Here, at Carbeth, we live in a landscape underwritten by many rich and complex human stories. Neolithic people lived and travelled through Carbeth many thousand of years ago and, since these early settlers, this landscape has many stories of passage to tell, from seventeenth-century cattle drovers, to nineteenth-century railway navvies, to the walkers on today’s West Highland Way.
Carbeth is also a landscape that has witnessed fierce conflicts over property: it’s a place where individuals and collectives, private wealth and communal models of land ownership, have found themselves in direct dispute.
I often reflect upon the human stories of Carbeth as I walk around this landscape. But until a couple of years ago, when I found myself poking around UCL’s legacies of slave ownership database I hadn’t thought too much about the provenance of so much of the wealth that once bought and owned Carbeth. I had not thought, in short, about how the story of the peaceful and beautiful landscape in which I enjoyed living was bound up with another story: a story of brutal exploitation and oppression on the one hand and immense private gain on the other. For this landscape that looks so Scottish is, in fact, also Caribbean. Its quiet white-painted properties, its familiar nineteenth-century “improvements,” the very shape of the land itself — all of these were developed through the profits of slave labour.
The land my home now sits on, the very stones with which my house was built, were, in the nineteenth century, owned by members of what’s been dubbed Glasgow’s “sugar aristocracy”: the wealthy merchants who made their fortunes from the human bodies they owned, and the commodities they produced, on their West Indian estates. These men and their families amassed enormous wealth from the profits of slave labour and, following the abolition of slavery in 1833, also received huge compensation sums from the British Government for the commercial losses they sustained.
How did the story of slavery and sugar become imbricated with this landscape?
The name “Carbeth” was first listed in records of this area in the late seventeenth century and, by 1754, it is named as a settlement on Roy’s miltary survey of Scotland. On other eighteenth-century maps, just north of Carbeth loch, the “clachan” and “Townfoot” of Carbeth are listed – a small cluster of fairly modest properties set in largely undeveloped land.
(Ordnance Survey map of Carbeth, 1864)
During the eighteenth century, many Glasgow merchants amassed huge fortunes from the profits of Caribbean slavery, and by the early decades of the nineteenth, had begun to ostentatiously display their wealth in the large country houses and estates they purchased in the surrounding landscape, particularly to the city’s west and north. Just after 1800, the 286 acre estate of Carbeth was purchased by one such sugar merchant — John Guthrie, a key figure in Grenada’s eighteenth-century plantocracy elite and a member of the Smith family of Glasgow’s Jordanhill who, as Stephen Mullen puts it: “were amongst the most successful West India families in the late eighteenth century, and succeeded in converting capital derived from Caribbean slavery into land in the west of Scotland.” Having converted his slavery profits into land, Guthrie set about “improving” his new property.
Guthrie enjoyed developing Carbeth. He began “to form the garden, ornamental water, and pleasure grounds which now add so much to the beauty of the place.” Additional “improvements” included building stables, housing and offices for estate staff, and a dam and watermill (where our house is now situated). The saw mill processed lumber from the surrounding woods, and during this period, Guthrie also developed the Cuilt road – which now runs past the top of our garden, connecting the estate with Blanefield to the east and Stockiemuir to the west. The new road must have helped with the transport of processed lumber, as well as improving general access to Carbeth.
Guthrie died in 1834, and his cousin, William Smith, inherited his country estate. Smith had been Lord Provost of Glasgow in 1822-4 and, like his cousin, had made a huge fortune from the combined profits of sugar and slave labour. Guthrie co-owned Jordanhill sugar plantation in Trinidad, the Wotten Waven estate in Dominica and held commercial interests in the estate of Bellaire in St Vincent. In 1833, when Britain abolished slavery, there were 154 enslaved people on Smith’s Jordanhill plantation and 135 at Bellaire. The British Government awarded the merchant claimants of these two estates £7649 8s 0d and £3697 10s 11d respectively under its compensation programme following slavery’s abolition- the total value of which (in today’s money) amounts to over a million pounds.
With the vast sum he received from the British government, Smith decided to improve his cousin’s country estate. In 1835, “from plans furnished by the late John Baird” Smith “made a considerable addition to the house.”
Smith named his country house “Carbeth Guthrie”, and that’s the name the large and handsome property he built retains today.
(Carbeth Guthrie, with the steading of Easter Carbeth – where we live, above the loch, in the distance)
In 1878, in The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry, Carbeth was described thus:
“This picturesque little estate is in the parish of Strathblane and county of Stirling, close to the Allander burn, which here separates Stirlingshire from Dumbartonshire. It is situated in the upper or hill part of the parish, and the views, from many parts of it, of the beautiful Valley of the Blane and the Highland hills, are particularly fine.”
