“Beautiful shells from the shore” Thomas Jefferson’s Sacred Grotto of 1771

Wednesday 24 January 2018:  A Presentation by Alley Jordan, University of Edinburgh.

In 1771, the twenty-eight-year-old Thomas Jefferson drew up plans for a classical grotto on his Virginian estate.  The scheme embraced a physical and an imaginary world, profoundly influenced by the literature of the ancient world.  Sadly for posterity, the ideas were never realised-financial constraints saw to that – but his original plans and additional notes of 1787 provide a tantalising glimpse into Jefferson’s neo-classical vision.  In a fascinating paper, Alley Jordan, a second year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, considered Jefferson’s grotto in its eighteenth-century context:  what was its purpose? what was nature of the Grecian ideal which had inspired it? And how does the physical creation of a neo-classical grotto relate to notions of Enlightenment?

The grotto, Alley argued, served many purposes but ultimately it was a place where Jefferson could materialise or re-create his own imagination. Jefferson was steeped in a classical tradition, his grotto a conscious attempt to bring classical antiquity to life. In ancient Greece, the grotto had represented a place of escape.  Situated in the mountains, it was a world away from the toils of everyday life. Its life-healing waters were associated with the god Asclepius and connected with the rivers of the Underworld.  In early modern times, the grotto came to be associated with melancholy, but Jefferson wanted to recreate the classical idea.  In his mind’s eye, he visualised a world removed from the day to day burdens of running a plantation where he could act out his own Theocritan idyll.  He believed in the healing powers of spring water and, as the ancients, imagined the presence of Asclepius.  Jefferson’s grotto, however, would be both healing and ornamental. He planned a tiered water fall which would make use of the natural waterfalls of Virginia and a sacred temple, similar perhaps to the Queen’s Temple at Stowe.  Music and musical instrument would be present in the temple, a conscious echo of a world reflected by the poetry of Theocritus and Virgil. As Alley argued, the grotto was an artistic work which enabled Jefferson to imagine himself in an artistic dreamland.

The plan for Jefferson’s grotto, consistent with the classical notion of a locus amoenus,  comprised a physical and mystical experience. Each part of the cave would elicit a different emotional response;  a visit represented a journey from dark to light and from cold to hot, whilst the presence of stone provided an important connection with geology and geography.  As Alley argued, the grotto was a place of transformation and enlightenment in the 18th century.

Alley’s paper generated animated discussion from an appreciative audience.  The Graduate Workshop  wishes Alley well with her continuing research.

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Our next Graduate Workshop takes place on Wednesday 7 February 2018 when our speaker will be Gintare Venzlauskaite from the University of Glasgow. Her paper is entitled:

From Post-War West to Post-soviet east: Manifestations of Displacement, Collective Memory, and Lithuanian Diasporic Experience Revisited

It considers WWII displacements from Lithuania.  To what extent did they have an effect on the country’s memory landscape? By providing a retrospective view of discursive patterns regarding population losses and their role in national identity construction, Gintare’s study travels across the US and Russia where a significant part of these losses has been transformed into diasporic communities and their networks.

The workshop will take place at 1 pm in G 16 in the William Robertson Wing of the Old Medical School in Teviot Place.

Everyone is welcome to attend!

Conceptualising Whiteness in the Black Imagination

Review by Devin Grier

On 28 November 2017, Rianna Walcott rounded up our last presentation of the first semester. Rianna is nearing the end of her first year as a digital humanities PhD student at King’s College London, having completed undergraduate and Masters degrees in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.   Her doctoral research, evolving from her Masters dissertation, considers the notion of ‘whiteness’ within black spheres.  She is currently examining the use of language by black women and women of colour in closed and secret Facebook groups, and the extent to which these groups are able to provide space to critique whiteness.

The experience of blacks in postcolonial Britain provided  the starting point for Rianna’s presentation. Whilst the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush in 1948, carrying almost 500 Jamaicans, was not the first landfall made by people of African descent to Britain, it marked the first influx of widespread migration from the West Indies to the United Kingdom. In the mid-twentieth century, the increase in Afro-Caribbean immigrants provoked a political backlash from those intent on preserving Britain’s imperial image. Rianna argued that anxieties among the white population resulted from a combination of racial and national identities. In order to differentiate themselves from the West Indians, a familiar white ‘we’ was constructed against a dangerous ‘black’ unknown. Because race and nationality became linked, being ‘British’ was predicated on white history. Rianna  argued that it was at this point that Britain “was beginning to be disrupted by the black other – or more accurately by a black other that dared to enter white space.”

