THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2024/2025

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of History, Classics and Archaeology : History

Undergraduate Course: Global Scotland: Empire, Encounter, Enslavement, 1650-1850 (HIST10498)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits40 ECTS Credits20
SummaryIn this course, students will examine a changing Scotland in a changing global context. It will connect histories of Jacobitism, Enlightenment, commercial and industrial development with European imperial trade and expansion, slavery, and settler colonialism.
Course description This course examines Scotland's past from a global perspective at the end of the early modern era. We will investigate the impact on Scotland of the growth of European empires, transatlantic slavery, and settler colonialism, and Scotland's contribution to these. Along with analysis of primary sources and engagement in key historiographical debates, students will have the opportunity to examine and imagine the refiguring of public representations of this past.

Students will develop in-depth knowledge of topics such as engagement in the East India trade and economic growth, and Scottish migration patterns. Simultaneously, it will explore Scotland's impact on colonised peoples, including Scots participation in the trade and forced labour of enslaved people of African descent, settler colonial violence against, and encounters with, First Nations in the Pacific and Atlantic worlds, and Scottish missionary activity in Africa and India. We will address discomforting histories including imperial violence and Scottish medical knowledge; engage in debates such as the position of Highlanders as colonised and colonisers; and will consider emerging knowledge of the presence of people of colour in Scotland.

Content note: The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: racial violence, sexual violence, attempted genocide, and state violence. While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.

Students should only be enrolled on this course with approval from the History Honours Programme Administrator.
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  0
Course Start Full Year
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 400 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 40, Feedback/Feedforward Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 350 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Coursework:
1,500 word book review (15%)
3,500 word historiography essay (30%)
1,500 word short written assignment (15%)
5,500 word research essay (40%)
Feedback Students will receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser during their published office hours for this course or by appointment.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Critically reflect on Scotland's imperial and colonial past
  2. Understand and integrate Scottish, enslaved, and First Nations histories of empire
  3. Formulate analyses of historical sources that address their character and context
  4. Design and deliver an independent research essay
  5. Summarise and communicate complex ideas in academic and public-facing writing with clarity, fluency, and coherence
Reading List
Colin Calloway, White People, Indians and Highlanders (OUP, 2008)

Tom Devine ed., Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection (Edinburgh UP, 2015)

Alexia Grosjean and Steve Murdoch eds., Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2005)

Shino Konishi, The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (Routledge 2012)

Andrew Mackillop, Human Capital and Empire: Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British Imperialism in Asia, c.1690-c.1820 (Manchester University Press, 2021)

Jennifer L. Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic (Duke UP, 2021)

Graeme Morton and David A Wilson eds., Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia (MQUP, 2013)

Stephen Mullen. Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775-1838 (University of London Press, 2022)

Murray Pittock, Scotland: The Global History: 1603 to the Present (Yale University Press, 2022)

Gregory D. Smithers, The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity (Yale University Press, 2016)

M. P. K. Sorrenson, Ko Te Whenua Te Utu = Land Is the Price: Essays on Maori History, Land and Politics (Auckland University Press, 2014)

Anna Suranyi, Indentured Servitude: Unfree Labour and Citizenship in the British Colonies (MQUP, 2021)
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills An ability to ethically integrate local and global perspectives on Scotland's past

A critical and reflective approach to legacies of the British and European empires

Skills in research and enquiry within and outwith University contexts, i.e. academic and public history
KeywordsNot entered
Contacts
Course organiserDr Rosi Carr
Tel: (0131 6)50 3758
Email: Rosalind.Carr@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Annabel Samson
Tel: (0131 6)50 3783
Email: Annabel.Stobie@ed.ac.uk
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