The Scottish Highlands and the British Empire during the

1920s and 1930s: a Case Study of Sir Alexander MacEwen

BA (Hons) Scottish History and Politics

2020

Silja Christine Roethinger

15017223

1

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I want to thank my supervisor Dr Jim MacPherson for giving me the

Empire bug in the first place and for his more than sound advice and encouragement

throughout this dissertation process. Thanks for showing interest, for understanding

what I wanted to achieve and for helping me to get there.

My gratefulness also extends to everyone at the Centre for History and my

Politics lecturers at the Moray and Perth colleges – thanks for everything you taught me

during the last years and for your time.

Special praise also goes to the Inverness archive staff for always providing

professional and helpful service – and for being such a cheerful bunch. The same goes

for the staff at Moray College library. There were also many people on the other side of

an email, locally and in Sri Lanka, who freely gave a lot of background information and

general advice; many thanks go to them.

Of the individuals that went out of their way to contribute to this dissertation

special mention goes to Sir Alexander’s grandson Alasdair, to the current owner of

Kessock House and to Adrian Harvey, the curator and director of the Highlander Photo

Archive who provided me with the Paterson portrait of Sir Alexander.

To all hard-working tea pluckers in Sri Lanka and India on the other side of my

‘cuppas’: many thanks for providing me with imperial gallons of my drug of choice.

Last but by far not least I cannot thank my husband Oliver enough for his

unwavering support throughout the, particularly to him, long years of this degree – and

for showing great bravery and amazing cookery/baking/tea-making skills in the eye of

a dissertation-writing wife, particularly during the final stages in ‘lockdown’.

2

Abstract

Set in the inter-war years against the backdrop of economic depression, this case study

on the former Inverness Provost Sir Alexander MacEwen discusses themes related to

his personal circumstances and thought, as well as factors determining the wider socio-

economic situation of the Scottish Highlands within the British Empire. In three

chapters this dissertation investigates: the continuance of personal and economic

involvement in empire and its impact at home through the example of Ceylon tea;

MacEwen’s reforming nationalist-imperialist ideas during a period of renewed popular

imperialism; and Highland development through the lens of the 1938 Glasgow Empire

Exhibition. The study argues that Scotland’s Highland region was still very much at

home with the Empire in the 1920s and 1930s as financial interdependency continued;

empire was still in the spotlight of popular discourse; and Highland development

happened in this imperial context. Individuals like MacEwen and his family members

were, however, largely indifferent to their deep personal imperial entanglements.

3

Contents Page No

Special Notes 4

List of Abbreviations 5

List of Illustrations 6

Introduction 7

Chapter One ‘Palmy Days’ in the Highlands: Alexander MacEwen, Ceylon Tea and the Everydayness of Empire 19

Chapter Two ‘At Hame’ with the Empire: Alexander MacEwen, Nationalist Imperialism and Imperial Reform 35

Chapter Three ‘Re-inspiring Scotsmen’: Alexander MacEwen, Highland Development and the 1938 Empire Exhibition 49

Conclusion 66

Bibliography Primary Sources 71 Secondary Sources 80

4

Special Notes

Throughout this dissertation British colonial terms and place names are utilised to

reflect contemporary usage and maintain consistency with primary sources; for example

by using Ceylon instead of Sri Lanka, and Calcutta as opposed to Kolkata. Today’s

names are on occasion used when referring to the present.

The quality of the photo in Figure 1.4 is unsatisfactory. The author would have

preferred to return to the Black Isle to take a better one (and to add a picture of the actual

memorial underneath, which is difficult due to the wrought iron fence), but this trip was

not possible due to the Coronavirus-induced lockdown. As the photo powerfully

visualises the Black Isle’s imperial links it was used despite that.

5

List of Abbreviations

EMB Empire Marketing Board

HC Highlands Committee (Glasgow 1938)

HCA Highland Council Archives

HCT History of Ceylon Tea (website)

HES Historic Environment Scotland

HIDB Highlands and Islands Development Board

Highlands and Highlanders The Highlands and the Highlanders

HRA Highland Reconstruction Association

LBS Legacies of British Slave-ownership

NA National Archives, Kew

NLS National Library of Scotland

NRS National Records of Scotland

ONDB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

PCAM Private Collection Alasdair MacEwen

‘Rebirth’ ‘Rebirth or Absorption’

SHPA Scottish Highlander Photo Archive

SNP Scottish National Party

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List of Illustrations Page No

Introduction

Figure 0.1 Bust of Sir Alexander MacEwen 9

Figure 0.2 Fyrish Monument 10

Chapter One

Figure 1.1 Lethington 21

Figure 1.2 ‘INVERNESS’ lettering 22

Figure 1.3 Shop window, Lipton’s Groceries 24

Figure 1.4 Stone ornament above the Mackenzie memorial 26

Figure 1.5 Greeting Card of Rosehaugh House 26

Figure 1.6 Highland Transport Company advert 31

Figure 1.7 Kessock House 32

Figure 1.8 MacEwen’s grave 33

Chapter Two

Figure 2.1 Stroll through An Clachan 37

Figure 2.2 ‘Highways of Empire’ 40

Figure 2.3 MacEwen and Gibb’s 1930s monographs 44

Figure 2.4 Act Now For the Highlands and Islands 46

Chapter Three

Figure 3.1 Hugh Quigley’s Plan 52

Figure 3.2 The Highlands and the Highlanders 54

Figure 3.3 ‘Official Guide’ to An Clachan 59

Figure 3.4 Postcard ‘The Clachan, Empire Exhibition’, with piper 60

Figure 3.5 Postcard ‘The Clachan & Sea Loch, Empire Exhibition’ 60

Figure 3.6 Posted greeting card with ‘Clachan Post Office’ sticker 61

Figure 3.7 ‘Official Letter Card of Empire Exhibition’ 62

Conclusion

Figure 4.1 Annie MacEwen, Alexander MacEwen’s mother 67

Figure 4.2 Studio portrait of Sir Alexander MacEwen 69

7

Introduction

In 1932, the erstwhile Inverness Provost Sir Alexander Malcolm MacEwen (1875–

1941) observed ‘a spirit of restlessness and discontent … in Scotland’.1 The inter-war

period MacEwen referred to was dominated by economic depression, decline and the

demoralisation of Scotland’s people, and heralded the demise of empire. The Highlands

and Islands encountered significant social, structural and economic challenges due to,

first, the impact of World War One and continuing high emigration numbers and, later,

during the Great Depression, high unemployment among the sparse population. Due to

the area’s challenging geography, healthcare and public service provision were patchy.2

