This page examines the views expressed by different historians about the extent of Scotland’s role in slavery and the slave trade.
“It is unlikely … that Scottish involvement in direct slave trading from Africa to the Americas was of any great significance”
“There was full and enthusiastic Scottish engagement at every level of the trade, even if direct trading from Scottish ports was miniscule”
“In [the Caribbean] islands the Scottish connection with slavery was direct, unambiguous and immediate”
T.M. Devine, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s global diaspora, 1750-2010
“Scots were drawn to the Caribbean in disproportionately high numbers … especially after 1763”
Douglas Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World 1750-1820
“documentary evidence survives to suggest that men in smaller towns like Dumfries and Kirkcudbright were occasionally involved in the trade and, more aggressively, transplanted Scots in England were heavily engaged’
David Hancock, Scots in the slave trade
“The influence of Scots in the business of slavery goes far beyond the boundaries of Glasgow. They were involved in the major Atlantic ports of Liverpool, Bristol and especially London”
Stephen Mullen, It Wisnae Us: the truth about Glasgow and slavery
“Many doctors trained in Scotland’s universities worked as surgeons on slave ships, or on plantations. Their presence ensured the continuity of slavery. Young Scots went in large numbers to the Caribbean to work as overseers of enslaved labour.”
Professor Diana Paton, article in The Scotsman, 21/6/20
“It is to the Scots’ eternal shame that a people who could write so lyrically about freedom in the fourteenth century grew fat in the eighteenth century by buying and selling other mothers’ sons and daughters.”
“While it is correct to say that Scottish ports like Greenock and Port Glasgow never witnessed the loading and unloading of slaves, the great Scots families of eighteenth century commerce were in the slave trade up to their necks.”
Neil Oliver, A History of Scotland
Scotland and Atlantic Slavery 