I have been intending to write about Krisztina Fenyo’s book,
Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, for several years and, in
particular, to focus upon one particular nugget that it contains.
The book, subtitled
Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands and the Clearances During the
Famine Years, 1845-1855, is a scholarly (the book is essentially her
PhD thesis of 1996) but extremely readable account of contemporary
Scottish newspapers’ attitudes to Highlanders and Islanders during
these turbulent and troubled years, attitudes which she categorises
into the trio that gives her book its title.
However, it is a
letter* written by Sir Charles Trevelyan in 1852 upon which I intend
to focus, a letter in which he:
“contemplated with satisfaction...the
prospects of flights of Germans settling here in increasing number –
an orderly, moral, industrious and frugal people, less
foreign to us than the Irish or Scottish Celt, a congenial
element which will readily assimilate with our body politic.”
(Italics as in the quote in the book).
At this time
Trevelyan was Chairman of the London Committee of the Highland and
Island Emigration Society (HIES) which he co-founded with Sir John
McNeill (** for links to previous pieces), publicly voicing the view that emigration benefited the
emigrants themselves and was an economic necessity, but this quote
clearly shows the racism underlying the removal of Gaels from
Scotland. The Gaels weren’t being removed because of overpopulation
but because they were deemed to be the wrong people to inhabit the Highlands and Islands!
Sir Charles
Trevelyan’s ‘day job’ was Assistant Secretary to the Treasury
and, in the climate of hostility to the Gael that Fenyo describes so
brilliantly in her book, it is inconceivable that the attitude he so
boldly elucidated in private wasn’t a core belief underlying his
chairing of the HIES.
To have such a clear
statement of an aim of ethnic-cleansing from such a senior civil
servant in the mid-nineteenth Century is extraordinary but even
today, as attempts are made to right the wrongs of the Clearances and
repair the damage done, particularly in terms of Highlands and Islands depopulation, Gaelic language and culture remain under attack.
I highly recommend reading Contempt, Sympathy and
Romance and will end with these closing words from the book:
“In
the mid-nineteenth Century, the Highland Gaels were viewed in many
ways – from inferior race to picturesque and poetic heroes - but,
with few exceptions, they were never seen as equal, fellow human
beings.”
*Source: National
Records of Scotland: HD4/2 Letterbook of HIES (2)
Trevelyan to
Commissary-General Miller, 30 June 1852
**Sir John McNeill:
