WITH all due respect to historians, especially Michael Fry and Sir Tom Devine, whose contributions to the Henry Dundas debate are in The National, they sometimes give the impression that they “own” the past. Their efforts sometimes to “corner” history seem to forbid interpretations of past events and personages that disagree with theirs.
There is a lot of information in the public domain about most, if not all, prominent personages of the past, and the modern internet means of accessing this information has likely rendered the profession of the historian less exclusive. Thus I found myself doing some electronic research into the life of Henry Dundas, and while my study of him was not of a timespan that a self-respecting professional historian might think deserving of the word “research”, I do think I emerged with a respectable opinion regarding the man.
Because, let us be clear, history is more than research. It is also opinion, perception, interpretation, and akin to a judge in a high court case having a verdict to deliver on people and events – after, of course, due consideration. The evidence presented before him in court is what amounts to research in the same way it does for historians.
I found in the case of Henry Dundas the complexities that can only come from someone who was pivotally engaged in complex matters – matters of state and more mundane domestic matters.
On the topic of slavery abolition there is evidence to back both arguments as to him opposing and supporting this cruel trade. As a
sort of mouthpiece for the sugar industry, Dundas was at best
against a quick ending to slavery, and yet by sharp contrast his legal counsel representation on behalf of Joseph Knight – who took his “owner” John Wedderburn, of Perth, to court in order to obtain his freedom – indicated the presence in the character of Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland, of what is known as the Caledonian Antisyzygy.
This psyche peculiarity, which is seen as common in the character of Scots, is a fusion of contrary viewpoints in an individual’s outlook on the world.
That this features in the happenings and experiences that Dundas was exposed to in the course of his life is one significant impression I had in my brief research of him. Maybe the historian is not the professional best suited to investigate such a personage. Maybe a psychologist would provide more convincing insights.
But anyway, Messrs Devine and Fry redeem their scholarly credentials in my mind by taking their historical backgrounds to their championship of Scotland’s independence. The brief sally I made by internet suggested to me that Henry Dundas was not of this redemptive patriotic ilk.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
I’D just like to say a couple of things, if I may, in response to Michael Fry’s hagiographic piece on his fellow Tory Henry Dundas (Here’s the real truth on Henry Dundas and whether he ‘prolonged’ slavery, June 16).
Firstly, “the UK was still the first country to abolish the slave trade” only because abolitionists tricked the Tories into leaving the House of Commons before the vital vote to go to the Derby in support of the King, royalty worship then as now being one thing (patriotism being the other) the Tories use to appeal to the whole community, whose needs their market system can never cater for.
Lucky for the King he wasn’t Charles I, who ran fatally foul of the same money men, who couldn’t use him the same way.
Second, the “UK” is not a country, it is an English empire which is an increasingly rank offence to the moral standards of the modern world.
Third, Dundas was a rigid champion and advocate of the British imperialism that normalised and exploited slavery on a global scale, kept generations of rightless Highlanders in terror of the whims of their landowning British masters, to whom “English rights of property” was all righteousness, and starved a million similarly rightless Irish people, among many others, to death.
The threat of losing the use of land, their only source of living, drove thousands into unwilling, expendable slavery in the British Army.
Finally, former slave owners were paid millions in today’s money in “compensation” for the loss of their slaves. The former slaves got nothing. Where was Saint Henry?
Ian McQueen
Dumfries
THAT pillar in Saint Andrew Square, Edinburgh, should have a representation of Saint Andrew on it, or perhaps just a Saint Andrew’s Cross (Saltire). The statue of Henry Dundas, about whom many folk in today’s Scotland know little, if anything, could be retired, possibly to a redundant statue park on top of Calton Hill, where anyone interested could visit it. Such retired statues should be accompanied by a board or plaque giving the name and dates and brief information concerning the person commemorated.
It’s time there was more Scottish history in schools and statues of famous Scots – including such as Cunningham Grahame, 1820 martyrs or Keir Hardie etc – in public places.
David Stevenson
Edinburgh
ON page 13, of The National on Wednesday, you carried a piece celebrating the critical success of “Gaisgich Oga an Darna Cogaidh” in winning an award in its category at the Prix Jeunesse TV festival.
Even to someone like me with very little Gaelic – I can trade quotes but not hold a conversation – the translation “Kids of Courage” seems very free indeed, more a descriptive subtitle than a translation, which I would give as “Young Warriors of the Second War”.
David Rowe
Beith
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