New map charts ‘surprising’ links between Inverness and slave trade
● Historian finds far more extensive connections than he had anticipated
Its original infirmary was built on wealth earned through the slave trade, as was its most prestigious school where at one time one in ten of its pupils was born in the Caribbean.
Now the full extent of Inverness’s links to slavery and the slave trade have been charted in a new map and walking tour by historian Dr David Alston, who has for many years researched the Highlanders who made their fortunes in the plantations of the Caribbean and South America and the money that they brought back home.
Dr Alston said the links between Inverness and the slave trade were vast and that hehadoftenbeensurprisedby the extent of the connections.
He said: “The more you look, the more you find. I have often been surprised by what I have found. When I first started looking at this topic I thought that the connections might have been a little local oddity but then the more you learn, the more you realise that these connections run right across society and also right across the Highlands.
“It also shows you the pernicious way that slavery reached out and sucked people in.”
Inverness landmarks on the tour include the old Caledonian Bank, which opened in 1838 under chairman John Ross of Berbice, the son of a Golspie carpenter who went to Berbice in Guyana, South America, where he became a plantation manager and slave owner.
John Ross was later praised for his role in suppressing a slave rising in Berbice in 1814, after which six Africans were hanged and beheaded. In 1834, he received £10,000 compensation for the freedom of his slaves.
Inverness Royal Academy is on the route, given money to build the school came from a number of local merchants and slave owners.
In 1804, almost one in every ten pupils at the school was from the Caribbean, including those who were born to Scots and “free coloured” women, Dr Alston said.
The High Kirk of Inverness offers another link to the slave trade. Here in 1812, a former enslaved African known as Black John was baptised as an adult. A slave in Berbice, he was brought to the Highlands by his master, James Baillie Fraser of Reelig.
Money earned from the slave trade also helped to fund the building of the old Royal Northern Infirmary, which opened in 1802.
Now an office of the University of the Highlands and Islands, a plaque here remains one of the few acknowledgements of the use of slavery profits and possibly the only one written in Gaelic.
“The more you learn, the more you realise that these connections run right across society and also right across the Highlands”
DR DAVID ALSTON