MacEwen (Figures 0.1 and 4.2) is an exemplary empire-born individual with Scottish

ancestry that ‘returned’ to Scotland and contributed financially, intellectually and

practically to the Scottish economy and society. Seemingly, though, MacEwen gave his

personal and economic entanglement in empire little weight. He saw Scottish self-

government as the best way to tackle Scottish issues but also sought imperial reform.

MacEwen spoke in favour of introducing modernity to the Highlands while, at the same

time, advocating for keeping Highland traditions and the Gaelic language and cultural

heritage alive, thus enabling the region’s people to ‘create a spirit of pride, confidence

and hope’.3

1 Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, The Thistle and the Rose: Scotland’s Problem To-Day (Edinburgh, 1932), p. 1; John A. Burnett, The Making of the Modern Scottish Highlands, 1939–1965: Withstanding the ‘Colossus of Advancing Materialism’ (Dublin, 2011), pp. 85–6. 2 Clive Birnie, ‘The Scottish Office and the Highland Problem, 1930s–1965’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh (2008), p. 16; Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 85–91; Richard J. Finlay, ‘Continuity and Change: Scottish Politics, 1900–1945’, in T. M. Devine and Richard J. Finlay (eds), Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 78. 3 Highland Council Archives (hereafter HCA), D375/3/2/8, Alexander M. MacEwen, ‘Rebirth or Absorption: A Study of Scottish Affairs’, typewritten manuscript with handwritten annotations by the author (c. 1936), p. 87.

8

This dissertation, which concentrates on the 1920s and 1930s, has two main

objectives: studying MacEwen’s personal circumstances, his thought and his

engagement with empire in detail; and using his case to explore the Highlands’ imperial

links. Themes discussed include connections with Ceylon and the everydayness of the

Empire’s presence at home, nationalist imperialism and imperial reform, and Highland

development and imperial revival. This is the first study that engages with Sir Alexander

in depth.4 Through discussing three different but interlinked aspects related to his

person, the analysis offers insight into inter-war Scotland’s relationship with the Empire

and demonstrates that it was still an important factor in public life and popular discourse

during the period as: there was still a considerable financial blowback from empire;

intellectuals like MacEwen aimed to reform and adapt the Empire to the changing world

order; and Highland development was discussed within this imperial framework. These

findings contribute to the historiography of Scotland, the Highlands and Islands and the

British Empire.

4 A plan by MacEwen’s children to have a biography written by Frank Thompson in the 1990s has been abandoned. See HCA, D436/2/1, Frank Thompson, synopsis of proposed 35,000-word biography of Sir Alexander MacEwen, with outline of the contents of six chapters; typescript (n. d., 1990–1991). However, the research material collected, including letters from the family, is invaluable to this study. See HCA, D436 Frank Thompson Papers, 1928–1994. Thompson merely wrote a paper on MacEwen which he presented before the Gaelic Society in 1997 and drafted a highly fictional ‘ancestral prelude’ going back to the eighteenth century. See Frank G. Thompson, ‘A Different Drum: A Biographical Note on Sir Alexander MacEwen’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Vol. 60, 1997–1998 (Inverness, 1997) [also HCA, D436/1/2]; Private Collection Alasdair MacEwen (hereafter PCAM), manuscript of an ‘Ancestral Prelude’ (1 and 2) to the proposed biography of Sir Alexander MacEwen, authored by Frank Thompson [19 pp.] (n.d., c. late 1990s). Ewen Cameron, however, covers MacEwen’s political career and touches on his involvement in Highland development. See Ewen Angus Cameron, ‘Sir Alexander MacEwen’, in James Mitchell and Gerry Hassan (eds), Scottish National Party Leaders (London, 2016).

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Figure 0.1 Bust of Sir Alexander MacEwen, Inverness Townhouse

© the author, 20195

MacEwen hailed on both the maternal and paternal sides from the Sutherland

Taylors at Dornoch as his parents were first cousins. Through his mother, MacEwen is

related – via the Munros of Poyntzfield – to the infamous returning nabob Hector Munro

of Novar (c. 1726–1805), the Ross-shire improvement-era landowner whose mock-

oriental folly on Cnoc Fyrish (Figure 0.2) reminds us of the empire’s lingering impact

