The proposer of “A Dance Called
America” (1994) is well-versed in history. At Edinburgh University he read
Scottish and American history. His interest in this particular book was sparked
during a visit last summer to the US and eastern Canada, particularly Quebec
and Nova Scotia (Quebec City, Cape Breton Island, Fortress Louisburg and
Halifax). He read the book during his travels.
The author of this month’s book, James Hunter, is a
Highlander by birth and residence, and has written a few books on
Highland-related subjects. Our proposer gave a brief résumé of Hunter’s output
and life. There are about 14 books.
“Last of the Free” is an
excellent history of Scotland from the ‘Highland viewpoint’. The author tends to view the Lowland
Scots much in the same way as Lowland Scots view the English, i.e. aggressive
centralisers. He is a well-kent face in the Highlands and formerly the Chairman
of Highlands and Islands Enterprise. One of
our members recalled that in this role he had a major influence on the
"Fresh Talent" proposal to encourage immigration into Scotland, and
had a vision of the Highlands being repopulated.
This book is an account of those
Highlanders who emigrated to North America. It complements another book we have
been reading lately, the novel by Neil Gunn The Silver Darlings.
Our proposer donned his
historian’s cap and reminded us of the context of Highland emigration. Until
the Union of 1707 Scots were unable legally to go to England’s American
colonies. Early Scots emigration did occur, to America (e.g. Georgia), but a
trickle became a flood after the collapse of traditional clan system following
the 1745 Jacobite Rising.
Outline of the chapters
Chapters 2 and 4 discuss the
Highlanders who went to what became the US. Those who had supported the Stuarts
in 1745 mainly supported King George in 1775. The author makes a parallel with
the French Canadians who supported the British both in 1775 and 1812. Indeed
many of the Highlanders who were on the losing side in the American Revolution
made their way to the surviving British colonies in Canada.
Many of Highland descent remained
in the USA. A diversion is the way the whites in the South, whether of Scottish
descent or not, have emphasised their Celtic heritage. Celtic South has a long
pedigree. Mark Twain said Walter Scott caused the War Between the States. Now that overt racism is out, a lot of
Southerners have hit on something to which blacks cannot belong. Tying Southern
history into Scottish history enables an emphasis on the heroic and romantic
elements without the politically incorrect baggage of slavery.
Chapter 3 deals with the
Highlanders’ military contribution to the defeat of the French in Canada.
General Wolfe’s infamous quote probably sums up the initial English view: “They are hardy, intrepid
and no great mischief if they fall.” But the British Government needed troops able to
operate in N America and the Highlanders fitted the bill, thus launching a
military tradition. Clan tradition and solidarity has been a very important
part of regimental esprit de corps. The victory of the Highlanders in
Canada elevated their reputation amongst the English and Lowland Scot for ever.
Somehow, Scots now identified with the British Empire.
Chapter 5 deals with the emotive
topic of the mass evictions/ clearances on Highland estates. The author’s
analysis of the emotional and controversial subject of the Highland Clearances
is balanced and persuasive. Our proposer had visited the Hector in Pictou, Nova Scotia, a replica of the ship that
brought the first Highlanders to Nova Scotia in 1773. A good point made by the
author is that conditions on the emigrant ships were no better than on slave
ships. Indeed emigrants paid in advance. Money for slaves was paid on arrival,
so some have argued there were better conditions on ships for slaves. He also
makes the important point that Highlander emigrants in the 19th
century were much poorer than their predecessors in the 18th
century. Nonetheless, as he makes clear, the emigrants considered they were
better off in Canada than in Scotland, in particular through being in charge of
their own destinies. Even so, farming small crofts - whether in Scotland or
Cape Breton - has not for many years provided an acceptable standard of living.
Chapter 6 deals with Cape Breton
Island. Our proposer reported this as being a fascinating place, with many
familiar Scottish surnames including his own. It has a Gaelic College and much
Celtic music (and festivals). Signs are often in Gaelic. In the 1930s there
were as many Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton as in Scotland, but the inexorable
advance of English has much reduced the number (read Alistair Macleod’s great
novel No Great Mischief).
Chapter 7 deals with the fur
trade and the exploration of Western Canada, and the Highlanders’ role in it.
The North West Company was a Highland
family business.
Chapter 8 deals with the
Sutherland clearance in Kildonan, and how many of the cleared Highlanders went
to the Red River from Thurso via Hudsons Bay. Others of course stayed in Sutherland, and turned to herring
fishing.
