Elizabeth Ritchie | University of the Highlands and Islands - UHI (original) (raw)
Papers by Elizabeth Ritchie
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 2022
Using the document of gravestone inscriptions, untapped by historians, provides a useful way to u... more Using the document of gravestone inscriptions, untapped by historians, provides a useful way to understand the aspirations and expectations of and for men. This article focuses on the nineteenth-century Highlands and Islands of Scotland, a strongly rural part of Britain. The expressions of masculinity shown on gravestones focused much on status and character. These were to be manifested in men’s public and in their private lives. Masculinity was demonstrated through various markers of status: skill and success in work; holding a public position, whether paid or voluntary; and through establishing a household. Masculinity was also demonstrated through character: a man was meant to inspire esteem and affection not just from his family or personal friends, but from the community at large. In addition, the gravestone evidence suggests that public service and leadership in performing and conferring masculine status was important in this place and time. The civic masculinity constructed in the public sphere and the affective masculinity created in private relationships were intrinsic and interconnected ideals for men. Gravestone inscriptions may be sparse and formulaic, but these words inscribed on wind-tilted, lichen-obscured stones, give a glimpse into the values and aspirations of the men who lived in the Highlands and Islands over a century ago.
Agricultural History Review, 2017
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Scots were among the many European immigrants who tr... more In the first half of the nineteenth century, Scots were among the many European immigrants who tried to turn North American forests into productive farms. They understood how livestock were integral to this project, providing draught power, meat, leather, wool, tallow, manure and income. However they had no experience of rearing and sustaining pigs, cattle and sheep in the old growth forest of Upper Canada. They brought some skills and knowledge from Scotland, but much was learned from neighbours, books and by experimentation. Emigrant guides, agricultural reports and personal letters indicate how exactly settlers utilized woodlands to feed and shelter animals in those first few years. As Scottish immigrants became more settled, they transformed much of the forest which had initially sustained them into arable and high quality pasture and meadow.
Genealogy, 2020
The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initial... more The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initially suggests that such details are unprofitable sources for evidence of male identity. However the sheer commonplaceness of stating a placename, particularly when it is noticeably associated with men rather than women, and when not all cultures do the same, indicates that it may reveal something of how men thought of themselves and how they felt. Canadian and Australian studies have suggested that recording placenames on a headstone was a marker of Scottish ethnicity, like an image of a thistle. However, in the nineteenth-century Scottish Highlands ethnicity was not a key component of identity. Indications of place, at least in the ‘home’ country, must therefore signify a different element of identity. This article examines headstone inscriptions of men from across the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands of Scotland who died in the nineteenth century. The resulting evidence indicates th...
Gender and Mobility in Scotland and Abroad, 2018
Elizabeth Ritchie, 'Pregnant Emigrants: Gender, Migrants and Childbirth in Rural British North Am... more Elizabeth Ritchie, 'Pregnant Emigrants: Gender, Migrants and Childbirth in Rural British North America, 1818-1850', in Sierra Dye, Elizabeth Ewan and Alice Glaze, (eds), Gender and Mobility in Scotland and Abroad (Guelph, 2018), 83-100.
Northern Scotland, 2019
In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth.... more In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not uncondit...
