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Ponsonby Britt posted:And anyway, wasn't Scotland in that time period rather poorer than the rest of Britain? It makes sense to me that Scots would be overrepresented in the low and mid levels of the colonial institutions, as a way of getting out of their local poverty. But that doesn't mean they supported the concept of imperialism, any more than African-Americans (who disproportionately serve in the military for the same reason) supported the war in Iraq. I'd be careful making such judgements about Scottish attitudes towards imperialism. You are prescribing an ideology on a population over a period of centuries. We have a tendency to use the past as merely examples of what is occurring in our own times (as with the Iraq example) and we miss the nuances existing in an alien time. The fact is, people in the past didn't exist as models of enlightened judgement, railing against unjust inequalities. Hack historians like Zinn, make such judgements , refusing to let his subjects speak for themselves. Ferguson, from the other side of the political spectrum is no better at this. Let's also not forget Scotland's imperial efforts in Central America in the 17th century as well. Scotland's role in this region has been whitewashed by those seeking an image of a Scotland clean of an imperialist past, when in fact Scotland had no qualms seizing native land for profit. This effort failed due to financial pitfalls and not a change of heart. While benefiting less than England, modern Scotland was built of the spoils of imperialism. In the same way in the American South, white non-slaveholders, while oppressed by aristocratic planters, gladly took in the wider economic rewards of slavery.
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Jun 16, 2012 14:56
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