Britain’s most-watched TV show takes place in a castle built by an opium trader surrounded by destructive non-native pine plantations. This is Scotland without Scots, writes Adam Ramsay - and English people can’t get enough of it.
This romanticisation of Scotland has been going on since Sir Walter Scott, it’s not a new phenomenon. It’s actually fairly apposite that the castle was paid for by the proceeds of empire because Scotland was an enthusiastic participant in the empire with much of Edinburgh and Glasgow being financed by the proceeds of “sugar” (read: the triangular slave trade route).
Unfortunately my fellow Scots can sometimes have a hard time grappling with our historical participation in empire and have a tendency to whitewash it. One of the reasons we had the unification of parliaments was that Scotland bankrupted itself by putting all of its money into an overseas colony which ultimately failed. Hard to see participation in empire as an English corruption if we were already trying to establish our own empire.
This romanticisation of Scotland has been going on since Sir Walter Scott, it’s not a new phenomenon. It’s actually fairly apposite that the castle was paid for by the proceeds of empire because Scotland was an enthusiastic participant in the empire with much of Edinburgh and Glasgow being financed by the proceeds of “sugar” (read: the triangular slave trade route).
Unfortunately my fellow Scots can sometimes have a hard time grappling with our historical participation in empire and have a tendency to whitewash it. One of the reasons we had the unification of parliaments was that Scotland bankrupted itself by putting all of its money into an overseas colony which ultimately failed. Hard to see participation in empire as an English corruption if we were already trying to establish our own empire.