Journal of British Identities, 2019
The visual, symbolic, and material campaign around Indyref 2014 was distinctive within British po... more The visual, symbolic, and material campaign around Indyref 2014 was distinctive within British politics. It was imaginative, one-sided, long-lasting, and responsive to changing political realities. The Yes campaign’s interaction with the landscape was far different from that of ordinary elections or the No campaign. Yes activists interacted with specific places and created micro-landscapes, shaping paint, fabric, and symbolism to suit that place, and making out of it a politicised space. Very occasionally this was resisted or counteracted by No campaigners. With their bodies or vehicles decorated, Yes voters moved through urban, rural, and even maritime, spaces. Occasionally this was done ritually, self-consciously claiming the territory as might a military manoeuvre or royal procession. As the landscape dictated the form and longevity of much of that expression by its texture, topography, and the impact of weather, campaigners imputed a proindependence voice to particular locations. The prolific stickering, particularly of roadsigns, turned the expanse of the rural Highlands into a Yes campaign-space. One consequence was that Indyref symbolism acted to challenge the prevailing wilderness aesthetic. It re-politicised a space which the wilderness ‘way of seeing’ had depoliticised. The stickers and political micro-landscapes in ‘natural’ locations forcibly made the point that these are peopled places: worked, managed, lived in and travelled through. Those campaigners marked their own existence in a place from which they have been rhetorically excluded. At the same time they blurred the dichotomy between nature and culture, between what is ‘out there’ and what is ‘in me’. Efforts to give, even impose, a political voice are especially significant in a landscape which is objectified and portrayed as ‘natural’ in the dominant discourse. Indyref was a debate about power and autonomy. Campaigning by politicising the landscape was the latest manifestation of an ancient conflict about control over these spaces.
Ontario History
In the ongoing discussion of how Canada’s economy developed and how the land was colonised, littl... more In the ongoing discussion of how Canada’s economy developed and how the land was colonised, little attention has been paid to the role of farm animals. The strategies of Scottish immigrants to rural Upper Canada show the centrality of livestock in subsistence, in the informal economy of barter, exchange and credit, and in off-farm sales. Raising stock—particularly cattle, sheep and pigs—was not an addition to settlers’ sources of income and subsistence, but underpinned most of them. Letters back to Scotland, supplemented by surveys and census data, show that animals’ contribution to clearing forest, raising crops, maintaining soil, providing food and clothing, raising cash or credit, maintaining reciprocal relationships and passing on property was integral to the success of backwoods farmers as they strove first for survival, and then for comfort.
From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic co... more From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic communities with the cooperation and assistance of the people and their priests. The historiography of protestant-Catholic relations is dominated by conflict and that of nineteenth-century Scotland focuses on tension in the industrializing Lowlands. However, the key religious issue for Highland Catholics was the response to expansionist protestantism. The Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS) best epitomizes this movement. Letters from priests and the society's annual reports reveal how long-established rural Catholic communities reacted to missionary activity and how, building on the tense compromises of the eighteenth century, for a few decades evangelicals and Catholics cooperated effectively. The ESSGS learned to involve local priests, provide sympathetic teachers and modify the curriculum. Catholics drew on their experience as a disempowered minority by resisting passively rather than actively and by using the society's schools on their own terms. Many Catholic parents and clergy developed a modus vivendi with evangelicals through their common interest in educating children. The evidence of northwest Scotland demonstrates how a minority faith group and missionaries negotiated a satisfactory coexistence in a period of energetic evangelical activity across the British world.
History Scotland (Jan/Feb 2016), pp 42-45., May 2015
Innes Review, Apr 2014
There is a delightful anticipation the first time one eases a document from its plastic sheet or ... more There is a delightful anticipation the first time one eases a document from its plastic sheet or coaxes open a musty volume: the catalogue has given a hint, but it really could contain anything. It can also be both fascinating and frustrating when one recognises that the information which an item contains could be very important for a fellow researcher, but is tangential to one's own work. One might read it out of curiosity, or take a few notes, before being obliged by the constraints of time to leave it aside and refocus on the research topic in hand. Such experiences can be a little unsettling, since essential evidence for one's own research might be hidden within a source whose title gives away no indication of its usefulness. For students of a subject like the Jacobites or the Clearances this is not a serious problem, since a wealth of sources is a mere 'request' away in major and minor repositories across Scotland and abroad. For those who wish to analyse less tumultuous subjects, the clues secreted in documents that are not obviously related to the topic in hand can be critical. With the notable exception of Alasdair Roberts, the paucity of researchers examining the nineteenth-century Catholic Highlands suggests that sources are an issue. The purpose of this present research note is to encourage Catholic historians to read Protestant sources against the grain in order to reassess the changing lives of Gaelicspeaking Roman Catholics. One such set of sources