of sojourner homecomings on Highland society and landscape.6

5 This bronze bust, created by the Highland artist Gladys Barron (1884–1967), was presented to MacEwen in 1933 and is on display in the Main Hall of Inverness Townhouse since. See Am Baile – Highland History & Culture, ‘Sir Alexander Malcolm MacEwen’, AB_INVTOWNHOUSE07_16 (1933), https://www.ambaile.org.uk/?service=asset&action=show_zoom_window_popup&language=en&asset=391&location=grid&asset_list=11016,20481,21642,418,8103,8083,8085,8087,8089,8092,8094,8096,8098,8101,8105,8106,8109,8111,8113,8115,8117,21823,391,4864,4865,4873,4883&basket_item_id=undefined (accessed 17 March 2020); Art UK, ‘Sir Alexander Malcolm MacEwan [sic] (1875–1941)’, https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/sir-alexander-malcolm-macewan-18751941-265101 (accessed 1 April 2020). 6 HCA, D375/9/5/1, papers including part of a family tree in poor condition; another family tree titled ‘The Sutherland Taylors’ (n.d.); HCA, D375/9/5/2, family tree compiled from information in D375/9/5/1, Highland Council (2004); G. J. Bryant, ‘Munro, Sir Hector (1725/6–1805/6), army officer’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter ONDB] (Oxford, 2004–20), online edition, September 2004, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-19546 (accessed 19 March 2019); Andrew Mackillop, ‘The Highlands and the Returning Nabob: Sir Hector Munro of Novar, 1760–1807’, in Marjory Harper (ed.), Emigrant Homecomings (Manchester, 2017).

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Figure 0.2 Fyrish Monument near Alness, built in 1792 © the author, 20197

Strong imperial links also exist through another MacEwen relative, Andrew

Sutherland (1757–1840), a slave-owner in Jamaica. 8 After the Abolition (1833),

Sutherland received over £1,000 in compensation for fifty-one enslaved at his

plantation. Sutherland returned to Dornoch once in 1822 for six months but his seven

‘reputed children of colour and their mother’ inherited his fortune.9

The tendency of returning Scottish nabobs and colonial plantation owners to

invest in landed capital and engage in ‘improvement’ arguably served to fortify the

entrenched position of the Scottish landed elite rather than undermining it.10 Regardless

of whether some of his relatives’ imperial wealth filtered through to MacEwen, these

kinship connections show that imperial links lasted over generations.

7 Munro commissioned the building of the monument near Alness – a memorial for his military ‘triumphs’ in India – to occupy his underemployed tenants. See Mackillop, ‘Hector Munro of Novar’, pp. 249–50. 8 HCA, D375/9/5/1; HCA, D375/9/5/2. 9 Legacies of British Slave-ownership (hereafter LBS) Database, ‘Andrew Sutherland senior’, University College London (hereafter UCL) Department of History (2020), http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/24461 (accessed 26 March 2020); LBS Database, ‘Context’, UCL (2020), https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/project/context/ (accessed 26 March 2020); LBS Database, ‘Rose Hill and Reform [Jamaica | St George]’, UCL (2020), http://wwwdepts-live.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/estate/view/3241 (accessed 26 March 2020). 10 T. M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire, 1600–1815 (London, 2003), p. 335; Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier: The Scottish Highlands and the Origins of Environmentalism (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 111; Mackillop, ‘Hector Munro of Novar’.

11

Both MacEwen and his wife Mary Beatrice, née Henderson, were born to

Scottish parents in British India; in Calcutta (Kolkata) and Rawalpindi, Punjab (now

Pakistan) respectively. 11 MacEwen’s father, Robert Sutherland Taylor MacEwen

(1839–1900), author of Clan Ewen (1904), was Judge at Calcutta and later Recorder of

Rangoon (Yangon) in Burma (now Myanmar).12 MacEwen was schooled in England

and Belgium and studied Law in Edinburgh.13 Only after being offered a workplace in

his step-uncle William Taylor Rule’s (1824–1906) Inverness law firm, he permanently

‘returned’ to his ancestral home.14 MacEwen held many offices and posts in Inverness;

was bailie from 1910, councillor at the Inverness town council (1908–1917, 1923–

1925), provost (1925–1931), Benbecula’s county councillor from 1931, and member of

the Inverness education committee from 1930. He chaired several societies including

the Inverness Royal Infirmary’s Board of Governors (1925–1934). In 1932, MacEwen

was knighted for his services.15 In the 1930s the former Liberal became politically

active for the nationalist cause; he was founding member of the Scottish Party in 1932,

stood as ‘Scottish self-government candidate’ for Kilmarnock and the Western Isles in

1933 and 1935, and became the first Scottish National Party (SNP) leader (1934–

1936).16

11 HCA, D375/3/13/8, certificate of baptism of Alexander MacEwen, St Andrew’s Church, Calcutta, Bengal, India (1875); HCA, D375/4/2/5, extract from register of births and baptisms, Rawalpindi, Punjab for Mary Beatrice Henderson (1877); HCA, D436/3, biographical summaries compiled by Robin MacEwen, handwritten and typescript (c. 1990). Lady MacEwen usually went by ‘Beatrice’. 12 HCA, D375/3/13/8; R. S. T. MacEwen, Clan Ewen: Some Records of its History (Glasgow, 1904); National Records of Scotland (hereafter NRS), 073/13, ‘MacEwen, Alexander M.’ (1941), statutory register of deaths, district of Knockbain, county of Ross and Cromarty, ScotlandsPeople online (accessed 3 May 2019); Thompson, ‘Different Drum’, p. 109. 13 ‘MacEwen, Alexander Malcolm (Sir)’, in Scottish Biographies 1938 (London and Glasgow, n. d.), p. 464; HCA, D436/3. 14 HCA, D436/3. 15 HCA, D436/3; ‘MacEwen’, in Scottish Biographies, p. 464; Malcolm MacEwen, The Greening of a Red (London, 1991), p. 7; Thompson, ‘Different Drum’, pp. 111, 114; James Miller, Inverness (Edinburgh, 2004), p. 291. 16 HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, Alexander M. MacEwen’s Election Campaign Leaflet as Scottish Self-government Candidate for Kilmarnock (Kilmarnock, 1933); Cameron, ‘MacEwen’; Thompson, ‘Different Drum’, p. 118.

