence supporters saw Scotland as a subject in the Empire (55% of 2014 Yes voters vs 32% of No voters). Conversely, 38% of No voters viewed Scotland as a partner, compared to 20% of Yes voters.
Glasgow University’s Professor Murray Pittock, a leading historian who has written extensively on Scottish identity, said the Jacobites had resisted the British Empire – and that may symbolically be linked to the modern independence movement.
“Clearly Jacobites were opposed to the Union, that was a key part of their platform and it is very important to some people who are opposed to the Union today,” he said.
“But the kind of political settlement the Jacobites wanted is not the kind of political settlement represented by the Yes campaign in 2014, most definitely not.”
Jacobites and empire
DR Allan Kennedy, a lecturer in Scottish history at the University of Dundee, told the Sunday National that the Jacobites were not opposed to the idea of empire. However, he said that giving people a clear view of history was “not helped by the fact that [it] is intensely politicised”.
“If you feel alienated from the British state, if you feel that Scotland would be better off independent, I can certainly see how part of that might be a repudiation of the British Empire and its legacy,” he said.
“Therefore, you'd be keener to think about Scotland's involvement in the Empire as being more passive or more to do with being a victim. But it doesn't change the facts.
“Both people who wanted the Union and people who opposed the Union would have agreed that empire was a useful thing to be involved in.
“If there is a constitutional divide now, it doesn't reflect the nature of constitutional debates back in the time of Union. A Jacobite British dynasty would probably have been just as enthusiastic about empire-building as a Hanoverian one was.”
Pittock explained: “There is more resistance in Scotland to the British Empire, especially in the early period, than there is in England. What there isn't is jingoism, a highly chauvinistic, xenophobic, imperialism – and indeed the celebration of events like Empire Day was much less marked in Scotland.
“But involvement, that's a very different matter. Participation as a major part of the British Empire is a central plank of Scottish history up to the 1960s.
“The 18th century, clearly the Jacobite risings and the aftermath of that were important for resisting the British Empire – but the number of people who end up resisting the Empire is very limited, towards non-existent.”
'It's not just names, it's genetics'
LIKE Pittock, Dr Kennedy argued that by its peak, Scotland was nothing less “than a full and enthusiastic partner in all aspects of the Empire – including the really nasty bits to do with the slave trade or the slave economy”.
Professor Geoff Palmer, a scientist who was Scotland’s first black professor and has prominently campaigned for recognition of the country’s historical role in the Empire, said evidence of Scottish imperialism is all around.
And for Palmer, the legacy of empire runs far deeper.
“I looked at a Jamaica telephone directory in 2007, and then I found that about 60% of the surnames in the Jamaica telephone directory were Scottish. Per acre, there were more Campbells in Jamaica than Scotland.”
“And it's not just names, it's genetics,” he went on.
“My family asked me to do my DNA because my girls and my son were brought up here, and so I did.
“My wife brought in the results and she got to 3-5% at the end and she stopped. She said, do you really want to hear it? I said, yes.
“She said, you’re 3-5% Viking from Shetland. A Jamaican who's got Viking, Shetland DNA. So it’s not just names.”
Palmer said that Scotland became a deliberate partner in the British Empire after the 1707 Act of Union, article four of which gave Scots “full freedom and intercourse of trade and navigation, to and from any port or place within the said United Kingdom, and the dominions and plantations thereunto belonging”.
Misunderstandings from Unionists and nationalists
PITTOCK said this close involvement in the British Empire was “the reason fundamentally why Scotland and the Scottish brand are known throughout the world”.
“That would never have happened without the British Empire. It simply wouldn't.”
However, he cautioned that “right across the political spectrum in Scotland, Unionist or nationalist, there is often a failure to understand the international dimension of Scottish experience that lay at the heart of imperial Scotland”.
And on the Unionist side, Pittock said that people can fail to understand how Scots worked for Scotland’s own interests even at the peak of the British Empire.
“Scotland was a really important international player with a national identity, doing things today which would be regarded as very unacceptable in Unionist circles,” he said.
“For example, setting up international organisations designed to get Scots only into jobs in East Asia or a whole load of places.
“An independent national operation for Scotland in the Empire was very important, and I think that's obviously missing from today's Unionist agenda.
“But equally, Scotland was never a colony, and that understanding is fundamentally missing from many of the people on the nationalist side.”
Moving on from empire
IN order to address misunderstandings – or plain falsehoods – about Scotland’s role in the Empire, all three experts said that education was crucial. However, all had different suggestions moving forward.
Pittock argued that the polling “reflects the extent to which Scottish history is still under-taught and underdeveloped in the educational system”.
He suggested that “one of the things that people get concerned about teaching Scottish history is that it will turn people into nationalists” – but added: “People need to understand Scotland's role in the British Empire, without simplifying it into being an oppressor or oppressed, and actually what a complicated and indeed a rich part of Scottish history it is.”
For Dr Kennedy, that education project has to extend beyond schooling.
“I've always thought that in a Scottish context, what's more problematic is the lack of a robust discussion of Scottish history in what you might call the public realm.
“If you look at sort of broadcasting, for example, there's very little proper good quality Scottish historical material produced by the television companies, BBC or ITV or whatever.”
For Palmer, national conversations such as those sparked by debates over removing statues, changing street signs, or rewriting memorial plaques – many of which happened after the death of George Floyd in the US and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement – have already moved things forward.
“Somebody said to me once, you can't tell the Scottish people their history because they can't take it,” he said.
“I say, don't underestimate the Scottish people. They want to know the truth.”
