TOM Devine’s significance in uncovering Scotland’s “slavery past” cannot be overestimated, and scholars everywhere are deeply indebted to his pioneering work.
I only want to add that in Aberdeen, intellectuals were condemning slavery even before 1770. Thomas Gordon, professor of Humanity at King’s College, proposed to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society in 1761: “Whether Slavery be in all cases inconsistent with good government?” His own reply is unequivocal: “[S]lavery is now justly exploded in all European governments. It debases the human nature in the person of the slave, and excites ferocity and a savage turn of mind in the master. The maxim upon which it is founded appears to be unjust.”
READ MORE: Tom Devine accuses Edinburgh and Herriot-Watt University of 'conspiracy of silence'
Poet and philosopher James Beattie, professor at Marischal College in the same city, was lecturing against slavery as early as 1764.
Ruth Perry
Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities
MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
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