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This study argues that Alexander MacEwen merits greater scholarly attention

than he is currently given and establishes that Scotland’s imperial connections were still

intact and relevant in the early twentieth century. It explores several avenues opened by

MacEwen: personal and economic imperial links, nationalist imperialism, and Highland

development. Following the post-imperial trend, this thesis acknowledges the

complexity of empire through an individual Scottish history that connects the domestic

with the imperial.17 To challenge what Stuart Hall calls the British people’s ‘profound

historical forgetfulness’ about their empire, John M. MacKenzie pioneered a seminal

historiographical movement that since explored imperial legacies in numerous ways.18

After the so-called ‘MacKenziean moment’ in the mid-1980s, imperial studies began to

transform, parameters shifted and the way academics write about empire changed.

Previously neglected aspects of empire ‘at home’ – like propaganda or imperial

commodities – are now studied and the barriers erected against the memory of negative

aspects of empire, from slavery to damages to the natural environment, start to break

down.19 In this, the currently over a hundred and fifty-strong ‘Studies in Imperialism’

series, started with MacKenzie’s Propaganda and Empire (1984), was key.

17 John M. MacKenzie, ‘ “The Second City of the Empire”: Glasgow – Imperial Municipality’, in Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities (Manchester, 2003), p. 220. 18 The late Stuart Hall used the phase specifically in connection to race relations, but the concept is universally applicable to – and intrinsically linked with – all elements accompanying the British Empire. See Stuart Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction (1978)’, in Sally Davidson, David Featherstone, Michael Rustin and Bill Schwarz (eds), Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays (London, 2017), p. 145; Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (London, 2018), p. 186; James Procter, Stuart Hall (London, 2004), p. 82. 19 Stephanie Barczewski, ‘Introduction: The MacKenziean Moment Past and Present’, in Stephanie Barczewski and Martin Farr (eds), The MacKenzie Moment in Imperial History: Essays in Honour of John M. MacKenzie (London/ Cham, 2020); Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose, ‘Introduction: Being at Home with the Empire’, in Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose (eds), At Home with the Empire: Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 5, 12–13; Cherry Leonardi, ‘The Power of Culture and the Cultures of Power: John MacKenzie and the Study of Imperialism’, in Andrew S. Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2014); John M. MacKenzie, ‘Afterword’, in Andrew S. Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2014); John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984); Stuart Ward, ‘Foreword: The Moving Frontier of MacKenzie’s Empire’, in Stephanie Barczewski and Martin Farr (eds), The MacKenzie Moment in Imperial History: Essays in Honour of John M. MacKenzie (London/ Cham, 2020); Stuart Ward, ‘The MacKenziean Moment in Retrospect (or How One Hundred

13

MacEwen does not match the most frequently used categories of individuals

analysed in empire historiography: he was no seventeenth- or eighteenth-century return-

migrating landowning nabob like the laird of Novar, nor one of the illustrious twentieth-

century ‘homecomers’ or ‘roots tourists’ with Highland ancestry such as the Canadian

Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (1895–1979).20 This study argues that MacEwen

stands for the continuance of these imperial connections from the early days of empire

into the twentieth century and therefore merits scholarly attention.

In the MacKenziean spirit, this analysis seeks evidence for the Empire’s

presence in the Scottish Highlands by following Catherine Hall and Sonya O. Rose’s

approach who, in At Home with the Empire, discuss the ‘everydayness’ and ‘taken-for-

grantedness’ of the Empire’s presence in the metropole.21 Stuart Hall’s emblematic

‘cuppa’, first used in his 1978 essay ‘Racism and Reaction’, demonstrates that everyday

life was literally ‘infused’ with empire. ‘Tea’, in Chapter One, thus acts as a metaphor

for ‘the outside history that is inside’ Highland history.22 The Empire’s ‘ordinariness’

will also be used in Chapter Two to explain why MacEwen, seemingly, only ‘thought

imperially’ when it came to politics.23

Volumes Bloomed)’, in Andrew S. Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2014); Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in Andrew S. Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories (Manchester, 2014). For a complete list of books published in the Manchester University Press’ series between 1984 and 2013 see Thompson (ed.), Writing Imperial Histories, pp. vii–xi. 20 For more on the ‘classic’ sojourners, return migrants, nabobs, ‘homecomings’ and ‘roots tourists’ see, for example, Tanja Bueltmann, Andrew Hinson and Graeme Morton, The Scottish Diaspora (Edinburgh, 2013); Devine, Scotland’s Empire, pp. 334–6; T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy, ‘Introduction: The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners’, in T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy (eds), The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners (Cham, 2017); Marjory Harper (ed.), Emigrant Homecomings (Manchester, 2017); Marjory Harper, ‘Book Review: Scottish Homecomings’, Scottish Affairs, Vol. 23, No 1 (2014), pp. 156–9; D. A. J. MacPherson, ‘Review Essay: The Scots Abroad: Recent Approaches to Migration, Diaspora and Identity’, Northern Scotland, Vol. 8, No 1 (2017); Mario Varricchio (ed.), Back to Caledonia: Scottish Return Migration from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (Edinburgh, 2012). 21 Hall and Rose (eds), At Home with the Empire; Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, pp. 21, 23, 29. 22 Stuart Hall, ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in Anthony D. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization, and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, new edition (Minneapolis, 1997), pp. 48–9; Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction’, p. 145; Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 2; Procter, Stuart Hall, p. 82. 23 Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, pp. 3, 21, 29.

14

To contextualise all the aspects of economic, intellectual and social history on

Scotland, the Highlands and Islands, and empire discussed, this study needed an array

of different historiographical sources.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the British introduced tea in Ceylon.

