Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900

Can Scotland be considered an English colony? Is its experience and literature comparable to that of overseas postcolonial countries? Or are such comparisons no more than patriotic victimology to mask Scottish complicity in the British Empire and justify nationalism? These questions have been heatedly debated in recent years, in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum on independence and amid a continuing campaign for more autonomy. Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination offers a general introduction to the emerging field of postcolonial Scottish studies, assessing both its potential and limitations in order to promote further interdisciplinary dialogue. Accessible to readers from various backgrounds, the book combines overviews of theoretical, social, and cultural contexts with detailed case studies of literary and nonliterary texts. The main focus is on internal divisions between the Anglophone Lowlands and traditionally Gaelic Highlands, which also play a crucial role in Scottish-English relations.Silke Stroh shows how the image of Scotland’s Gaelic margins changed under the influence of two simultaneous developments: the emergence of the modern nation-state and the rise of overseas colonialism.

Reviews of Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900

Stroh engages with the contested question of whether postcolonial theory can be fruitfully applied to Scottish literary expressions and cultural encounters by outlining the fundamental concepts and applying them to the most fundamental fault-line in Scottish history, that between the Lowlands and Highlands. In revisiting familiar texts, such as Martin Martin s surveys of the Western Isles and Walter Scott sWaverley, and introducing onesless familiar today, she demonstrates convincingly and comprehensibly that the hallmarks of colonial discourse Othering, civilizing missions, internalized stigmatization, and so on abound in the ways in which anglophone authors represented their Gaelic subjects. Michael Newton, author of Warriors of the Word and Seanchaidh na Coille / Memory-Keeper of the Forest"