Postcolonial scholarship based on racial identity and ‘othering’ has tended to distinguish the non-white from the ‘neutral’ position of a white, western male. Through the window of literature, Rianna sought to invert this viewpoint by prioritizing black observation and analyzing several texts authored by West Indians and their British descendants, from the Windrush period to the modern day. In the course of her discussion, she made particular reference to Sam Selvon’s novel, The Lonely Londoners (1956), and Zadie Smith’s literary debut, White Teeth (2000).

“The novels,” Rianna contended, “are linked by examination of the physical, literary and social dimensions of ‘space.’ As both the container of everyday life and an active agent or social force. The physical space of London, and how black writers conceptualize the city as a multicultural space, is central to my argument.” In each book, the black character is written into what is self evidently a white space: “Galahad walks through Piccadilly Circus while naming what he sees, and, in a metafictional gesture, White Teeth’s Samad viscerally links his colonised body with imperial space by inscribing his name in blood onto a bench in Trafalgar Square.”

In conclusion, Rianna summarized the literary representations of migrants who transform their new spaces: “Spaces are defined in relation to the self, and treated as something to be assimilated into, creolised, or rejected from.” Presented in the form of literature, these various processes of assimilation highlight the paradoxical nature of Britain’s physical space: “The narratives show black immigrants and black Britons futilely searching for a compromise between discrete, segregated racial identities and the threat of dissolution through multiculturalism.”

Outside her doctoral research, Rianna has pursued related interests. In early 2017, she co-founded Project Myopia, a website dedicated to decolonizing and diversifying university curricula. The project crowd-sources reviews of diverse materials and advocates their inclusion in academic syllabuses.

The workshop was well-attended, with a very active and insightful question and answer session following the presentation. We wish Rianna the best of luck with her future studies.

 

The Establishment of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and its influence on the Ukrainian Diaspora in Scotland

Review by Devin Grier

Peter Kormylo, from the University of Glasgow, joined us on 14 October 2017. Recently retired from a career in public education, Peter now dedicates his time to researching the history of the Ukrainian community in Scotland.  His aim is to fill a wide gap in knowledge, as the literature on the Ukrainian diaspora in the United Kingdom is lacking. Since Scotland’s Ukrainian community has a relatively low profile, it tends to be forgotten.

During the workshop, Peter identified  four distinct waves of Ukrainian migration to Scotland:

Wave 1. Late nineteenth, early twentieth century: migrant laborers who intended to find

Travelling Ukrainian with his dancing bear outside the Hole in the Wall Pub, Dumfries, 1907

work in the Americas. Many from Ukraine who were destined to cross the Atlantic  stopped off in Scottish ports including  Leith. At this point in their travels, some migrants had already run out of money and decided to disembark in Scotland. Referred as the ‘Little Russians’ by British natives, this small stream of Ukrainians  disappeared into Scottish society.

Wave 2. 1905-1917: political refugees of the Russian Revolution. During this period, the UK government implemented the 1905 Aliens Act which controlled the level of immigration from eastern Europe. The main requirement for entry was that an individual had show  a means of support. As a result, the elite classes made up the majority of this second migratory stream.

Wave 3.  1939-1947: WWII and post-war immigrants.  This period contained four main  elements:

• 1939: Royal Canadian Airforce: second generation Ukrainians from Canada.
• 1942: Polish Armed Forces.
• 1946: Ukrainian displaced persons who refused Soviet Union repatriation, and Ukrainian European voluntary workers.
• 1947: Surrendered army personnel of the Ukrainian Galicia Division. This wave consisted of Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered on the Eastern Front following Germany’s defeat. The division was removed from its internment in Italy in order to prevent the nearby Soviet Union from repatriating the Ukranian POWs. During peace arrangements, thousands of Ukrainian POWs were transported to workers’ camps in Britain, many of which were in Scotland. Peter’s research is now focused on identifying the Scottish camps that contained sizable Ukrainian communities.

