How and why did a religious country like Scotland in 17th and 18th centuries, get involved in slavery and how was it eventually ended?

Come along to The Outhouse (12A Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh) at 4 pm for a talk by Kate Phillips on her book Bought and Sold: Scotland, Jamaica and Slavery.

In 1660 King Charles 11 won Jamaica from the Spanish and offered its land to both the Scots and the English. Many from Scotland took up this offer to become Jamaica’s earliest settlers (Campbell is the most common surname in Jamaica).To push up production of colonial exports the Royal African Company was launched to sell enslaved people to work in plantations. Scottish merchants lent the settlers funds to buy slaves in exchange for sugar and tobacco to be delivered to Scotland for processing and re-sale. Kingston Jamaica became the biggest slave distribution centre in the world.

The law was changed to make enslaved people ‘property’ (chattel slaves) to ensure these merchants could recover bad debts in our courts, it also made slaves mortgageable property. The average price of a slave 2,400 lbs of sugar or £17, was paid back in a couple of harvests. Planters remortgaged their enslaved workers, expanded their estates and bought more slaves.

They sent home to Scotland for skilled builders, carpenters, masons and managers known as bookkeepers, to work their growing estates. Scotland’s hard wearing linen was exported to clothe the slaves and salted fish to feed them (salt fish and akee became Jamaica’s national dish).

Slave dealers in West Africa wanted imported iron ore, Venetian beads and printed Indian cloth in exchange for enslaved people. Slave traders avoided high import taxes by loading these goods in Scotland’s small harbours from Campbeltown to Stromness. (Twenty four ships did regular business with local merchants in Campbeltown). Their town councillors bought shares in slaving ships. Together the Campbeltown ships carried 133,275 African men, women and children into a life of slavery. Over 22,000 of these died while crossing the Atlantic.

Government ended the trade in1807. When parliament widened the franchise in 1832 the people of England and Scotland swept out the MPs who had defended slavery and ended the practice in all of Britain’s colonies.

Everyone is welcome to the free event; people are warmly invited to bring an item of food to put on the table and help take away everything at the end so there is no waste.

For more information please follow the link below.