is the reports produced by Protestant educational organisations. These often include inspectors' accounts, the letters of teachers and the petitions of local inhabitants. Although Protestant, such societies were active in regions populated by Catholics. One such body, the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS), was founded in 1811. Most of their voluminous reports can be found in Edinburgh's National Library of Scotland, although there are some in the Special Collections of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Guelph University Libraries. Examining them for data about areas such as Barra, South Uist, Moidart, Knoydart and Strathglass has exposed a wealth of material. Naturally the reports discuss educational and religious 4 RITCHIE: Page 2 of 27 matters among Highland Catholics, but they also speak to how priests and people interacted; how different faith communities negotiated with each other; and about the social and economic lives of ordinary people. What follows will therefore focus on the material produced and collated by the ESSGS, in order to demonstrate the research possibilities of such records. (Detailed work on the papers of other Protestant educational and missionary societies is likely to be equally productive.) I shall introduce the ESSGS and discuss how historians can approach the annual reports. I shall also give a sample of the letters sent from predominantly Catholic parts of the Highlands and Islands, illustrating the nature of the material and suggesting possibilities for further research. Most of the transcribed extracts have been selected from the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, when the annual reports were at their fullest. In addition, this a significant period for historians of Highland Catholicism in three ways: it covers Catholic emancipation, the rise of Evangelical Presbyterianism in the north west, and the Clearances. The final section shows how such determinedly Protestant sources can be used by Catholic historians. At the most basic level they can provide new information. A case-study of the Small Isles shows how they can complement and question the sources most commonly used. A second case-study, of the central Highlands, demonstrates how they can provide new insights into how Catholic families and communities interacted with the religious and philanthropic agencies who intended to modify their culture. Despite the increasing poverty and political powerlessness of the sub-tenant classes, reading these sources against the grain shows how ordinary Catholic Highlanders exercised considerable agency in education and in religion.
Jodi Campbell, Elizabeth Ewan and Heather Parker (eds) The Shaping of Scottish Identities: Family, Nation, and the Worlds Beyond, 2011
History Scotland, Jan 2014
History Scotland, Mar 2014
Published in History Scotland
Blogs by Elizabeth Ritchie
This blog is dedicated to exploring the history and archaeology of Dornoch and its neighbouring p... more This blog is dedicated to exploring the history and archaeology of Dornoch and its neighbouring parishes. It is a collaboration between Historylinks museum and the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, co-ordinated by Elizabeth Ritchie. Posts are written either by Elizabeth or by guest contributors. We do not claim to be all-knowing about the history of the area, so readers are invited to make a comment, a correction, or additional points in the comments section. We welcome discussion as we all explore the past in this region. In the blog we discuss artefacts and documents stored by the museum; museum activities; the history and archaeology that is out and about in the district; and history-related events happening in the area. We are interested in every time period and in people, places and things within a twenty five mile radius of Dornoch, which incorporates south east Sutherland and north east Ross-shire. Come join us as we delve beneath the surface to explore how people used to live in this corner of Scotland’s Highlands and how the place has changed!
https://historylinksdornoch.wordpress.com/
Thoughts on the shaping and expression of Scottish and British masculine identities through the o... more Thoughts on the shaping and expression of Scottish and British masculine identities through the outdoors in the 1930s.
I was invited to write a post for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland blog. I chose to focus on ... more I was invited to write a post for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland blog. I chose to focus on what we could glean about women's work from a case study of the Old Statistical Accounts of east Sutherland's parishes. http://statacc.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 2022
Using the document of gravestone inscriptions, untapped by historians, provides a useful way to u... more Using the document of gravestone inscriptions, untapped by historians, provides a useful way to understand the aspirations and expectations of and for men. This article focuses on the nineteenth-century Highlands and Islands of Scotland, a strongly rural part of Britain. The expressions of masculinity shown on gravestones focused much on status and character. These were to be manifested in men’s public and in their private lives. Masculinity was demonstrated through various markers of status: skill and success in work; holding a public position, whether paid or voluntary; and through establishing a household. Masculinity was also demonstrated through character: a man was meant to inspire esteem and affection not just from his family or personal friends, but from the community at large. In addition, the gravestone evidence suggests that public service and leadership in performing and conferring masculine status was important in this place and time. The civic masculinity constructed in the public sphere and the affective masculinity created in private relationships were intrinsic and interconnected ideals for men. Gravestone inscriptions may be sparse and formulaic, but these words inscribed on wind-tilted, lichen-obscured stones, give a glimpse into the values and aspirations of the men who lived in the Highlands and Islands over a century ago.
