By Niall Gray The historian’s relationship with government has always been a contentious subject. Called to inform and encourage debate across all sections of society, historians have repeatedly run into difficulties when engaging with state authorities. This is often due to the potentially sensitive topics that researchers wish to discuss, with the British government subsequently […]
By Claire C. Arnold In April of 1888 Herbert Gibson made a momentous decision. Writing in his personal diary, he switched from writing in English to writing in Spanish to declare that after seven years in Argentina he had “ceased to be Scottish” and “adopted a new country.” [1] Over the following years, the newly […]
By Xiang Wei In a letter to his mother dated 2 February 1700, Alexander Shields (1659/60–1700), a Covenanting Church of Scotland minister, described the Darien colony (Panama) as ‘a remote, but very pleasant Land, and one of the most fruitful spots of the Earth, where God reigns’. The promising picture of ‘the Rising Sun in […]
By Joseph Wagner The study of Scottish interactions with the world outside of Europe in the seventeenth century has greatly expanded over the past twenty-five years. It has been galvanised by moving away from a focus on Scotland’s ‘national’ attempts at empire-building, such as the unsuccessful attempts to colonise Nova Scotia in the 1620s and […]