These “fine views” are still apparent, but what do we, who live here, really see when we look at this landscape? Do we see how these peaceful places are underwritten by a history of violence and brutality? Do we see oppression and inequality, the grotesque exploitation of one race while another amassed huge wealth? The landscape of Carbeth contains many human stories but – and I have felt this especially over the past few days – it is crucial that we acknowledge this story in particular. For this distinctively Scottish story can only be thought of as “hidden” or “invisible” because many Scots would rather not look at it, but it too is written in this landscape, and it is part of who we are. The story of Glasgow sugar and Caribbean slavery, the horrific legacy of racist, racial oppression, underwrites the quietness, the ease and comfort, the fine views that are enjoyed by myself, by Tom, and by our friends and neighbours. In our ownership of property here, at Carbeth, it is also important that we own our knowledge of its story.
The definitive work on this subject is that of Stephen Mullen – and I’m looking forward to his forthcoming book, Glasgow’s Sugar Aristocracies in the British Atlantic World
Trying to find this excellent article again I came across references to a Buchanan, First Laird of Carbeth (or Garbeth) of 1450-96, and a Thomas Buchanan, 3rd Laird – so the name would appear to go back to the fifteenth century at least. Thanks very much for the fascinating research.
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Thank you very much. A very important history that demonstrates the hidden horrors that greedy humans are capable of. If only…….
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I was so impacted by this post when I first read your story of Carbeth six months ago. Then, today, I read this article from the Smithsonian explaining how Scottish slave profits bought some of the land which was cleared of Scottish tenants for sheep farming in the mid-1800s, among them some of my ancestors. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-research-investigates-how-enslavement-profits-changed-landscape-scottish-highlands-180976311
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this is really important (and very welcome) research – which will hopefully increase understanding of the symbiotic relationship between Scottish colonialism and the clearances
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Thank you for raising this awareness.
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Thank you for this post – very informative. I remember seeing a TV history programme that said the ‘reparations’ to the slave owners took something like 150 years to be repaid as government debt. Truly astounding. Would love to know more of this history – my ancestry is mainly Scottish and I’d like to know more of the truth. Thank you again.
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Thanks for the information
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I think about these issues rather a lot (due to the diaspora/hybridity/postcolonial position of my PhD), and recently re-read Edward Said’s essay on Jane Austin and Mansfield Park in “Culture & Imperialism”. It’s important to think of where the wealth came from, and at whose expense. It’s amazing how much we take for granted, especially when legacies of colonialism become innocently fixed in popular parlance – ‘Demerara sugar’ or ‘cane sugar’ as baking ingredients for example, which quite obviously show the method of their production enmeshed in British colonial history. I recently sent this article to my Guyanese family too. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/16/scotland-guyana-past-abolitionists-slavery-caribbean.
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Thank you for this, though there is truly no comfort in knowing that the stain of slavery lies on all lands, and infects all histories, no matter how lovely the landscape.
Today my country is literally burning because of our latest egregious acts of white police violence on black citizens. Its first peoples suffer the ravages of COVID 19 in the poverty of the reservations we exiled them to, and the poor and dispossessed suffer in our cities across the country. A goodly portion of us have decided they don’t care that a deadly virus rages, threatening the old and the poor and belligerently flout safety protocols as “un-American”. There is no leadership, and indeed, the pathetic human we elected president and those who keep him in power do everything they can to use tragedy to hide their failures and crimes. My children are terrified for the world they are inheriting, and I am too.
Do we ever learn from the crimes of our past? Are we capable of holding the natural beauty of our planet and the human depravity that lies on top in our minds to see the long term costs and debts of our actions? I pray to whatever is good that we are.
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LOL! I just realized my “white” ancestor is Scots/Irish! He migrated from Scotland to Ireland and stayed long enough to buy a ticket to America.
The red and blond hair, and pale skin that presents itself to this day has caused trouble for many mothers in our family. My own father wondered about our sister because of the patch of stark white hair that labeled her different. Was a good thing she had his features because her skin was so light.
The story told is, the Scotsman bought a slave woman, married her, and the Armstrong name became a force to be reckoned with in our part of Texas.
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Stunningly beautiful scenery. One day maybe I will get back to Scotland and be able to witness this for myself
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Kate, I truly appreciate your bringing this history of Carbeth to light. who knew? And a very appropriate post given all the horror that is happening right now because of race inequality. thank you.