Agricultural History Review, 2017
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Scots were among the many European immigrants who tr... more In the first half of the nineteenth century, Scots were among the many European immigrants who tried to turn North American forests into productive farms. They understood how livestock were integral to this project, providing draught power, meat, leather, wool, tallow, manure and income. However they had no experience of rearing and sustaining pigs, cattle and sheep in the old growth forest of Upper Canada. They brought some skills and knowledge from Scotland, but much was learned from neighbours, books and by experimentation. Emigrant guides, agricultural reports and personal letters indicate how exactly settlers utilized woodlands to feed and shelter animals in those first few years. As Scottish immigrants became more settled, they transformed much of the forest which had initially sustained them into arable and high quality pasture and meadow.
Genealogy, 2020
The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initial... more The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initially suggests that such details are unprofitable sources for evidence of male identity. However the sheer commonplaceness of stating a placename, particularly when it is noticeably associated with men rather than women, and when not all cultures do the same, indicates that it may reveal something of how men thought of themselves and how they felt. Canadian and Australian studies have suggested that recording placenames on a headstone was a marker of Scottish ethnicity, like an image of a thistle. However, in the nineteenth-century Scottish Highlands ethnicity was not a key component of identity. Indications of place, at least in the ‘home’ country, must therefore signify a different element of identity. This article examines headstone inscriptions of men from across the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands of Scotland who died in the nineteenth century. The resulting evidence indicates th...
Gender and Mobility in Scotland and Abroad, 2018
Elizabeth Ritchie, 'Pregnant Emigrants: Gender, Migrants and Childbirth in Rural British North Am... more Elizabeth Ritchie, 'Pregnant Emigrants: Gender, Migrants and Childbirth in Rural British North America, 1818-1850', in Sierra Dye, Elizabeth Ewan and Alice Glaze, (eds), Gender and Mobility in Scotland and Abroad (Guelph, 2018), 83-100.
Northern Scotland, 2019
In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth.... more In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not uncondit...
Journal of British Identities, 2019
The visual, symbolic, and material campaign around Indyref 2014 was distinctive within British po... more The visual, symbolic, and material campaign around Indyref 2014 was distinctive within British politics. It was imaginative, one-sided, long-lasting, and responsive to changing political realities. The Yes campaign’s interaction with the landscape was far different from that of ordinary elections or the No campaign. Yes activists interacted with specific places and created micro-landscapes, shaping paint, fabric, and symbolism to suit that place, and making out of it a politicised space. Very occasionally this was resisted or counteracted by No campaigners. With their bodies or vehicles decorated, Yes voters moved through urban, rural, and even maritime, spaces. Occasionally this was done ritually, self-consciously claiming the territory as might a military manoeuvre or royal procession. As the landscape dictated the form and longevity of much of that expression by its texture, topography, and the impact of weather, campaigners imputed a proindependence voice to particular locations. The prolific stickering, particularly of roadsigns, turned the expanse of the rural Highlands into a Yes campaign-space. One consequence was that Indyref symbolism acted to challenge the prevailing wilderness aesthetic. It re-politicised a space which the wilderness ‘way of seeing’ had depoliticised. The stickers and political micro-landscapes in ‘natural’ locations forcibly made the point that these are peopled places: worked, managed, lived in and travelled through. Those campaigners marked their own existence in a place from which they have been rhetorically excluded. At the same time they blurred the dichotomy between nature and culture, between what is ‘out there’ and what is ‘in me’. Efforts to give, even impose, a political voice are especially significant in a landscape which is objectified and portrayed as ‘natural’ in the dominant discourse. Indyref was a debate about power and autonomy. Campaigning by politicising the landscape was the latest manifestation of an ancient conflict about control over these spaces.
