Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 Silke Stroh northwestern university press evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www .nupress.northwestern .edu Copyright © 2017 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2017. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress. Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons At- tribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. In all cases attribution should include the following information: Stroh, Silke. Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2017. For permissions beyond the scope of this license, visit www.nupress.northwestern.edu An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 Chapter 1 The Modern Nation- State and Its Others: Civilizing Missions at Home and Abroad, ca. 1600 to 1800 33 Chapter 2 Anglophone Literature of Civilization and the Hybridized Gaelic Subject: Martin Martin’s Travel Writings 77 Chapter 3 The Reemergence of the Primitive Other? Noble Savagery and the Romantic Age 113 Chapter 4 From Flirtations with Romantic Otherness to a More Integrated National Synthesis: “Gentleman Savages” in Walter Scott’s Novel Waverley 141 Chapter 5 Of Celts and Teutons: Racial Biology and Anti- Gaelic Discourse, ca. 1780– 1860 185 Chapter 6 Racist Reversals: Appropriating Racial Typology in Late Nineteenth- Century Pro- Gaelic Discourse 213 Conclusion 247 Abbreviations 253 Notes 255 Works Cited 305 Index 327 Acknowledgments During the research which underlies this book, and during the gestation pro- cess of the manuscript, I have benefited greatly from the advice and support of various people and institutions. Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Dieter Riemenschneider and Prof. Dr. Frank Schulze-Engler from the University of Frankfurt a.M. for their invaluable mentorship during my first years of working on Scottish postcolonialism. I have also received impor- tant encouragement, comments, suggestions, and support from Prof. C. L. Innes, Prof. Dr. Mark Stein, Prof. Carla Sassi, Dr. Michael Newton, Prof. Dr. Christoph Heyl, Dr. Christine Vogt- William, Caroline Kögler, my NUP editors Gianna F. Mosser and Nathan MacBrien, and the two anonymous peer review- ers. Any remaining shortcomings in this book are, of course, entirely my own. I would also like to thank the friendly staff at Bridgeman Images for sup- plying the picture reproduced on the cover—this Victorian scrap perfectly captures the ambiguity of the Scottish Highlanders’ position in British colo- nial discourse: on the one hand, the Highlander marches alongside the other (ethnically unmarked) British redcoat soldier as a leader of the pageant, presumably a fellow conqueror of the “exotic” people and animals behind him, but on the other hand he is arguably also part of the pageant of the colonized—ethnically marked like them, and with some “primitive exoti- cism” emanating from his garb. Recalling the triumphal marches in ancient Rome where victorious commanders and emperors paraded themselves, their troops, foreign captives and spoils, this Victorian procession also reflects Brit- ain’s attempts to portray itself as a successor to imperial Rome—with “Celts” as barbarian Others to both empires, and a bridge between them. Further thanks are due to the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD) for facilitating my very first stay in Scotland as a scholar of their “Anglistenprogramm” during the aca- demic year 1996– 97, which laid the initial foundations for my long-standing fascination with Scottish studies. I have also benefited enormously from a doctoral scholarship granted by the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). Furthermore, I would like to thank the National Library of Scotland as well as the libraries of the University of Glasgow, the University of Aberdeen, and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig for their gener- ous permission to use their excellent resources during my research. Some of the ideas presented in this book were previously published in a different form as parts of essays in the following collections and journals: vii viii Acknowledgments Global Fragments: (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order, edited by Anke Bartels and Dirk Wiemann; Transcultural English Studies: Theories, Fictions, Realities, edited by Frank Schulze-Engler and Sissy Helff; Transla- tion of Cultures, edited by Petra Rüdiger and Konrad Gross; The Bottle Imp 10; Within and Without Empire: Scotland Across the (Post)colonial Border- line, edited by Carla Sassi and Theo van Heijnsbergen; Anglistentag 2012 Potsdam: Proceedings, edited by Katrin Röder and Ilse Wischer; and Con- tested Identities: Literary Negotiations in Time and Place, edited by Roger Nicholson, Claudia Marquis, and Gertrud Szamosi. In terms of theory and historical basics, there are also some overlaps with my earlier monograph Uneasy Subjects: Postcolonialism and Scottish Gaelic Poetry— in a way, these two studies complement each other, approaching the Scottish (post)colonial question from different linguistic angles. I am also immensely grateful for all the love and support I have received from my parents Irene and Werner Stroh, and from my partner Gregor Addi- son. He is due additional thanks for many inspiring reading suggestions and years of lively intellectual dialogue. It is to these three wonderful people that this book is dedicated. Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination Introduction Can Scotland and the “Celtic fringe” be considered as English colonies? Is their experience and literature comparable to that of overseas postcolonial countries? Can international postcolonial theory help us to understand the Scottish predicament? Is Scottish political and cultural nationalism similar to anticolonial resistance overseas? Or are such comparisons no more than Scottish patriotic victimology, attempting to mask complicity in the British Empire and justify initiatives to secede from the United Kingdom? Caught between nationalist rhetoric, an ever-expanding academic “theory indus- try,” and more skeptical perspectives which doubt the value of Scottish and “Celtic” postcolonialisms, these questions have been heatedly debated in recent years. On an international level, the transformation of postcolonial studies from a small academic margin into an increasingly popular, respected, and institutionalized part of the academic mainstream has been ongoing since the 1980s and, despite recurrent theoretical (self- )questioning, the field still remains a trendy academic growth sector. Historically, postcolonialism has close connections to questions of political autonomy, emancipation move- ments, and nation-building. Hence, debates about extending postcolonial approaches to Scottish studies were to some extent fueled by recent political developments: the devolution process of the late 1990s which gave Scotland its own “regional” parliament within the United Kingdom while pan-British “national” affairs remained with the Parliament in London; the 2007 and 2011 elections which made the Scottish National Party (SNP) the governing power in the Edinburgh Parliament; and the run- up to the 2014 referendum on whether Scotland should become a sovereign nation- state of its own, with full independence from the United Kingdom. When that referendum resulted in a “no” vote, some might have wondered whether nationalist—and postco- lonial—questions should now be considered unviable, dated, and discredited: Did not this referendum result confirm an overall satisfaction with being part of Britain, a “sameness” and identification with the English (and other Brit- ons), rather than a sense of being a marginalized Other or an internal colony?1 These are valid questions, but in reality these issues are much more complex. Even after the 2014 referendum, the question of Scottish autonomy remained on the agenda. Political campaigning for more powers continued, even if the campaign was supposed to take place within the British state for the time being. Moreover, many refused to give up on independence as a long- term goal. Activism remained vigorous, and the pro-independence Scottish 3 4 Introduction National Party quadrupled its membership within six months after the 2014 plebiscite. Other pro-independence parties likewise experienced a growth in membership. Desires for stronger representation of Scottish interests within the Union, and for an end of pan-British austerity politics, led to a huge SNP success in the 2015 elections for the British Parliament, when the party gained 50 additional seats and came to represent fifty-six out of fifty-nine Scottish constituencies. The SNP also won the election for the Scottish Parliament in May 2016. The “Brexit” referendum in June 2016 brought a renewed sense of urgency: Although most Scots voted to remain