UNI RESEARCH REVEALS SINISTER PAST OF PLAIDS
Sunday Mail
Gordon Blackstock
Tartan was used to control slaves and played an important part in the shameful trade, researchers have claimed.
They say Africans kidnapped and forced to work in plantations were ordered to wear specif ic patterns to identify who “owned” them.
Analysts at the Sacred Heart University in Connecticut found British slave owners used the designs to preserve “dominance, maintain order and support the slave trade”.
Assistant Professor David Loranger, of the uni’s fashion marketing department, said tartan was used to make men, women and children feel uncomfortable in their work.
A specif ic law covering its use was introduced just a decade before kilts were banned in Scotland by the Hanoverian government, in an effort to control a Jacobite rebellion.
The South Carolina Negro Act of 1735 allowed slaves to wear: “Negro cloth, duffels, coarse kerseys, osnabrigs, blue linen, check linen, or coarse garlix, or c a l icoe s , che cked cot tons or Scottish plaids.”
The study, published in Clothing and Text i les Research Journal , said: “Scottish Highland dress, which consists of kilts and tartans, has been appropriated, manipulated, and transformed by the British in order to forward political, commercial, and social objectives since the mid-1500s.”
Research also found tartan played a vital role in negotiations between the UK, Africa and the US.
K nown a s The Triangular trade, Indian-made tartan texti les would be bought with British gold before they were taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who were then taken on to the US.
Professor Loranger said: “Tartan’s role in the slave trade is significant.
“We found a lot of documents about a company cal led the Royal African Company, based on an island off the coast from Sierra Leone, who shipped a lot of slaves to the US.
“There are accounts of visitors to the island where they were based finding all the slaves kitted out in tartan.
“Extraordinarily, the island had a golf course and slaves working on it were wearing tartan too.
“The same went for the plantations in the US. The South Carolina Negro Act let slaves only wear thick, uncomfortable fabrics like tartan.
“We think that was a way of control – telling someone they can’t pick what to wear, as a way of control.
“But there was possibly something even more sinister.
“Mak i n g them wear those sort of thick fabrics while doing backbreaking work in hot conditions could make them so tired that they wouldn’t contemplate escaping or complaining at the end of the day.”
Prof Loranger said dressing up slaves in tartan was also done by slave owners “to amuse themselves” and “possibly mark who owned who”.
He added: “We found ‘missing’ posters put up for a slave who had escaped who was described as wearing a tartan bonnet.
“It might well have been used by different plantations to identify who owned who.”