‘Ceylon tea’ rapidly became a valuable imperial commodity, successful brand and

widely used propaganda tool.24 While extensive historiography on Ceylon tea exists,

relevant works like D. M. Forrest’s A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea (1967) are dated

and concentrate largely on Ceylon-internal aspects, like planters, estate workers, tea

processing and trade.25 Recently, however, Scoto-Ceylonese relations received well-

deserved scholarly attention: Angela McCarthy and Tom Devine, in Tea and Empire

(2017) and related publications, investigate the pioneer planter James Taylor, a

Kincardineshire Scot. 26 Through archival primary-source material, like letters and

photographs, McCarthy and Devine not only paint a picture of Taylor but recreate his

24 Kent Deng, ‘A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World by Erika Rappaport’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 49, No 1 (2018); MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, pp. 22, 26, 127, 132, 157; Matthew Mauger, ‘Writing Tea’s Empire’, Annals of Science, Vol. 75, No 3 (2018); Erika Rappaport, A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Woodstock, 2019). 25 D. M. Forrest, A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea, 1867–1967 (London, 1967). See also Shiva N. Breckenridge, The Hills of Paradise: British Enterprise and the Story of Plantation Growth in Sri Lanka (Pannipitiya, 2001); John Weatherstone, The Pioneers: 1825–1900, The Early Tea and Coffee Planters and Their Way of Life (London, 1986); Harry Williams, Ceylon: Pearl of the East, second edition (London, 1963), chs 10 and 11. 26 T. M. Devine, ‘A Scottish Empire of Enterprise in the East, c. 1700–1914’, in T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy (eds), The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners (Cham, 2017), pp. 34–5; Mauger, ‘Writing Tea’s Empire’; Angela McCarthy, ‘Ceylon: A Scottish Colony?’, in T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy (eds), The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners (Cham, 2017); Angela McCarthy, ‘The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea’, in Angela McCarthy and John M. MacKenzie (eds), Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600 (Edinburgh, 2016); Angela McCarthy, ‘Memorialising James Taylor, “Father of the Ceylon Tea Enterprise” ’, Remember Me: The Changing Face of Memorialisation, blog post 1, posted 19 July 2016, https://remembermeproject.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/memorialising-james-taylor-father-of-the-ceylon-tea-enterprise/ (accessed 25 July 2019); Angela McCarthy, ‘Memorialising James Taylor, ‘Father of the Ceylon Tea Enterprise’, Remember Me: The Changing Face of Memorialisation, blog post 2, posted 18 October 2017 https://remembermeproject.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/memorialising-james-taylor-father-of-the-ceylon-tea-enterprise-in-scotland/ (accessed 7 March 2020); Angela McCarthy and T. M. Devine, Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon (Manchester, 2017). Tea and Empire was published in time for the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of Ceylon tea and the 125th anniversary of James Taylor’s death in 2017.

15

relationships to his kith and kin who followed him abroad and to those staying behind.

As these contributions, together with Ranald C. Michie’s article ‘Aberdeen and Ceylon’

(1981), concentrate on nineteenth-century links between north-east Scotland and

Ceylon, their usefulness to this study is largely limited to setting the historical

backdrop. 27 Similar research is needed on links between Ceylon and the Scottish

Highlands to which Chapter One makes an initial contribution.

Sir Alexander MacEwen was both, part of the 1930s Scottish nationalist

movement and an imperialist. Contributions to the historiographical debate around

inter-war Scottish nationalism like T. M. Devine’s ‘The Break-up of Britain?’ (2006),

chapters in Scotland, Empire and Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century (2015) edited

by John MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass, and publications by Richard J. Finlay and

others do, however, not connect rising Scottish nationalism with continued – or renewed

– imperialism.28 Thus far historians focus on either nationalism in the first half of the

twentieth century, or on nationalism and the decline of empire in the second half of the

twentieth century. One exception is Finlay’s 1992 article ‘ “For or Against?”: Scottish

27 Thomas J. Barron, ‘Scots and the Coffee Industry in Nineteenth Century Ceylon’, in T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy (eds), The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners (Cham, 2017), pp. 163–85; Ranald C. Michie, ‘Aberdeen and Ceylon. Economic Links in the Nineteenth Century’, Northern Scotland, Vol. 4, No 1 (1981). 28 Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 85–7; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 87–9; T. M. Devine, ‘The Break-Up of Britain? Scotland and the End of Empire: The Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 16 (2006); Richard J. Finlay, Independent and Free: Scottish Politics and the Origins of the Scottish National Party, 1918–1945 (Edinburgh, 1994), pp. 96–186; Richard J. Finlay, ‘National Identity, Union, and Empire, c. 1850–c. 1970’, in John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine (eds), Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2016), pp. 280–316; Richard J. Finlay, ‘The Rise and Fall of Popular Imperialism in Scotland, 1850–1950’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 113, No 1 (1997); John M. MacKenzie, ‘Brexit: The View from Scotland’, The Round Table – The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 105, No 5 (2016), p. 578; John M. MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass, ‘Introduction’, in John M. MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass (eds), Scotland, Empire and Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2015), p. 1; Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen and Stuart Ward, ‘ “Cramped and Restricted at Home”? Scottish Separatism at Empire’s End’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 25 (2015), pp. 159–62; Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen and Stuart Ward, ‘Three Referenda and A By-election: The Shadow of Empire in Devolutionary Politics’, in John M. MacKenzie and Bryan S. Glass (eds), Scotland, Empire and Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2015), p. 201; Andrew S. Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005).

16

Nationalists and the British Empire’.29 Chapter Two uses these sources against primary

documents by MacEwen and others to address this shortfall and to argue that during the

period discussed popular imperialism and nationalism coexisted.