Wave 4. Mid-1980s onwards. After Mikhail Gorbachev became head of state in 1985, the political system of the Soviet Union underwent extreme liberalization. As a result, the number of Ukrainian immigrants to the UK increased. Furthermore, the subsequent fall of the USSR in 1991 ignited an even greater wave of migration to the UK.

Peter also presented a handful of extraordinary historic photographs of the Ukrainian community in Scotland. Much of Peter’s research has been coloured by the response to his ongoing photo exchange project. His photo exchange holds a wealth of material for those interested in the Ukrainian community.  Anyone  wishing to add to the collection, or inquire about specific images, can email Peter at nasharchiv@btinternet.com

 

Crisis, Migration and Precariousness: The New Galician Diaspora as a Case Study

On 28 February 2017, we were delighted to welcome Dr Maria Alonso Alonso to the Diaspora Studies Graduate Workshop.  Maria obtained her PhD from the University of Vigo in 2014 and is currently based at the University of St Andrews where she holds a a Xunta de Galicia International Postdoctoral Fellowship.  Her work focusses on the Galician diaspora. She has published widely in academic journals; her output also includes short stories, poetry and a novel in the Galician Language.  Her most recent book entitled Transmigrantes Fillas de Precareidade (“Transmigrants , Daughters of Precariousness”), published by Axourere in 2017, challenges an over positive image of migration in order to highlight  the feelings of vulnerability experienced by her own, younger generation.  In a stimulating paper Maria, explored the interconnected themes of crisis, migration and precariousness.

Traditionally, Galicia has been a migrant community.  As Maria observed, it is difficult to find a family unaffected by migration.  In the 19^th century, Castile was a popular destination for migrants; at the time of the Spanish Civil War, Latin America, notably Argentina and Uruguay, provided a popular draw.  More recently, it has been Europe.  Factors have included poverty, political instability and unemployment.  Statistics, eloquent of a social crisis, reveal how Spanish unemployment has soared since the beginning of the millennium, rising from 8% in 2006 to 26% in 2012. The trend is most pronounced in the younger generation.  In 2015, youth unemployment (representing the  under 25s) stood at 51%; in the same year graduate unemployment stood at 30%; in Germany the comparative figure was 3%. Over the past five years, over one million Spanish citizens have emigrated; a significant number have come to the UK.  In 2015, on the basis of Spanish Government figures, 45,000 Spanish nationals were formally registered as living in the UK; most were between the ages of 25 and 35, and approximately 20% Galician.

Maria’s family like many others were affected by migration.  This photograph includes a number of family members including her mother, aunts and uncles, and grandparents

However, as Maria argued, it is important to recognise the presence of a push and pull factor. In the late 1990s, Galicia became a host country.  Spain, which was undergoing a period of political transition, became part of the Euro zone.  It opened its borders to foreign labourers including Africans, Europeans (particularly the Swiss and Germans) and first and second generation emigrants to Latin America (the so called retornados).  Many of the new immigrants were employed in the construction and service industries; at the same time many professional Galicians emigrated to north Europe and the USA.   In many respects, the boom proved transient as images of Castellon airport and Santiago de Compostela City of Culture testify.  As much as nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, nobody ever expected the Spanish Crisis.

The New Galician Diaspora is characterised by a sense of precariousness as the title of Maria’s recent book suggests.  The Galician Government has promoted an official narrative based on a sense of Sentimentality for the home country from abroad.  Thus Galicians, in the words of Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, “are a nostalgic people…. (who) live in harmonious communion with their landscape…yearning for its beauty”.  According to this received view, emigration is not as traumatic as it might seem.  In fact, emigration is the equivalent of success.  However, this rigid agenda blots out stories of precariousness.  New narratives have developed to challenge the official line. The  stereopytoes and metaphors commonly associated with Sentimentality have been analysed and challenged in the work of Carballeira.    Since 2015, a flurry of publications have provided a critique of Sentimentality. Eloy Domínguez Serén, although comparatively unknown within Galicia, has demonstrated on the basis of his own experiences, how feelings of alienation become important in the context of migration.  The concept of Saudade, almost untranslatable into English, captures the vital angst of living abroad. Manuel Forcadela goes further.  For Forcadela, Saudade is like a form of castration.

