Scotland, empire and decolonisation in the twentieth century

238 Pages·2015·7.545 MB·English

by  Bryan Glass (editor), John M. MacKenzie (editor)

STUDIES IN IMPERIALISM STUDIES IN IMPERIALISM
General editor: andrew s. Thompson S
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Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie
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t Scotland, empire
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This volume represents one of the first attempts to examine the
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connection between scotland and the British empire throughout the n
d and decolonisation
entire twentieth century. as the century dawned, the scottish economy t,
was still strongly connected with imperial infrastructures – such as h e
railways, engineering, construction and shipping – and colonial trade em
in the twentieth
and investment. By the end of the century, however, the scottish tp
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economy, its politics and its society had been through major upheavals, i
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which many connected with decolonisation. e
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century
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as the British empire moved into its final phase during the mid- ien
twentieth century, the speed of economic change, military activity and td
the formulation of ideas – and their political effects – accelerated. These h
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were reflected in press reactions to imperial events, and in the image c
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and status of a military embroiled in the campaigns of the ‘imperial end ec edited by
game’. This book also details the concluding acts of migratory activity, no
the effects on identity formations (both at home and in the empire tulo Bryan s. Glass and
itself), the re-evaluation of scottish heroic figures and approaches to rn
scottish politics. Moreover, although it is often thought that the British yi JoHn M. MacKenzie
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underwent few of the traumas of decolonisation experienced, for a
example, by the French, this book shows that the end of empire still t
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influenced events at home – even in ways that prove quite different from o
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those expected.

The chapters within this volume, written by a group of distinguished
scholars, represent ground-breaking research on scotland’s complex
and often-changing relationship with the British empire in the
period. The introduction that opens the collection will be viewed
for years to come as the single most important historiographical
statement on scotland and empire during the tumultuous years of the
twentieth century.
M
Bryan s. Glass is senior lecturer at Texas state University and founder of the
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British scholar society
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John M. MacKenzie is emeritus Professor of imperial History at the University l
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of lancaster, Honorary Professor at the University of st. andrews, Honorary ns
Professor at the University of aberdeen, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the
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University of edinburgh i
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ISBN 978-0-7190-9617-4
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9 780719 096174
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
© Copyright protected – it is illegal to copy or distribute this document
General Editor: Andrew S. Thompson
Founding Editor: John M. MacKenzie
When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded
by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than twenty-five
years ago, emphasis was laid upon the c onviction that
‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant
an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’.
With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains
the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work
has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural
phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex,
frontiers and law, science and the environment, language
and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much
else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present
comparative work on European and American imperialism,
and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these
areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects,
shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to
lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of
studies in the field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic
in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge,
responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs
of this ever-expanding area of scholarship.
Scotland, empire and decolonisation
in the twentieth century
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SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES
ed. Andrew S. Thompson
MUSEUMS AND EMPIRE
Natural history, human cultures and colonial identities
John M. MacKenzie
MISSIONARY FAMILIES
Race, gender and generation on the spiritual frontier
Emily J. Manktelow
THE COLONISATION OF TIME
Ritual, routine and resistance in the British Empire
Giordano Nanni
BRITISH CULTURE AND THE END OF EMPIRE
ed. Stuart Ward
SCIENCE, RACE RELATIONS AND RESISTANCE
Britain, 1870–1914
Douglas A. Lorimer
GENTEEL WOMEN
Empire and domestic material culture, 1840−1910
Dianne Lawrence
EUROPEAN EMPIRES AND THE PEOPLE
Popular responses to imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands,
Belgium, Germany and Italy
ed. John M. MacKenzie
SCIENCE AND SOCIETY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
ed. Saul Dubow
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Scotland, empire and
decolonisation in the
twentieth century
Edited by
Bryan S. Glass and John M. MacKenzie
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2015
While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press,
copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter
may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of
both author and publisher.
Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
ALTRINCHAM STREET, MANCHESTER M1 7JA, UK
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 07190 9617 4 hardback
First published 2015
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Typeset in Trump Medieval by
Koinonia, Manchester
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CONTENTS
List of contributors vi
1 Introduction John M. MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass 1
PART I – Migration, diaspora and identities
2 Initiatives, impediments and identities: Scottish emigration
in the twentieth century Marjory Harper 25
3 Applying the diasporic lens to identity and empire
in twentieth-century Scotland Graeme Morton 44
4 The strange case of jute Gordon T. Stewart 65
5 Scots in early twentieth-century British Columbia:
class, race and gender Michael E. Vance 86
PART II – Anti-colonialism, the military,
decolonisation and nationalism
6 Anti-colonialism in twentieth-century Scotland
Stephen Howe 113
7 Beating retreat: the Scottish military tradition in decline
Stuart Allan 131
8 Newspapers and empire: bringing Africa to the Scottish
public Bryan S. Glass 155
9 David Livingstone, the Scottish cultural and political revival
and the end of empire in Africa John M. MacKenzie 180
10 Three referenda and a by-election: the shadow of empire
in devolutionary politics Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen
and Stuart Ward 200
Index 223
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CONTRIBUTORS
Stuart Allan is Principal Curator of Scottish Late Modern Collections at
National Museums Scotland. He has published widely on Scottish military
history, including (with Allan Carswell) The Thin Red Line: War, Empire and
Visions of Scotland (2004).
Bryan S. Glass is Senior Lecturer in History at Texas State University. He
is the author of The Scottish Nation at Empire’s End (2014) and is founding
member and General Editor of The British Scholar Society.
Marjory Harper is Professor at the University of Aberdeen. Among her many
books on emigration is the recent Scotland No More: The Scots who Left
Scotland in the Twentieth Century (2012).
Stephen Howe is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. Recent
publications include The New Imperial Histories Reader (2009).
John M. MacKenzie is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of
Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at the Universities of Aberdeen and St
Andrews. He is the author of The Scots in South Africa (2007) and co-editor
(with T. M. Devine) of Scotland and the British Empire (2011).
Graeme Morton is Professor of Modern History at the University of Dundee.
His publications include The Scottish Diaspora (with T. Bueltmann and A.
Hinson) and William Wallace: A National Tale (2014).
Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen is a postgraduate student at the University of
Copenhagen. He has worked on Scottish nationalism relating to Empire,
particularly the Hamilton by-election of 1967, and is preparing a dissertation
on the semantics of British identity in the processes of global decolonisation.
Gordon T. Stewart is Professor at Michigan State University. He has published
extensively on Dundee and jute. A recent book is Journeys to Empire: Enlight-
enment, Imperialism and the British Encounter with Tibet 1774–1904 (2009).
Michael E. Vance is Professor at St Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Among his books is Imperial Immigrants: Scottish Settlers in the Upper
Ottawa Valley 1815–1840 (2012).
Stuart Ward is Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Provost of
Regenson College. He co-authored (with Deryck Schreuder) Australia’s Empire
(2008).
[ vi ]
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CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
John M. MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass
The relationship between Scotland and the British Empire in the
twentieth century was both wide-ranging and highly complex. In the
opening year of the century, the Scottish economy was still strongly
connected with imperial infrastructures (like railways, engineering,
construction and shipping), and colonial trade and investment. The
industrial profile of Glasgow was securing a ‘war dividend’ for the
city in booming production connected with the Anglo-Boer War of
1899–1902. Perhaps as a result, Glaswegians – and people in many
towns and cities throughout Scotland – were eager to take time off to
indulge in notable street celebrations for such events as the Reliefs of
Ladysmith and of Mafeking.1 Nevertheless, for many Scottish people,
migration remained a major means of escaping poverty or unemploy-
ment, or of seeking opportunities not available at home, and within
a few years the migratory routes would be undergoing a major shift
from the United States to the British dominions.2 Many Scots were
serving overseas in the army or other services, not least in the war in
South Africa, while in the election of 1900, the imperial and patriotic
party, the Conservatives, won a major victory, even if their triumph
was to prove ephemeral.3 Scottish missions were active throughout
the empire and many Scots portrayed themselves as a distinctively
religious – largely but far from exclusively Protestant – people, notably
distinguished for their work in proselytisation, in education and in
medical work.4 Scottish intellectual, political and literary figures
appeared to continue to be intrigued by the possibilities of empire, not
least by its capacity to transform a small and marginal country with a
slight population into a source of major global influence.5 The supposed
national characteristics of the Scots seemed to be inseparably bound
up with empire – the martial race visibly active in campaigns every-
where, hardy settlers coping with harsh frontier conditions, devoted
missionaries and well-trained doctors and educationalists active in
[ 1 ]
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SCOTLAND, EMPIRE AND DECOLONISATION
many colonies. In addition to all of this, for the great majority of Scots,
slight increases in both leisure time and income had produced a great
burgeoning of popular cultural activity, including some forms where
patriotic and imperial content was mixed in with other fare – the music
hall, variety, other theatrical forms, exhibitions, and later the cinema.6
By the end of the century, however, the Scottish economy, its
politics, and its society had been through major upheavals which many
connected with the decline and end of the British Empire.7 The dramatic
swings in the economic cycle during the century had fully exposed the
fragility of an economy over-dependent on heavy industries. Scottish
politics had at least given the impression of being more turbulent
than elsewhere on the British mainland, reacting strongly to events in
Ireland, producing in ‘Red Clydeside’ a reputation for radicalism, and
appearing to spawn lively nationalist sentiment, even if this has to be
qualified by the fact that the voting behaviour of the Scottish people
showed little inclination either in the direction of a major leftward
shift or towards genuine nationalism, in the latter case at least not
until the century was well advanced.8 Moreover, Scotland had become
a strikingly secular society, Presbyterian Church attendance falling
strongly from its highs early in the century, with only a relatively brief
resurgence in the decade or more after the Second World War.9 Migra-
tion also experienced a new boom during the decades at the middle of
the century, but swiftly tailed off as such migration became increas-
ingly restricted by quotas and financial or other qualifications.10 After
a peak of electoral performance in the 1955 election, the power of the
Tory party went into a long decline, reaching its nadir by the end of
the century, impelled by a Scottish revulsion against Thatcherism.