In the inter-war years new efforts were made to address the prevalent ‘Highland

problem’ and to develop the Highland and Island region economically and socially. At

the same time, the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition tried to bolster the Empire in the

eye of the Scottish public. While numerous studies discuss various aspects of Highland

development, the subject has not been analysed in context with imperial propaganda;

with the exception of Angus MacKenzie’s ‘Self-help and Propaganda’ (2010), which

also refers to both MacEwen and the Glasgow exhibition.30 Chapter Three, therefore,

places the Highlands in an imperial context by engaging with ‘development literature’

and the Highland contribution to the Empire exhibition through Sarah Britton’s ‘Urban

Futures/Rural Pasts’ (2011) and Hayden Lorimer’s ‘Ways of Seeing the Scottish

Highlands’ (1999). 31 Despite popular conceptions of modernity as an enemy of

tradition, for example in James Vernon’s seminal study Distant Strangers (2014), the

primary sources suggest that within the Highland development movement around

MacEwen modernity and tradition went hand in hand.32

This dissertation was inspired by, and is based heavily upon, archival and

published primary sources held at the Highland Council Archives (HCA), the National

29 Richard J. Finlay, ‘ “For or Against?”: Scottish Nationalists and the British Empire, 1919–39’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 71, No 191/192 (1992). 30 Angus MacKenzie, ‘Self-help and Propaganda: Scottish National Development Council, 1931–1939’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, Vol. 30, No 2 (2010). 31 Sarah Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, Cultural and Social History, Vol. 8, No 2 (2011); Hayden Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing the Scottish Highlands: Marginality, Authenticity and the Curious Case of the Hebridean Blackhouse’, Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 25, No 4 (1999). 32 James Vernon, Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern (Berkeley, 2014).

17

Records of Scotland (NRS) and privately. These sources, particularly the MacEwen and

Frank Thompson papers and MacEwen’s writings, are complemented by other primary

sources of the period and contextualised using relevant historiography as far as previous

research exists.33 MacEwen’s two monographs, The Thistle and the Rose (1932) and

Towards Freedom (1938), pamphlets, leaflets, letters and newspaper reports were

analysed. Particularly MacEwen’s unpublished, hand-annotated manuscript ‘Rebirth or

Absorption’ (c. 1936) was a valuable source as it has not been given scholarly attention

before.34 The autobiography of MacEwen’s son Malcolm The Greening of a Red (1991)

gave insight into the family’s economic situation and lifestyle.35 For Chapter Three, the

Highlands committee’s publications The Highlands and the Highlanders and ‘An

Clachan, the Highland Village’ (both 1938, Figures 3.2 and 3.3) were treasure troves on

subjects from hydroelectricity to the Gaelic revival.36

Led by these sources, the study follows a thematic approach in three chapters.

Chapter One uses Sir Alexander MacEwen’s inheritance of Ceylon tea shares to explore

longstanding connections between Highland Scotland and Ceylon. It discusses estate

management, imperial investment, personal consequences of inheriting wealth, the

Depression’s impact on the economy, and engages with the everydayness of empire and

the onset of ‘historical amnesia’ that followed the multi-level imperial encounter.37

Chapter Two then compares MacEwen with other writers to outline the intellectual

33 HCA, D375 Sir Alexander MacEwen Papers, 1805–2004; HCA, D436 Frank Thompson Papers, 1928–1994; NRS, GD347 Papers of the Sutherland Family of Rearquhar, 1606–1964; NRS, BT2/ 6989 and BT2/ 13027, Avon and Golconda Tea and Rubber Company Limited (dissolved company files), 1909–c. 1925; PCAM. 34 HCA, D375/3/2/8. 35 MacEwen, Greening. 36 The Highlands Committee (hereafter HC) for the Empire Exhibition (eds), ‘An Clachan, the Highland Village: Official Guide’ (Glasgow, 1938); HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders: The Past and Future of a Race [A’ Ghaidhealtachd: Ar Dileab ‘s ar Dòchas] (Glasgow, 1938). 37 Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction’, p. 145; Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 9; Hall with Schwarz, Familiar Stranger, pp. 12, 185, 186.

18

framework of the period. Differences in MacEwen’s stance on nationalism, race and

empire to his contemporaries are highlighted to show that MacEwen was a moderate

nationalist who suggested to reform the British Empire into an equal federation of self-

governing nations. Lastly, Chapter Three shifts the attention to MacEwen’s involvement

in both Highland development and the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition to analyse

attempts by him and others to introduce modernity to the Highlands while, at the same

time, holding on to Highland tradition and the Gaelic language. Beginning with

MacEwen’s links with Ceylon we now move on to the analysis of the Empire’s presence

in the Highlands.

19

Chapter One ‘Palmy Days’ in the Highlands:1 Alexander MacEwen,

Ceylon Tea and the Everydayness of Empire

Alexander MacEwen’s imperial entanglement intensified in 1925 when he inherited

family shares in Ceylon tea. This chapter uses this economic link between the Highlands

and empire to demonstrate its financial and social impact locally. The inheritance

initially solidified MacEwen’s well-to-do upper-middle-class lifestyle and allowed him

to float companies that improved the region’s service provision.2 These companies and

the tea estates were managed locally from MacEwen’s premises in Inverness and by

agency houses in Colombo and London. 3 Ceylon, nevertheless, featured little in

MacEwen’s writings. Chapter Three argues that this unstated embeddedness of empire

in MacEwen’s life corresponded with a society-wide silence on imperial matters.