Chapter 9 describes the
contribution of various Scots (in particular John Macdonald) in the bringing
together of the various provinces within Canada to form a Federation.
Undoubtedly this was motivated in part by the fear of USA territorial
ambitions. The Canadian Pacific railway was vital to the Canadian national
identity. Highlanders made an immense contribution to it. Whereas it would be a wild exaggeration
to claim Canada as a Scottish Highland creation, they certainly played an
important role. Perhaps as the author is writing about the Highlanders’
contribution, a somewhat unbalanced picture emerges.
What we discussed
The title of the book is strange.
It comes from James Boswell’s Journal of 1773. He describes a whirling dance
coming from Skye, presumably invented to represent the emigration to America.
They call the dance, America. Later, in
the 1980s, the Celtic rock band from Skye wrote the song Dance called
America.
The landlords came
The peasant trials
To sacrifice of men
Through the past and that quite darkly
The presence once again
In the name of capital
Establishment
Improvers, it’s a name
The hidden truths
The hidden lies
That once nailed you
To the pain
The peasant trials
To sacrifice of men
Through the past and that quite darkly
The presence once again
In the name of capital
Establishment
Improvers, it’s a name
The hidden truths
The hidden lies
That once nailed you
To the pain
Not all of us are as familiar
with Scottish history as our proposer!
One of our members, unable to attend, sent an enthusiastic
set of comments: “I found almost all of it riveting. The militias in the US in
the eighteenth century were of course particularly absorbing for me given my
military history interests”.
But some of us thought the book
was ‘heavy going’, with so many clan names, place-names and dates. We would
have liked a few maps (Scotland and N America) to show where the places were.
Perhaps some statistics on the numbers emigrating could have been given. One of
our members complained of having to use Wikipedia to follow the narrative. It
was in that encyclopaedia that I found the following remarkable factoid:
“According to the 2001 Census of Canada, the number of Canadians
claiming full or partial Scottish descent is 5,219,850 ”.
That is about the same as
Scotland’s own population, and hugely more than the present-day Highland
population. Of course, there are Highland diaspora all over the world, and
plenty in the USA. But can we be given some data? Or perhaps a Table to show the chronology? Other books about
Scottish history have been more helpful in this regard (Prebble’s Highland Clearances, Smout’s History of the Scottish People).
Probably, one needs to be a
Highlander oneself or a historian from the Lowlands to enjoy this book without
‘further study’. If, like your humble scribe, you are English (!) then this
book is an uphill struggle, although one undoubtedly learns a lot, and in the
end it is a satisfying read. But Prebble and Smout write for audiences
anywhere.
We discussed the Highland
Clearances at some length. We English (of whom I was the only representative
this month), may well be ‘aggressive centralisers’ and we do feel a little
uncomfortable discussing the sins of our forefathers, especially in Scottish or
Irish company. Interestingly, I found my Scottish friends (Lowlanders all, I
think) also sensitive on matters to do with the Clearances.
In his enthusiasm for all things
Highlander, we thought Hunter had not always been fair to Lowlanders and the
English. Our member who could not be with us expressed it thus:
“The Glencoe
massacre was portrayed as English imperialism rather than yet
another internecine clan horror - in his world
Highlanders don't slaughter
each other. He applauds Highlanders finding jobs for
their nephews and
cousins as admirable clan solidarity, while others might
see this as nepotism (which I can vouch is rife to this day in the Gaelic
speaking world). However, it was in his favour that his more sentimental or
emotional points were generally then qualified by a more rational appraisal”.
It is difficult to imagine the
living conditions in the Highlands at the time when the Scottish Enlightenment
was in full swing in the Lowlands, and the Industrial Revolution was well
underway throughout Europe. These huge cultural and social movements had
touched the Highlands only inasmuch as they created demand for product such as
herrings and kelp, and then sheep.
Prebble’s book may have
exaggerated the level of oppression associated with the Clearances, with its
focus on the ‘Year of the Burnings’ (1814) and the single incident at
Strathnaver in which Patrick Sellar the factor to the Sutherland family torched
dwellings, sometimes whilst people were still inside them. It rapidly became a cause célèbre partly because
of the literary skill of one Donald Macleod, a stonemaker from Strathnaver, who
later emigrated to Canada and wrote passionately about the incident. The author
confronts us with these words, written by Richard Hugo an American poet who
lived in Uig for a few months:
Lord, it took no more than a wave
of a glove,
A nod of the head over tea.