Somewhat surprisingly there is nobody currently working on Galician Studies at the University of Edinburgh.  Maria concluded by suggested that important comparisons might be drawn between her native Galicia and Scotland, i.e. as communities existing within hegemonic powers.

This well attended paper provoked interest and debate.  Maria’s scholarly approach was enhanced by the authority of personal experience.  We look forward to welcoming Maria at future graduate workshops and research seminars.

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Emigration: Scotland to Australia 1840-1870. Was the Effort Really Worthwhile?

On 12^th January 2017, the Graduate Workshop welcomed Jennifer McCoy of Federation University, Australia.  Jennifer is a part time first-year PhD student who currently combines research with teaching.  Her doctoral research considers the contribution made by immigrant Scots in the development of Eastern High Country Victoria in the mid to late 19^th century. Family history has provided the stimulus for Jennifer’s formal academic research and, in her own words, has led to her asking “so many questions that (have gone) beyond the usual genealogical study of births, marriages, deaths and people connections”.   Her presentation considered the “loose ends” which have inspired her project and the lines of enquiry which they suggest.

At the heart of Jennifer’s research lie the big questions: Where had the Scots come from?  Where did they settle?  Moreover, was their effort worthwhile?  Existing research has tended to focus on the more well known, yet many early Scottish settlers remain strangely “invisible”.  Memorialisation,  gravestones in particular, have provided a useful starting point.  By way of case study, Jennifer considered her own McCoy ancestors. As the 1841 census records reveal, James McCoid (sic) and his wife Charlotte Dowie hailed from Girvan in Ayrshire.  In 1855, they made the perilous five month sea voyage from Liverpool to Hobart before travelling to South East Victoria.  The McCoy family clearly flourished.  In 1932, Mary, the daughter of Charlotte and James, left the considerable sum of £ 45,000 to her local Presbyterian Church.  Her sister Elizabeth ran a successful hotel.  What role then did women play in the settler society?  How did the Presbyterian  Church impact upon their lives?  How was such wealth generated in a comparatively short time?  In the long term, Jennifer anticipates broadening the scope of her research and considering the experiences of other Scottish families in the development of South East Victoria.

A lively discussion followed. The presentation provided a perfect opportunity for Jennifer to meet and exchange ideas with members of our own post graduate community.  We all wish her well with her continuing research.

Alastair Learmont

Scots in 18th Century Rome: Graduate Workshop 29th November 2016

 

Our next workshop will now take place on Tuesday 29th November at 1 pm in G16 of the William Robertson Wing of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology (Doorway 4 of Teviot) when Dr Lucinda Lax, Senior Curator of 18th Century Collections at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, will speak on:

Franciszek Smuglewicz’s James Byres of Tonley and His Family: A Scottish Antiquarian Network in Eighteenth-Century Rome. 

Smuglewicz’s portrait of James Byres of Tonley  provides the focal point for a consideration of  why Scots in general, and Byres in particular, became so prominent as Ciceroni for grand tourists    In what ways did Scottish families operate as “corporations” in 18th Century Rome?

All are most welcome to attend.

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/

“Imprest on vellum”: Lowland language and the early American republic, c. 1800-1830.

Sean Murphy from the University of St Andrews spoke to the Diaspora Studies Graduate Workshop on Tuesday 1 November.  Sean has a particular interest in the relationship between the Scots language and British imperialism. He is a graduate of the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and will shortly submit his PhD thesis at the University of St Andrews.  We were delighted to welcome back Sean.

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The new circumstances under which we are placed, call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects. An American dialect will therefore be formed.

Thomas Jefferson 16 August 1813

In the early decades of the 19^th century, Thomas Jefferson argued that the growing United States of America, a nation of considerable size and cultural diversity, required a language to express all ideas.  Would new words and new phrases “adulterate” the English language?  Had the language of Burns “disfigured” the English language?  Did the Athenians consider the Doric, the Ionian, the Aeolic, and other dialects, as disfiguring or as beautifying their language?”  Jefferson thought the latter. Developing an analogy based on the richness of the Greek language, he argued that a variety of dialects enriched a language. The learned writers of the contemporary Edinburgh Review, who eschewed new words were, in his view, mistaken.