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Yes, it isn’t until we question and really look that we find a deeper, often troubling history to where we live. I live on a small Island in Moreton Bay in Queensland Australia. The indigenous people of this area were somehow overlooked and not sent onto the missions but they were still exploited. Their descendants tell stories of the massacre of other tribes by the British Soldiers and how the slaves taken from the Pacific Islands to work on the sugar plantations were held on the island next to our. If you dig deep you can find some of this information in the achieves but it is living history to them. There land and culture was stolen, along with their children. I double there weill ever be any kind of compensation.
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Thank you for yet another thought provoking post. I think all nations have an uncomfortable past depending on the lens through which you view it. Some are not so very much in the past. Some within living memory.
Am currently reading a fascinating book by Alice Procter called “The Whole Picture” about the colonial story of some items in our museums, why we need to acknowledge them and discuss their source, provenance, and curation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-14/art-tour-guide-galleries-museums-racism-colonialism-exclusion/12241850
Here in Australia (portrayed by some to be “the lucky country”) our original inhabitants first were treated like livestock to be moved and then like indentured slaves at the whim of the colonials who moved onto their lands. Unsurprisingly when they resisted or rebelled, massacres took place. These complex and diverse societies were forced either into hiding or broken up and sent to various “missions” in areas decided by people whose authority was great but motives questionable by today’s societal norms. These massacres are only being recognised and properly researched in recent times. Children were forcibly separated from families and other siblings. This government policy that continued until the 1970s created what became to be known in the 1980s as “The Stolen Generation”. The First Nation Peoples only received the right to vote in the 1960s and their life expectancy is still much poorer than others. Pacific Islanders were “black-birded” to a form of slavery in our sugar industry and when this practice came to an end, some were returned but not necessarily to the correct island nation or forced into shanties out of sight of the town. The White Australia policy – a form of apartheid – only started to be dismantled in the 1970s.
This recent history still effects our society through intergenerational racism, trauma and unconscious bias that we are now only starting to understand. Posts such as yours encourages us to look a little further into the history of the land on which we occupy with an open mind.
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Reinforces my belief that very few obscenely wealthy people/families acquire that wealth without exploiting others. Totally undermines the individualistic rhetoric that such wealth is earned and that those who possess it are entitled to it.
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Good article! Slavery is embedded in many cultures, but especially around the British Empire and its Colonies. Canada has its own history of slavery too. The USA, of course we all know that one. I live in a small town where many of the settler descendants have a very negative And racist attitude toward the First Nations People, whose land we live on. There is very little recognition of the people and how the land was wrested from them. There are two Reserves on this land and there is a strong First Nations presence, but it is difficult to get others to acknowledge how their ancestors obtained this land we “own” now. I do believe the first step is recognition of how wealth and privilege was obtained, and to re-learn the true history of a place and bring it forward into current day living. It is the hiding and denial of what really happened that causes such a huge divide.
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Thank you for this informative and food for thought giving blog post, Kate, and the same goes for the comments.
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Thank you for this, wish more people could read it. we are indeed ‘broken’ here. I am heartbroken re what is happening.
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A thought-provoking post, especially when the after-effects of slavery are so prominent in the US at the moment. And as someone has already pointed out, we have to acknowledge modern-day slavery in the clothing industry. We should all buy #fairtrade!
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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Nowdays it’s the huge corporations and their shareholders who amass enormous wealth from the profits of slave labour.
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The tv programme on BBC 2 ca!led “A place through time”. this last week was saying about the large houses owed by sea captains were built from the
profits of slave trading.I think it was in Bristol.
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yes – in Bristol – it was an excellent programme
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Thank you Kate, for your forthright and timely reminder that it is never too late to share a difficult truth.
I appreciate all your work…your thoughtful writing , your creative designs, and your quest for justice in the wide ranging activities of everyday life. Your words and actions inspire more good than than you can imagine. Each person touched by your in depth works, links with you to illuminate the world around them…to pay it forward.
“It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darknes”
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Before we chastise our ancestors too much, remember just how intertwined our own textile, clothing, and fashion industry is with modern slavery. We all may not profit to the tune of a Carbeth Guthrie, but the £3 hand-embroidered t-shirt worn for a summer and discarded is probably the result of similar levels of suffering on the part of the children who produced them.
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A point with which I totally agree
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Another interesting piece of Carbeth’s history is that of Carbeth Huts. Where a (then) altruistic landowner provided an escape from the city, the suffering of war, and a place in history that endures today.
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yes, I’ve linked to the huts and hutting in this post, and written about Carbeth huts & the outdoor movement in our ‘West Highland Way’ book
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Thank you for this important and timely post.