Ontario History
In the ongoing discussion of how Canada’s economy developed and how the land was colonised, littl... more In the ongoing discussion of how Canada’s economy developed and how the land was colonised, little attention has been paid to the role of farm animals. The strategies of Scottish immigrants to rural Upper Canada show the centrality of livestock in subsistence, in the informal economy of barter, exchange and credit, and in off-farm sales. Raising stock—particularly cattle, sheep and pigs—was not an addition to settlers’ sources of income and subsistence, but underpinned most of them. Letters back to Scotland, supplemented by surveys and census data, show that animals’ contribution to clearing forest, raising crops, maintaining soil, providing food and clothing, raising cash or credit, maintaining reciprocal relationships and passing on property was integral to the success of backwoods farmers as they strove first for survival, and then for comfort.
From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic co... more From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic communities with the cooperation and assistance of the people and their priests. The historiography of protestant-Catholic relations is dominated by conflict and that of nineteenth-century Scotland focuses on tension in the industrializing Lowlands. However, the key religious issue for Highland Catholics was the response to expansionist protestantism. The Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS) best epitomizes this movement. Letters from priests and the society's annual reports reveal how long-established rural Catholic communities reacted to missionary activity and how, building on the tense compromises of the eighteenth century, for a few decades evangelicals and Catholics cooperated effectively. The ESSGS learned to involve local priests, provide sympathetic teachers and modify the curriculum. Catholics drew on their experience as a disempowered minority by resisting passively rather than actively and by using the society's schools on their own terms. Many Catholic parents and clergy developed a modus vivendi with evangelicals through their common interest in educating children. The evidence of northwest Scotland demonstrates how a minority faith group and missionaries negotiated a satisfactory coexistence in a period of energetic evangelical activity across the British world.
History Scotland (Jan/Feb 2016), pp 42-45., May 2015
Innes Review, Apr 2014
There is a delightful anticipation the first time one eases a document from its plastic sheet or ... more There is a delightful anticipation the first time one eases a document from its plastic sheet or coaxes open a musty volume: the catalogue has given a hint, but it really could contain anything. It can also be both fascinating and frustrating when one recognises that the information which an item contains could be very important for a fellow researcher, but is tangential to one's own work. One might read it out of curiosity, or take a few notes, before being obliged by the constraints of time to leave it aside and refocus on the research topic in hand. Such experiences can be a little unsettling, since essential evidence for one's own research might be hidden within a source whose title gives away no indication of its usefulness. For students of a subject like the Jacobites or the Clearances this is not a serious problem, since a wealth of sources is a mere 'request' away in major and minor repositories across Scotland and abroad. For those who wish to analyse less tumultuous subjects, the clues secreted in documents that are not obviously related to the topic in hand can be critical. With the notable exception of Alasdair Roberts, the paucity of researchers examining the nineteenth-century Catholic Highlands suggests that sources are an issue. The purpose of this present research note is to encourage Catholic historians to read Protestant sources against the grain in order to reassess the changing lives of Gaelicspeaking Roman Catholics. One such set of sources is the reports produced by Protestant educational organisations. These often include inspectors' accounts, the letters of teachers and the petitions of local inhabitants. Although Protestant, such societies were active in regions populated by Catholics. One such body, the Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS), was founded in 1811. Most of their voluminous reports can be found in Edinburgh's National Library of Scotland, although there are some in the Special Collections of Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Guelph University Libraries. Examining them for data about areas such as Barra, South Uist, Moidart, Knoydart and Strathglass has exposed a wealth of material. Naturally the reports discuss educational and religious 4 RITCHIE: Page 2 of 27 matters among Highland Catholics, but they also speak to how priests and people interacted; how different faith communities negotiated with each other; and about the social and economic lives of ordinary people. What follows will therefore focus on the material produced and collated by the ESSGS, in order to demonstrate the research possibilities of such records. (Detailed work on the papers of other Protestant educational and missionary societies is likely to be equally productive.) I shall introduce the ESSGS and discuss how historians can approach the annual reports. I shall also give a sample of the letters sent from predominantly Catholic parts of the Highlands and Islands, illustrating the nature of the material and suggesting possibilities for further research. Most of the transcribed extracts have been selected from the 1810s, 1820s, and 1830s, when the annual reports were at their fullest. In addition, this a significant period for historians of Highland Catholicism in three ways: it covers Catholic emancipation, the rise of Evangelical Presbyterianism in the north west, and the Clearances. The final section shows how such determinedly Protestant sources can be used by Catholic historians. At the most basic level they can provide new information. A case-study of the Small Isles shows how they can complement and question the sources most commonly used. A second case-study, of the central Highlands, demonstrates how they can provide new insights into how Catholic families and communities interacted with the religious and philanthropic agencies who intended to modify their culture. Despite the increasing poverty and political powerlessness of the sub-tenant classes, reading these sources against the grain shows how ordinary Catholic Highlanders exercised considerable agency in education and in religion.