Analyses of the relationship between Ceylon tea and Scotland are largely limited to

work by McCarthy and Devine, and Michie, and concentrate primarily on nineteenth-

century ties with north-east Scotland during the ‘tea rush’. 4 This chapter, instead,

focuses on the early twentieth century and the Highlands. First, it provides the

background on MacEwen’s inheritance and lifestyle, longstanding Scoto-Ceylonese

connections, and Ceylon tea. To demonstrate MacEwen’s profound and far-reaching

imperial entanglement this chapter, then, analyses three major aspects: Scottish imperial

1 The phrase ‘palmy days’ refers to a remark made by Margaret MacEwen in reminiscence of the MacEwens lifestyle after the inheritance of Ceylon tea shares before the financial crash. See HCA, D436/4/2, letter from Margaret MacEwen, the younger daughter of Alexander MacEwen, to Frank Thompson, p. 1, note 5. 2 HCA, D436/4/2; HCA, D436/7/2, Malcolm MacEwen, correspondence with MacEwen Family and Frank Thompson, typed letters (1990–1991); MacEwen, Greening, p. 7; Thompson, ‘Different Drum’, p. 113. 3 MacEwen, Greening, p. 44. 4 Devine, ‘Scottish Empire of Enterprise’, pp. 34–5; Mauger, ‘Writing Tea’s Empire’; McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’; McCarthy, ‘James Taylor’; McCarthy, ‘Memorialising’, blog posts 1 and 2; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire; Michie, ‘Aberdeen and Ceylon’. Older British and Sri Lankan studies also highlight this relationship and emphasis cases of chain migration from Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire regions. See Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, pp. 39, 41–3, 114, 176; Weatherstone, Pioneers, p. 167 and passim.

20

investment and material changes to the MacEwens; the un-remarkableness of their

imperial involvements; and MacEwen’s local entrepreneurship. It argues that, through

the links between Ceylon and the Highlands, empire still impacted on both economy

and society at home during the inter-war years.

In December 1925, MacEwen inherited the estate of his step-aunt Clare Rule

née Beville (c. 1824–1925): her Inverness home, The Camp, which sold in 1926 for

£700, jewellery, a ‘valuable’ tea service, other silverware, imperial investments like

shares in Australian Gold Mining and the Canada Permanent Mortgage Corporation and

cash, altogether worth over £36,000 before duty – nearly £1.5 million in today’s money.5

This wealth, according to MacEwen’s eldest Robert (1907–1998), called Robin,

‘enabled [MacEwen] not only to have many of the good things in life but to do good for

others’.6

The MacEwens had been well-off already though. Malcolm MacEwen (1911–

1996) later described the family’s lifestyle at Lethington (Figure 1.1) thus: ‘After we

had moved [c. 1915] to the select middle-class and professional “hill” area of Inverness

we lacked for nothing in the material sense, with a large house, a beautiful garden, a

tennis court, six holes for pitch-and-putt golf, a car from 1914 (and two by the 1930s),

servants, and at the height of our prosperity a chauffeur-gardener’.7 MacEwen senior

had an income of ‘over £2,000’ on which he ‘paid supertax’.8 Brangan, their previous

5 NRS, SC29/44/67, ‘Rule, Clare’ (1925), Inverness Sheriff Court, wills and testaments, ScotlandsPeople online (accessed 7 April 2019), pp. 875, 877–85. The inheritance’s worth was converted with the currency online converter of the National Archives, Kew (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/). 6 HCA, D436/7/1, Robin MacEwen, correspondence with MacEwen Family and Frank Thompson, handwritten and typed letters (1990–1991), letter from 10 January 1991, p. 1. 7 MacEwen, Greening, p. 6. 8 HCA, D375/5/2/1, Alexander M. MacEwen, estimates of expenditure and income, handwritten (no date, c. 1937–1939); MacEwen, Greening , p. 17; NRS, VR004200057, ‘MacEwen, Alexander M.’ (1940), No 38/22–24, ’21 Church Street/Bank Lane, offices and house’, valuation roll, Inverness burgh, ScotlandsPeople online (accessed 24 June 2019).

21

home had been bought with Beatrice’s dowry, and in 1911 MacEwen and his sister had

also inherited property in Dornoch which put the MacEwens ‘in a sounder position than’

they had started off when they married in 1906.9

Figure 1.1 Lethington, Annfield Road, Inverness. Architect: W. L. Carruthers, 1892

© The Highland Council, 198110

The MacEwens were ‘not untypical of the professional families in the Scottish

Highlands, with impeccable middle-class ancestries on either side, who combined

aspirations to materially greater prosperity and a share in political power with a strong

sense of social service and responsibility’.11 Regarding a proposed biography about his

father, Malcolm wrote in 1990 that the ‘Tea shares crash needn’t take much space’.12

Apparently, ‘worn imperial associations’ were uncalled-for in an interpretation of his

father’s life. 13 This sentiment is exemplary for the complex phenomenon today

9 HCA, D436/4/2, p. 1, note 3, p. 5; PCAM, letters from Sir Alexander MacEwen to his fiancée Mary Beatrice Henderson (1903–1906). 10 In MacEwen’s time, Lethington was No 7 Annfield Road, today it is No 13. See Highland Historic Environment Record, MHG15593, ‘Lethington, 13 Annfield Road, Inverness’, https://her.highland.gov.uk/monument/MHG15593 (accessed 10 June 2019); NRS, VR004200057, ‘MacEwen, Alexander M.’ (1940), No 29/51. 11 MacEwen, Greening , p. 6. 12 HCA, D436/7/2, letter from 20 September 1990, p. 1. 13 Hall with Schwarz, Familiar Stranger, p. 185.