People were torn from their crofts
And herded aboard, their land
turned over to sheep.
They sailed. They wept.
The sea said nothing and said
I’ll get even.
Their last look at Skye lasted
one hour. Then fog.
But clearances were not confined
to Scotland. They occurred earlier in England during the British Agricultural
Revolution. And much of all social change during the Industrial Revolution has
the same ingredients: a nod of the head, people losing livelihoods, violence,
long-lasting resentment and then sadness.
It is impossible to visit the
Highlands today without being struck by a sense of melancholy.
Before the Clearances, however,
life in the Highlands was no bed of roses. It should be kept in mind that the
climate and soils of the Highlands are marginal for agriculture. The growing
season is short and unreliable. Moreover, the period covered by the book was
especially cold and stormy. A succession of bad harvests may well have been a
factor forcing people to flee to the coast where kelp and herring could provide
a livelihood, as portrayed in Neil Gunn’s novel, The Silver Darlings. During the so-called
Little Ice Age (from about 1550 to 1850) the temperatures of the Northern
Hemisphere were about a degree colder than in the late 19th Century
(hence ice skating and curling were popular sports in Scotland, and Ice Fairs
were held annually on the Thames). The year 1816 is known as ‘the year without
a summer’ and sometimes ‘Poverty Year’ – this occurred in the midst of the
second phase of the Clearances and must have exacerbated the hardship and
misery.
We digressed into a discussion of
how to pronounce the word Gaelic, as in the language. You should definitely
pronounce it ‘Gallic’ for the Scottish version of the language, and ‘Gaellic’
for the Irish form. No-one told the editors of my Longman’s Dictionary (i-pad
edition with sound).
We learn from Hunter’s book that
the more fortunate emigrants who had survived the transatlantic journey were
more or less dumped on Canadian soil, and had to build their own shelters and
attempt to grow crops. Winter was damn cold in Canada too. Many starved when
their first crops failed. This is hardship on a scale far beyond the experience
of our generation. One imagines that a high degree of selection must have
occurred, a human example of the Survival of the Fittest. Certainly those who survived did well,
keeping up the Highland traditions of music, bagpipes, shinty and curling.
Bonspiels today are nearly as important in parts of Canada as the Olympics
elsewhere!
Given this enthusiasm for all
things Scottish, one might expect a few of the successful Scottish Americans to
send money home. A few have. Andrew Carnegie emigrated to the United States
with his parents in 1848 and made a fortune in steel. He was a scholar and
philanthropist who gave much back to Scotland (and England). Not all have been as generous as
Carnegie. Donald Trump’s wealth is said to exceed 3 billion dollars. His mother
was born on the Isle of Lewis. Hasn’t he done well, a
real-estate magnate and owner of the Miss Universe Organisation? Rupert Murdoch, the Australian
newspaper owner of Scottish descent is no philanthropist either. The
descendants of William Cargill, a sea captain from Orkney, amassed immense
wealth from the family agro-business; in recent times Margaret Cargill became
known as a major philanthropist. Scottish-American business woman Mary Maxwell
Gates helped her clever son, Bill Gates, get started. Blame Bill for all those
bugs in Microsoft Word if you like, but salute him please for the good works he
has done thorough the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
A complete list of
Scottish-Americans is lacking in this book. The author might have made a bit
more of this. Again, I had to do my own research! 30-40 million Americans claim
Scottish descent. Scots are
certainly well-represented in a roll-call of American presidents (there are 23
of them, including Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon), famous astronauts (Neil
Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin), food magnates (Campbell’s soups, MacDonald’s
fast-food, the secretive Cargill family), car-makers (David Dunbar Buik),
musicians (Elvis, Bill Munro, and John Baez’s mum came from Edinburgh) and even
Uncle Sam himself is supposed to be the son of a nice young couple from
Greenock. For further
details of the widespread influence of Scottish people in the USA, possible not
entirely without a Scottish bias, be amused by this: http://www.scotland.org/features/item/scotlands-influence-on-the-usa/
The Scottish Government organised Homecoming
Scotland in 2009 to attract talent and
money back home. However, it was reported to have been a financial failure.
The night was drawing on, and as we gathered up our belongings to go, our host suddenly remembered the special treat he had waiting for us. He produced a bottle of Cape Breton Malt Whisky. It was like a Speyside, not as good as a Dalwhinnie but pretty decent.
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