Scandal in the Highlands.
A 60-page report was commissioned by the National Trust for Scotland, the body responsible for the protection and promotion of Scottish heritage.
Its title sounds like repentance: "
Facing our past
"!
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On 885 kilometers of coastline,
"the organization owns and maintains a large number of estates, gardens, buildings and collections
" lists Jennifer Melville, project manager.
This report is, she says, the first step towards realizing the
“truth”
about Scotland's slave past.
“This
heritage was created, improved or financed by the suffering of others,
” she explains
.
We can bring these truths to life and address their complex history
”
.
Before justifying the writing of this report: “
Our public demands to know more about this subject.
"
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Among the 48 controversial sites, some are the most touristic in Scotland, like the dizzying Glenfinnan monument.
This tower, 18 meters high, marks the beginning of the Jacobite uprising of 1719. Close to the shores of Loch Shiel and surrounded by mountains, the monument is today disputed, 302 years later, by this famous report.
The latter explains that it was built by Sandy Macdonald, a wealthy businessman who made his fortune in Jamaica, during the height of the slave trade.
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"Focusing on slavery while ignoring its many other flaws exposes the madness of the woke view of history."
Robert Tombs, historian
This work also calls into question the role played by certain influential figures of the time, such as Charles Edward Stuart, the second contender for the Scottish and English crowns. According to this report, it is necessary to go back to 1745, shortly before the battle of Culloden, that the one also nicknamed "
Bonnie Prince Charlie
" will lose, to understand where the "problem" comes from. Indeed, underlines the document of Jennifer Melville, the pretender "
sailed from Nantes - a very busy port in the transatlantic slave trade - to the Hebrides, in the summer of 1745 on a French slave ship
"
.
The latter belonging to "
the wealthy shipowner, slave trader and plantation owner of Irish origin, Antoine Walsh
".
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The bronze statue of the merchant slave Edward Colston was unbolted and then thrown into the water by protesters of the "
Black Lives Matter
" movement on June 7, 2020 in Bristol.
HANDOUT / AFP
This report could cheer up activists in the “Black Lives Matter” movement, who are already very active in Scotland.
And especially in Edinburgh, where the statue of Henry Dundas, a politician who worked to delay the abolition of slavery, was covered in graffiti.
Protests which have also arisen in England with the debarment of the statue of the slave merchant and English patron Edward Colston, in Bristol in the south-west of the country.
"
Focusing on slavery while ignoring its many other flaws exposes the madness of the woke view of history,
" historian Robert Tombs explains, in the column titled "
Why Erase Bonnie Prince Charlie Now?"
And published in
The Telegraph
.
Before continuing: “
It seems to be the only thing that touches modern consciousnesses.
Yet the slave trade was widely viewed as a bad business even then. ”