Jodi Campbell, Elizabeth Ewan and Heather Parker (eds) The Shaping of Scottish Identities: Family, Nation, and the Worlds Beyond, 2011
History Scotland, Jan 2014
History Scotland, Mar 2014
Published in History Scotland
This blog is dedicated to exploring the history and archaeology of Dornoch and its neighbouring p... more This blog is dedicated to exploring the history and archaeology of Dornoch and its neighbouring parishes. It is a collaboration between Historylinks museum and the Centre for History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, co-ordinated by Elizabeth Ritchie. Posts are written either by Elizabeth or by guest contributors. We do not claim to be all-knowing about the history of the area, so readers are invited to make a comment, a correction, or additional points in the comments section. We welcome discussion as we all explore the past in this region. In the blog we discuss artefacts and documents stored by the museum; museum activities; the history and archaeology that is out and about in the district; and history-related events happening in the area. We are interested in every time period and in people, places and things within a twenty five mile radius of Dornoch, which incorporates south east Sutherland and north east Ross-shire. Come join us as we delve beneath the surface to explore how people used to live in this corner of Scotland’s Highlands and how the place has changed!
https://historylinksdornoch.wordpress.com/
Thoughts on the shaping and expression of Scottish and British masculine identities through the o... more Thoughts on the shaping and expression of Scottish and British masculine identities through the outdoors in the 1930s.
I was invited to write a post for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland blog. I chose to focus on ... more I was invited to write a post for the Statistical Accounts of Scotland blog. I chose to focus on what we could glean about women's work from a case study of the Old Statistical Accounts of east Sutherland's parishes. http://statacc.blogs.edina.ac.uk/
Education in the early nineteenth-century Highlands was mainly provided by church-based organisat... more Education in the early nineteenth-century Highlands was mainly provided by church-based organisations: the parish schools, the SSPCK, the Gaelic Schools Society and the General Assembly Schools. In all but one of these, three or four boys attended school for every girl. Crofters clearly valued education for boys rather than for girls and this suggests that their motivation for using these schools was to most efficiently improve the economic prospects of family and community. The only schools where there were almost as many girls as boys were those of the Gaelic Society. The Society was founded in 1811 and its aim was evangelistic. They taught basic literacy in Gaelic in order that pupils could read the Bible. The education was accompanied by a strong Evangelical ethos and within a few years the Society operated schools all over the Highlands. In Protestant regions almost as many girls as boys could be found in the Society’s classrooms, but in Catholic regions the proportion of female pupils remained low. This suggests that Catholic parents used Gaelic Schools in the same way they used other schools. In contrast, a high proportion of Protestant parents valued the spiritual content as well as the practical skills of a Gaelic School education so sent their daughters as well as their sons. As a consequence, Protestant girls after 1811 were far more likely to participate in schooling than their Catholic counterparts. The evidence of the Gaelic Schools Society statistics gives new insight into female participation in education as well as crofter attitudes to education and to religion.