        Sean Murphy used the words of Jefferson as both the introduction and cornerstone of his presentation. Jefferson had expressed the desire to “enlargen our employment of the English language”.  Moreover, a dignified American dialect was comparable to the Scots of Robert Burns whose writing had been readily available in the young United States of American from the 1790s.  The poetry of Burns, Sean argued, fostered a sense of nostalgia, in emigrant Scots.

          The work of two Scots/Irish poets provide an important insight into the social and diasporic world of Scots/Irish.  David Bruce from Pennsylvania was a first generation emigrant who may have had roots in the north-east of Scotland, possibly in Caithness.  A contemporary of Burns, his poetry expressed the post-colonial political concerns of a Scots/Irish diaspora.  Bruce defended the Scottish Irish community which had been blamed for the so called Pennsylvania “whiskey rebellion of 1794”. Fiercely anti Jacobin, his work reflected an earlier age and showed a Scottish pride in rationality.

    Robert Dinsmore of New Hampshire, was a third generation emigrant Scots/Ulsterman.  If Bruce was a Scottish American, then it might be argued that Dinsmore was an American Scot.  Sean’s readings of Dinsmore’s poetry tended to suggest that the vowel sounds of a third generation Scot might have developed, or, in any event, have been different from the Scots American of Bruce.  Dinsmore looked to the past and made a connection between his ancient Irish ancestors and the tribes of the native American Indians.  He was more of a rustic bard.  Both poets – Bruce in more pastoral vein – were influenced by the poetry of the elder Alan Ramsay, of Gentle Shepherd fame, who was known for his use of the Scottish vernacular two generations before Robert Burns. Nostalgia, perhaps even exoticism, were the hallmarks of these poets.  If the English had crafted Athenian, then the Scots excelled at the Doric.

         A wide-ranging discussion considered the publication and marketing of the poems and the extent to which other diasporic groups may have been represented in contemporary periodicals.

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Please note:

 The Graduate Workshop originally scheduled for Tuesday 15 November, has been cancelled.

Unfortunately, our speaker, Micheal Hopkirk of the University of Dundee, is indisposed.  Michael was due to speak on “Highland Adventurers to the Caribbean: Estimating the Scale of Highland-Caribbean Economic Migration, 1780-1830”

Our next Graduate Workshop will  now take place on Tuesday 29th November (further details below)

                                                                                             Alastair Learmont

‘Toil and Care under the Scorching Sun’: Scots in Jamaica, 1776-1838.

On Monday 17 October, the Graduate Workshop was delighted to welcome Dr Stephen Mullen, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow.  His paper considered Scottish emigration to the Caribbean in the late 18^th and early 19^th century within its social and economic context. He adopted a transatlantic approach.

Stephen argued that levels of emigration from Scotland to the West Indies increased in the first third of the 19^th century.  In the absence of Scottish port statistics during this period, precise quantification is problematic but contemporary advertisements from the Glasgow Herald suggest that between 1806 and 1834, 1742 ships made the transatlantic journey from the Clyde to the Caribbean, of which approximately 600 were bound for Jamaica.  An approach based on earlier work by Allan Karras and Douglas Hamilton (in relation to the second half of the 18^th century), points to between 3000 and 5500 Scottish sojourners travelling to Jamaica alone during this period. Kingston was the most popular port of arrival. In 1774, the planter historian, Edward Long, had estimated that one third of the 18,000 (white) inhabitants of the island were either Scots or descended from Scots, a view endorsed by Lady Nugent a generation later. In 1801, she wrote, “Almost all the agents, attornies [sic], merchants and shopkeepers, are of that country [Scotland] and really do deserve to thrive in this, they are so industrious.”

A Scottish presence on the island was re-in forced by Scottish institutions, notably the Kingston Masonic Lodge of St Andrews, the Presbyterian Kirk (also St Andrews), and, arguably, the use of Scots law in order to secure the repatriation of wealth to the home country.  Attempts to establish a Scots Kirk were initially resisted in the Jamaican assembly but evidence of rapid and successful fundraising suggests a broadly based and relatively affluent Scots community within Kingston and other parts of the island. St. Andrews Kirk was opened in 1819. The first three ministers of the Kirk, were educated at Old College in Edinburgh; the third minister, James Wordie, established a local Sunday school.