22

described through terms like Empire ‘forgetfulness’ or ‘disavowal’; a ‘historical

amnesia’ that affects the British people since the 1950s.14

In this analysis, ‘tea’ is therefore not only read verbatim but used as a metaphor

for Scotland’s share in the exploitation of the British colonies through trade in imperial

commodities; after all, no tea has been grown commercially in Britain until very

recently. Tea, like other imperial goods, was imported from colonial plantations and

laden with the ballast of centuries of conquest, colonisation and exploitation that had

lifted the Empire into power. British economy and culture were therefore not just

generated from within but were products of outside influences. The history of the

countries where tea comes from – Sri Lanka, India – thus lies ‘inside’ Scottish history.15

Figure 1.2 ‘INVERNESS’ lettering, garden near the manager’s bungalow, Nuwara Eliya

© www.historyofceylontea.com, 201716

14 Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction’, p. 145; Hall with Schwarz, Familiar Stranger, pp. 12, 185, 186. 15 Hall, ‘Old and New Identities’, p. 49; Hall, ‘Racism and Reaction’, p. 145; Procter, Stuart Hall, p. 82. Seemingly, the first commercial British tea was grown in Cornwall: ‘in 2005, creating the ultimate Britishness in every cup’, see Tregothnan – The Tea Grown in England, https://tregothnan.co.uk/ (accessed 25 April 2020). Meanwhile there are small tea gardens in Angus, Fife and Perthshire, though, and Scottish-grown tea becomes available in small quantities. See Tea Gardens of Scotland, https://teagardensofscotland.co.uk/ (accessed 5 April 2020). 16 HCT, ‘Nuwara Eliya (Inverness) Estate’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/media-archive/nuwara-eliya-inverness-estate--76 (accessed 10 March 2020).

23

By the twentieth century, Scotland already had longstanding connections with

Ceylon through commerce, emigration and its British governance. Due to a ‘special

relationship’ between the tropical island and Aberdeen’s university, up to half of the

white Ceylon tea planters were Scots. They particularly dominated the Ceylon Tea

Plantations Company during the nineteenth century. Although Ceylon’s Scottish

population grew through chain migration, not organised settlement, Ceylon has been

described as a ‘Scotch colony’.17 Estates often had – and still have – Scottish names,

like Glencoe or Culloden, and to this day Nuwara Eliya estate in Sri Lanka’s central

Hill Country (Figure 1.2) sells ‘Inverness’ tea.18

The most famous Scot connected with Ceylon tea, the Glasgow-born grocer

extraordinaire Sir Thomas Lipton (1848–1931), revolutionised tea marketing and sales.

Lipton profited from the new imperial economy that had exoticised the diet of the Scots

who now regularly and habitually consumed sugar, coffee and, not least, Ceylon tea.19

Grocery stores like the one in Inverness brought the Empire through Lipton’s Ceylon

tea logo – the island’s distinct, teardrop-shaped outline – closer to the people in the

Highlands (see Figure 1.3).

17 John M. MacKenzie, ‘Scots and the Environment of Empire’, in John M. MacKenzie, and T. M. Devine (eds), Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2016), p. 171; McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’, p. 197 and passim; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, pp. 4, 211; Michie, ‘Aberdeen and Ceylon’. 18 Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, pp. 110–12; McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’, p. 191; Weatherstone, Pioneers, passim; History of Ceylon Tea (hereafter HCT), ‘Tea Estates A–Z’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-estates/estates-registry (accessed 5 March 2020); HCT, ‘Nuwara Eliya (Inverness)’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-estates/estates-registry/nuwara-eliya-inverness--2847.html (accessed 5 March 2020). 19 William H. Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 2 (New York, 1935), pp. 179–80, 304, 306; Lennox A. Mills, Britain and Ceylon (London, 1945), p. 69; Devine and McCarthy, ‘Introduction’, p. 6; Forrest, Hundred Years, pp. 152–4; MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, pp. 22, 26; John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine, ‘Scots in the Imperial Economy’, in John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine (eds), Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2016), p. 233; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, pp. 89–90; Roy Moxham, Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (New York, 2004), p. 167; Rappaport, Thirst for Empire, pp. 46–50 and passim; Weatherstone, Pioneers, p. 128. Born to Irish immigrants in Glasgow, Lipton self-identified as a ‘Glasgow Irishman’. See McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, p. 211.

24

Figure 1.3 Shop window, Lipton’s Groceries, 50 High Street in Inverness (1957) © Am Baile20

Recently, the lesser-known Kincardineshire-born planter James Taylor (1835–

1892) received in-depth scholarly attention from McCarthy and Devine.21 Taylor, today

celebrated as the ‘father of the Ceylon tea enterprise’, commercially pioneered the tea

plant as manager of Loolecondera estate and induced the island’s subsequent transition

to tea after coffee fell victim to ‘coffee rust’ in the 1870s–1880s.22

However, there are also Highland connections with British Ceylon. One is James

Alexander Stewart Mackenzie (1784–1843).23 As governor of Ceylon (1837–c. 1841)

20 Am Baile – Highland History & Culture, ‘Lipton’s Shop Window’, PAW22019, https://www.ambaile.org.uk/?service=asset&action=show_zoom_window_popup&language=en&asset=21128&location=grid&asset_list=21128,21422,40247,40248,40249,3177,21682,14654&basket_item_id=undefined (accessed 15 June 2019). 21 McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’, pp. 192–204; McCarthy, ‘James Taylor’; McCarthy, ‘Memorialising’, blog posts 1 and 2; Mauger, ‘Writing Tea’s Empire’; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire. 22 Lennox A. Mills, Ceylon under British Rule, 1795–1932 (London, 1933), pp. 248–50, 253; Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 1, pp. 177, 178–80, 199; Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, pp. 110–12, 149; Forrest, Hundred Years, pp. 57–96; History of Ceylon Tea, ‘James Taylor’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-planters/planters-registry/james-taylor--11119874.html (accessed 3 March 2020); McCarthy, ‘Memorialising’, blog posts 1 and 2; McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’, pp. 192–204; McCarthy, ‘James Taylor’, p. 118 and passim; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, p. xviii, chs 2 and 3; Weatherstone, Pioneers, pp. 148. 23 T. F. Henderson and K. D. Reynolds, ‘Mackenzie, