THERE is definitely “a thing” going with Scotland being highlighted for exploitation during the times of West Indian plantation slavery (“How the rich got rich: Scotland and its slave trade”, Herald Arts, October 10, and Letters, October 13).
In an apparent campaign of sorts to saddle Scotland with this moral debt via bits of evidence of past misbehaving by some of its people, there has been an absence of contextual balance, snap judgments without much attempt to “historify” actualities of the time.
There is even what is now called slave-trafficking today, a fact that is seldom applied to bring perspective into studies of past enslavement practices.
I am sure Scotland does not generally protrude in any international guilt list of enslavement perpetrators. Which is not to ignore its involvement in colonial wrongs, but to ignore its involvement in colonial “rights” also is to be remiss in making moral judgments on a global scale.
Scotland has been as much a put-upon country as not, and has its own history of persecution, which sadly includes by oppressors of its own. It also has a reputation for respecting other cultures and a readiness to integrate with non-Scots. Many Scots participate in friendship societies with descendants of former colonised peoples.
I would suggest one of the worst blemishes from the times of West Indies plantation slavery was the excessive financial compensation paid to plantation proprietors when slavery was officially abolished. Not one Jamaican penny went to the real victims of the whole sordid commerce.
If any redress is required it should begin from this terrible misjudgment.
Ian Johnstone,
84 Forman Drive, Peterhead.
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