As Stephen observed, the Scottish emigrant was typically a”sojourner in the sun”: the single young man who had travelled to the West Indies “less  in quest of fame than of fortunes” (pace Long) but whose principal motivation was to return to his native land in affluent middle age to enjoy and – when the time was right – transmit his new found wealth.  The motive of the sojourner raises the mechanism of repatriation of capital as much inter vivos as post mortem.  The example of Andrew Taylor, an upwardly mobile overseer on the York estate in Trelawney, is a case in point.   In the 1820s, Taylor’s correspondence provides evidence suggesting that he was making provision for family members in his native land in the event of his not returning to Scotland.  Stephen argued that Scottish merchants played a pivotal role in the transmission of wealth.  They were able to convey bills of exchange to Scotland and, on the death of a Scots testator, were well placed to act as executors.

How wealthy were these sojourners in the sun?  How much wealth did they repatriate?  And what was its impact on the Scottish economy?  Stephen’s recent work has comprised an analysis of the wills and inventories in Scottish archives.  They provide first hand evidence of the nature of repatriation of wealth and the extent of  individual fortunes.  Of the “super rich” William Rae had a fortune approaching that of William Beckford. Scots law, Stephen argued, provided a means of channelling Scots wealth.

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Our next Diaspora Studies Graduate Workshop will take place on Tuesday 1 November at 1 pm in G 16 in the William Robertson Wing of the School of History Classics and Archaeology (Doorway 4)

Sean Murphy of the University of St Andrews investigates the apparent enthusiasm for Scottish literature and Lowland Scots language within the United States.  His paper highlights the manner in which Scots forms were seen to set an example for the development of an American English.

Sean’s paper is entitled :

“Imprest on vellum”: Lowland language and the early American republic, c. 1800-1830.

All are most welcome to attend.

Alastair Learmont

Business, Farming and Jolly Good Times: 4 October 2016

On Tuesday 4 October, the Diaspora Studies Graduate Workshop welcomed Shane Smith, a third year PhD student from the University of Northumbria.  Shane’s paper, entitled “Business, Farming and Jolly Good Times”, charted the migration of the British and Irish soldiers to the Perth settlement in Upper Canada between 1815 and 1850.

Perth, south-west of Ottawa, formed the focal point of significant military re-settlement in the years immediately after the Napoleonic wars.  Between 1815 and 1831, 1425 soldiers, together with their wives and children, settled in Perth. From the early 1830s, the balance shifted significantly to civilian emigration.

Examples of Land Grants: Libraries and Archives Canada, Upper Canada Land Petitions, Volume 421, Microfilm 2739, Folio 48 e (Shane Smith)

The central contention of Shane’s paper was that a small group within the military elite was well placed to dominate the administration, agriculture and business of an evolving community.  Its members also played a pivotal role within the social life of the settlement.   Seniority within the military enabled former officers to benefit from sizable grants of land of as much as 1000 acres.  Allocation was essentially based on a tariff system according to seniority.  In addition, all former military personnel could reasonably expect to receive one acre of land within the urban community of Perth.  Shane considered the involvement and advancement of notable individuals in the civic life of Perth including Roderick Matheson and Anthony Lesley. The military, he argued, formed part of an interconnected world where patronage played a vital role.

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Our next Diaspora Studies Graduate Workshop takes place on Monday 17 October when Dr Stephen Mullen of the University of Glasgow will speak on the emigration of Scots to the Caribbean between 1776 and 1838.  His paper is entitled “Toil and Care under the Scorching Sun:  Scots in Jamaica, 1776-1838”.

Our Autumn 2016 Seminar Series

We’ve now posted our autumn 2016 seminar programme, which you can find on the programme page:

• Autumn 2016 Seminar Series

The seminars start on Tuesday, 4th of October in Room G16 in the William Robertson Wing, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Old Medical School, Teviot Place.

Shane Smith (Northumbria University) will speak on:

“Business, farming and ‘jolly good times’: The migration of British and Irish soldiers to the Perth military settlement in Upper Canada 1815-1850.