100,000 SCOTS WERE SOLD INTO SLAVERY

As someone who has been campaigning for some time for greater education in schools on the landed gentry of Scotland’s role in the African slave trade, as enthusiastic partners in the newly formed United Kingdom, as well as for a statue to be erected in Glasgow to note their role in this cruel trade.

What is perhaps less well known are the large numbers of ordinary Scottish people, perhaps as many as 100,000, who were rounded up and transported to the West Indies and American colonies to be sold into slavery, a practice that occurred as early as 1630.

According to the Egerton manuscript, found in the British Museum and enacted in 1652: “it may be lawful for two or more justices of peace within any county, citty or towne, corporate belonging to the commonwealth to from tyme to tyme by warrant cause to be apprehended, seized on and detained all and every person or persons that shall be found begging and vagrant ... in any towne, parish or place to be conveyed into the Port of London, or unto any other port from where such person or persons may be shipped into a forraign collonie or plantation.”

The numbers taken as slaves must have been huge as, according to the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies of 1701, we read of there being an estimated 25,000 slaves in Barbados, of whom 21,700 were white. The fair-skinned slaves were known as Redlegs or Redshanks by the locals because of their sunburned flesh.

Affluent and powerful local government officials, who likely had a stake in the plantations, slave trade and the associated benefits, were happy to oblige in this practice.

Merchants were also known to put in special requests to the city council to fulfil specific wants, with young women often on the wish list. In addition to this practice, political prisoners were routinely sold into slavery. Oliver Cromwell, for example, was responsible for sending thousands of Scots to slavery in the Caribbean, with prisoners from the Jacobite Uprisings facing the same fate.

Descendants of the Scots forced into slavery are now beginning to realise that this is a part of our history that has been quietly swept under the carpet, and as we note our role in the African slave trade, it is only right that there should be a greater awareness of this practice.

Welcome to your history as part of the Union. Sorry to say, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and makes for some pretty grim reading if you're a Scot.