Scotland had also become a much more notably diverse religious and
multi-ethnic society, even if in some respects less so than England and
Wales. Intellectual and literary Scotland had passed through the post-
colonial revolution, in which various forms of guilt, revisionism and
distancing had replaced the old certainties, however much the latter
had always been hedged about with qualifications. Although echoes of
empire continued to resonate through modern mass media like televi-
sion or the cinematic revival at the end of the century, these tended to
take forms of nostalgic questioning very different from their counter-
parts a hundred years earlier. In any case, in many respects they were
largely drowned out by the vast range of popular cultural forms as well
as the almost overwhelming diversity of information and communi-
cations opportunities available on the internet and on social media.
Perhaps paradoxically, however, empire at the same time was resur-
rected as a major source of study, research and publication for scholars
in a number of disciplines, perhaps arising from a sense that empire
[ 2 ]
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INTRODUCTION
had been, at least in theory, a precursor of modern globalisation, or at
the very least had been a significant component in the framing of the
world we had inherited. But the global and the international were also
being placed in the context of the national and local. Simultaneously
with these scholarly developments, the problems of the nature and
manufacture of Scottish history, as well as of allegedly Celtic identi-
ties, were also subject to considerable debate.11
Yet these snapshots of the relationship between Scotland and
empire at the beginning and end of the twentieth century should not
be seen as symbolising a shift from one absolute to another, from some
starkly positive to strikingly negative attitudes. If there is one word
which symbolises most strikingly the relationship between Scotland
and empire over this period, it is surely ‘ambivalence’. Some commen-
tators a hundred years and more ago saw empire as a vast zone of
opportunity, with even those on the Left like James Keir Hardie and
James Ramsay MacDonald viewing the colonial world as a global field
for the spread of socialist ideas or for the extension of moral political
action (see below for some fleshing out of the thinking and influence
of these two personalities). But others saw it as draining away Scottish
talent and Scots population, as well as diverting attention from social
deprivation. The apparently intractable poverty and slum conditions
of Scottish cities and towns seemed to be emphasised by the overseas
investment practices of a bourgeoisie apparently distracted from oppor-
tunities for development at home. Indeed, the low wages that helped to
produce the profits that went into such diversionary investment served
to emphasise endemic consumer under-consumption.12 Many spotted
the fact that the Scottish economy remained dangerously skewed while
even aspects of the well-defined Scottish social hierarchy, embedded
in land ownership and certain agricultural specialisms, seemed to be
promoted by the imperial relationship. Wars, such as the Anglo-Boer
at the beginning of the century and the Great War after 1914, seemed
to produce a tremendous resurgence in imperial sentiment, even in the
use of the words Britain and British, which to some critical commenta-
tors appeared to detract from efforts to maintain the distinctiveness of
Scottish politics, culture and society.13 And if that were not enough, the
old accusation of Dr Samuel Johnson about the ‘high road to England’
still seemed to hold good.14 Those Scots who did not leave for the
empire were just as likely to head south looking for work, while, as
is well known, Scottish companies often departed in the same direc-
tion in order to maximise their opportunities. All this seemed to be
reflected in the decennial censuses which continued to reveal that
Scotland, uniquely among advanced societies, had a population that
was more likely to decline or ‘flat-line’ rather than exhibit any signs
[ 3 ]
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