r/Scotland • u/TimesandSundayTimes • 10h ago
The truth about Robert Burns and his connection to the slave trade
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/the-truth-about-robert-burns-and-his-connection-to-the-slave-trade-mnxlrdkrm?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit&utm_content=branded13
u/bbrichards 9h ago
Thank fuck for altruistic people like you lot at the Times. I've always secretly known those dodgy people at the national trust for scotland are evil bastards and out to get us.
Unbiased organisations like news international must be protected at all costs. Praise be to Murdoch.
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u/joolzdev Poblachd na h-Alba 9h ago
Why are these outlets being allowed to flaunt rule 7?
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u/polaires 9h ago
Because the mods don’t care.
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u/joolzdev Poblachd na h-Alba 9h ago
Yet they do care quite a bit about other users following rule 7.
I wonder what makes Murdoch's shite so special?
Care to weigh in u/Synthia_of_Kaztropol, u/StonedPhysicist, u/handmedownthemoon, anyone else?
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u/StonedPhysicist Abolish Westminster Ⓐ☭🌱🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ 4h ago
If I speak, big trouble. But I'm delighted to hear more of this feedback.
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u/Synthia_of_Kaztropol The capital of Scotland is S 6h ago
last year, this one agreed to limit their posting to weekly or less, and to post more obscure articles that people might otherwise not come across.
I've reopened the mod discussion on what should be done with them.
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u/AcanthaceaeCrazy1894 9h ago
Why is a newspaper even posting this shite to r/scotland?
Never seen them report on any of their Royals and their hands in the slave trade.
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u/UnderwaterGun 9h ago
I’ve known since school that poets are evil, I’m sure this paywalled article confirms my biases.
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u/Otocolobus_manul8 8h ago
I don't think the people commenting here have read the article.
Dr. Stephen Mullen has pointed out in previous articles and comments that James Watt had much more substantial connections to the Atlantic slave economy which you never see mentioned. If anything, I would be interesting in seeing what his, and Lamont's research proves in terms of Burns' convictions.
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u/Optimaldeath 9h ago edited 8h ago
Odd to bring this up out of nowhere, they've had plenty of SNP conferences to bother with so the only reason I can think of is because a certain ex-DUP leader had a bad day.
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u/TimesandSundayTimes 10h ago
In the spring of 1786, a struggling 27-year-old Scottish tenant farmer was thinking of taking a job in one of the slave plantations of the Caribbean.
Robert Burns — who went on to become Scotland’s national poet — had got a young woman pregnant out of wedlock and he desperately needed money.
Writing to a supporter, he explained that what he called the “holy beagles, the haughmagandie pack” — the church authorities who prosecuted fornicators — were on his case.
More than a year later Burns was still musing about moving to Jamaica. He told the same well-wisher, Glasgow doctor, travel writer and novelist John Moore, that he knew exactly what cruel duties — and fatal risks — the work entailed.
The bard never did cross the Atlantic but over the past two decades Burns has become the poster boy for Scotland’s disproportionate role in Caribbean slavery.
Heritage bodies have repeatedly linked him to the mass trafficking and exploitation of Africans and their descendants. The National Trust for Scotland, for example, lists his birthplace museum, a cottage near Ayr and popular tourist attraction, as “slavery-connected”.
However, a major new academic investigation has exposed significant flaws in this argument.
The Historian Stephen Mullen and Burns scholar Craig Lamont, both of Glasgow University, have dug into original sources — such as letters and shipping adverts — and cast doubt on the seriousness of the poet’s intention, expressed in one of his best-known verses, to go “owre the sea”.
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u/polaires 9h ago
Awful paper.