Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World - (Histories of the Scottish Atlantic) by S Karly Kehoe & Chris Dalglish & Annie Tindley

About the Book

Reveals the importance of social networks and identities to defining Highland Scots' engagements with Empire and its lasting legacies

Book Synopsis

This is a book about the social in Highland entanglements with Empire - the networks, relationships and identities that made it possible for Highland Scots to access the Empire and its benefits. It explores - from a range of perspectives - the impact that these Scots had, as sojourners and settlers, on the different places they encountered. It is also a book about the present-day legacies of their engagements with Empire, and of the ongoing process of forging social and cultural identities with Highland roots.
The volume presents rigorous and insightful new research from both well-established and early career scholars, accompanied by commentary on the research and the issues it raises from a range of academic and non-academic voices. The book represents a significant contribution our understanding of the role of Highland Scots, influenced significantly by their culture and language, in creating the Empire and its legacies. It advances knowledge of just how diverse the impacts of Highland Scots were on forging landscapes and lifescapes across the Atlantic, and how their exposure to the colonial world influenced and reshaped their Diasporic identities. While the British Empire was a collaboration of diverse interests, this book will shed light on one important interest: the Highland one.

From the Back Cover

Reveals the importance of social networks and identities to defining Highland Scots' engagements with Empire and its lasting legacies This is a book about the social in Highland entanglements with Empire - the networks, relationships and identities that made it possible for Highland Scots to access the Empire and its benefits. It explores - from a range of perspectives - the impact that these Scots had, as sojourners and settlers, on the different places they encountered. It is also a book about the present-day legacies of their engagements with Empire, and of the ongoing process of forging social and cultural identities with Highland roots. The book represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the role of Highland Scots, influenced by their culture and language, in creating the Empire and its legacies. It advances knowledge of just how diverse the impacts of Highland Scots were on forging landscapes and lifescapes across the Atlantic, and how their exposure to the colonial world influenced and reshaped their Diasporic identities. While the British Empire was a collaboration of diverse interests, this book will shed light on one important interest: the Highland one. Key features  Individual chapters that suit individual specialisms, while still being accessible to readers from other disciplines/professions  Important (re)considerations of understudied perspectives and areas of scholarship, presenting new histories of under-studied social groups or situations and new insight on social networks and entanglements as a key aspect of Empire  International material to allow comparison and contextualisation and broaden readerships S. Karly Kehoe is Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. Her work concentrates on Scottish and Irish Catholic settlement and colonisation in the north Atlantic. Chris Dalglish is a Director of Inherit, the Institute for Heritage and Sustainable Human Development, which is part of a UK-based charity, the York Archaeological Trust. Annie Tindley is Professor of British and Irish Rural History at Newcastle University and Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology. Her work interrogates land issues in the modern period including ownership, management and reform.

Review Quotes

Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World is an admirable and important contribution to a growing body of work on the transatlantic connections between Scotland and the Americas, particularly those concerning the Highlands. The outsize Scottish participation in the British Atlantic system is now well-documented, and the Highlands in particular have been the subject of much recent scrutiny. The present study deepens our understanding of this participation, building on recent historiography that seeks to revise an earlier picture of Highlanders as helpless victims of dispossession and displacement.--Kenneth McNeil, Eastern Connecticut State University "Eighteenth-Century Scotland"

This important volume illustrates the complex entanglements between power, identity and belonging embedded in multiple historical social networks informing the Scottish Highlands' uneasy relationship with the Atlantic World. Its thematic focus on land, language and networks of (dis)empowerment is an invaluable contribution to contemporary policy discourses in Scotland and elsewhere.--Calum MacLeod, Sustainable Development Consultant and Policy Analyst

About the Author

S. Karly Kehoe is Professor of History and Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities at Saint Mary's University in Nova Scotia. Prior to coming to Saint Mary's, she lived and worked in Scotland. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the Global Young Academy and the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, and an alumna of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland. Her work concentrates on Scottish and Irish Catholic settlement and colonisation in the north Atlantic, but she is also interested in sustainable development and rural change in Nova Scotia and the Scottish Highlands.

INHERIT: the Institute for Heritage & Sustainable Human Development.

Dr Chris Dalglish is a Director of INHERIT: the Institute for Heritage & Sustainable Human Development. His PhD was about the recent history of communities and landscapes in the Scottish Highlands, and he continues to research people's changing relationships with their land and places. He has a particular research interest in matters of ethics and justice concerning people and their relationships with heritage, land and landscape. INHERIT supports community development through cultural heritage. Working around the world, the Institute provides practical help to communities, carries out purposeful research and advocates evidence-based policy change. It is part of a UK-based charity, the York Archaeological Trust.

Annie Tindley is Professor of British and Irish Rural History at Newcastle University and Head of the School of History, Classics & Archaeology. Her work interrogates land issues in the modern period including ownership, management and reform. In 2015 she established and became the first director of the Centre for Scotland's Land Futures, an inter-institutional and interdisciplinary research centre, and is the series editor for Scotland's Land, an interdisciplinary book series published by Edinburgh University Press. She is the author of The Sutherland Estate, 1850-1920 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), and Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871-1945 (co-edited with Ewen A. Cameron, Birlinn, 2015).