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This symposium arises from a UKRI-funded research project ‘From Lismore to Barbados: The Gaelic Caribbean travel journal and verse of Dugald MacNicol (1791-1844)’. That project edits a number of Scottish Gaelic literary texts composed in Barbados at the start of the nineteenth century, one of a number of lesser-known items of Irish and Scottish Gaelic cultural production connected with the Caribbean. MacNicol, who spent most of his adult life as a military officer stationed throughout the Caribbean, left a considerable sum of money to his ‘esteemed friend’ Joanna Franklin, a free woman of colour, and their children, upon his death in 1844. He was one of many Gaelic-speaking Scots and Irish employed in colonial service.
Bringing together scholars from the Caribbean, Ireland, Scotland and further afield, this symposium examines the broad notion of a ‘Gaelic’ Caribbean, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. Throughout that period, Gaelic speakers from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands were present in the Caribbean in a variety of guises, as indentured servants at an early period, but also as enslavers and beneficiaries from the worst of European colonialist policies. Over a day and a half, speakers will examine some of the literary and historical entanglements and connections between Scotland and Ireland with the Caribbean.