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A really well-written post. I was thinking about this issue just the other day in response to someone who claimed that Britain and America are qualitatively different countries because “Britain didn’t have slavery” – as I disabused the writer, I wondered why it is that that is a story that is rarely mentioned and rarely claimed. And here on the other side of the world, I live in a house that is also the product in part of forced labour, on land that was stolen via genocide, but never ceded. These long histories never go away.
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An additional tragedy is the legacy slave labor leaves today. I am a new resident of Alabama. I live in the “Black Belt” a term used to describe the fertile middle of Alabama. It’s rich soil made it desirable for plantations and slavery. There are signs showing the location of plantations and antebellum homes are often romanticized and reborn as wedding venues. What we see here are the poorest of black Americans with high unemployment, poor schools, chronic health conditions, and limited access to health care that has led to disproportionately high death rates due to Covid 19. It’s going to take a lot of work here to “Make America Great Again.”
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I find myself thinking very frequently about the severe inequalities of health and education your part of the world, Beth, and recent avoidable deaths. Lines seem to be drawn in a particularly stark way right now.
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When has America truly been great for every American and not just the majority? I long for the day when we will no longer hear how this country was built by immigrants. My ancestors did not migrate here but their labor definitely built this country. So did the Chinese, to name another overlooked group.
My DNA comes from Africa, is mixed with Native, Eastern Indian and European. I deal with the guilt that came from privilege by way of Anglo ancestry although my grandfather was almost lynched by whites. He was saved when a white “cousin” intervened. He told them to “Stop! That’s Vox.” Grandpa lived to tell the tale.
Every “race” has been enslaved at one time or another. Africans were the only ones who ticked all the boxes for “a good slave.”
When will we finally make America great?
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There slowly came an end to it, when the sugar beet was discovered. A sort of public-private partnership started in Berlin, when Industry built a research institute to find out how to best produce sugar from these beets. The building ist still there and belongs to Berlin Technical University, while from what they found in the attic and cellars, they build a museum, you can still visit as part of the Technical Museum:
https://technikmuseum.berlin/en/exhibitions/permanent-exhibition/sugar/
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Actually, the sugar beet was never „discovered“ 😉 It is the result of selection and other breeding methods, starting with a regional strain of a fodder beet.
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That is truely more correct. Of course they started with something they had found/discovered some sugar in.
One aim was to make sugar cheaper by producing it in Europe and become independant of sugar cane.
And it was a research project that tried to breed a root with a higher sugar content as well as finding an effective industrial process to get it out. And is was one of the first academic-industrial partnerships. Though this is probably neither the correct term, considering the time it all started.
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Thank your this timely and important post. With so much pain happening now, we must remember, learn, stop acting and reacting out of ignorance and fear. We are so broken…
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Thank you for this post on such an important subject. All too often we are unaware of or reluctant to acknowledge the connections between the past and our present time.
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I personally think we should educate ourselves constantly, talk open about the past – whatever it is that has stained it – and ensure we are learning from it and acting (!!!) like it. Not bragging, just DOING.
Silence is acceptance of the status quo and makes you just as guilty – silence doesn’t mean just words to me, because deeds speak louder than words.
I still have so much to learn and that entry in your blog just made me aware that I didn’t know of Scotlands envolvement in the slavery busines. It shouldn’t be a surprise – is was the freaking time back then, Scotland as part of Great Britian was big in local and overseas exploitation – but it is an eye opener when visiting thise places. I wish – and maybe that’s an idea – that tourist places would include this part of the history clearly into their little booklets and make it clearly part of their websites and their stories about a place, a town, a couny…its history.
So many thoughts and so much still to do. And even with social distancing we can still do something.
Thank you!
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I applaud your timely writing – it is only in unveiling the truth can we begin to repair and heal this human wrong. I am certain that most do not know on whose backs this incredible land had come to be perfected. Thank you so much for this beautiful and clear account of the beauty and its costs. And may the healing begin for real everywhere in the world as everywhere this same story can be told. May this and other unveilings bring hope for true, lasting change.
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I found it curious that the slaveowners were paid reparations when the slaves were so deserving of it. We have that question in the US right now. It underlies our current racial unrest. I suppose most of the descendants of the slaves of the Scots were far away in the Caribbean whereas ours live among us.
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Indeed. But it is only relatively recently we have – on both sides of the Atlantic – started thinking about the long-overdue issue of slavery reparations from the opposite direction
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My in-laws – both now deceased – were part of that discussion – the family is still waiting for compensation of the goods that a Western government has stolen from their families. My father-in-law was okay to discuss the past, my mother-in-law too traumatized still – I leave the countries involved unnamed as the issue is still not openly discussed and addressed, only words, but no further steps. You don’t hear in the the press, you will only hear it from elderly familiy members – it is a crying shame.
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