With the assistance of Strathnaver Museum, MacKay Country, David Worthington, Malcolm Bangor-Jone... more With the assistance of Strathnaver Museum, MacKay Country, David Worthington, Malcolm Bangor-Jones, Donald MacLeod and Issie MacPhail I organised a conference in Bettyhill, on the north coast of Scotland to commemorate the Strathanver Clearances of 1814 and the birth of the poet Rob Donn in 1714. Over 80 people attended from local communities, universities around the UK and at least 5 countries outside the UK. Lots of fun as well as intellectual stimulation was had by all!
Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 2012
International Review of Scottish Studies
Lizanne Henderson. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740. P... more Lizanne Henderson. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670-1740. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. Pp. 382. ISBN: 978-1-403-99566-7 (HB); ISBN: 978-1-403-99567-4 (PB); ISBN: 978-1-137-31324-9 (EB). €94.99 / €79.99.
Journal of British Studies, 2014
Book Review
Northern Scotland, May 2014
Northern Scotland, May 2013
Scotland and America is a decently priced and handily sized survey of key themes in the relations... more Scotland and America is a decently priced and handily sized survey of key themes in the relationship between Scotland and America in the formative two centuries between 1600 and 1800. Murdoch's first two chapters give a useful overview of the seventeenth, then the eighteenth centuries, before delving into several major themes. The trade in sugar and tobacco which connected Scotland with the southern American colonies and the Caribbean is followed by a chapter on the linked subject of slavery. Murdoch then neatly turns one discussion of racialised relationships into another with an examination of Scots and Native peoples. The final full-length chapter assesses religious linkages and borrowings before Murdoch concludes with a range of thoughts inspired by the 'Scottish invention of America' debate, focusing especially on philosophical debates around American independence.
International Review of Scottish Studies, Jan 1, 2008
International Review of Scottish Studies, 2005
Genealogy, 2020
The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initial... more The perfunctory noting of name, dates, family relationships and a location on gravestones initially suggests that such details are unprofitable sources for evidence of male identity. However the sheer commonplaceness of stating a placename, particularly when it is noticeably associated with men rather than women, and when not all cultures do the same, indicates that it may reveal something of how men thought of themselves and how they felt. Canadian and Australian studies have suggested that recording placenames on a headstone was a marker of Scottish ethnicity, like an image of a thistle. However, in the nineteenth-century Scottish Highlands ethnicity was not a key component of identity. Indications of place, at least in the ‘home’ country, must therefore signify a different element of identity. This article examines headstone inscriptions of men from across the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands of Scotland who died in the nineteenth century. The resulting evidence indicates that place was a significant element of male identity, indicating personal or ancestral connection with a particular location; a regional affiliation; professional success; social status; national and international mobility; an imperial or patriotic mindset; or even geographical dislocation. In short, place was highly significant to nineteenth-century Highland men, and was a key element of their personal identity.
here: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/4/4/97 or click on 'file' above.
Church History, 2016
From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic co... more From the 1810s into the 1830s evangelical missionaries worked among Scottish Highland Catholic communities with the co-operation and assistance of the people and their priests. The historiography of protestant-Catholic relations is dominated by conflict and that of nineteenth-century Scotland focuses on tension in the industrializing Lowlands. However, the key religious issue for Highland Catholics was the response to expansionist protestantism. The Edinburgh Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools (ESSGS) best epitomizes this movement. Letters from priests and the society's annual reports reveal how long-established rural Catholic communities reacted to missionary activity and how, building on the tense compromises of the eighteenth century, for a few decades evangelicals and Catholics co-operated effectively. The ESSGS learned to involve local priests, provide sympathetic teachers and modify the curriculum. Catholics drew on their experience as a disempowered minority by res...
This examination of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd (Gaelic-speaking area) extends beyond protestant i... more This examination of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd (Gaelic-speaking area) extends beyond protestant ideas about the gendered family to how people actually implemented spiritual practices at home. The results complicate earlier conclusions, showing that family worship undermined as well as reinforced the patriarchal family. The challenge to fathers’ authority came less from the influence of mothers than from children and non-family members who, through literacy, became better equipped than fathers for spiritual leadership. Examining family life shows how some Gaels used evangelicalism to reshape their culture while also exposing how others resisted this change.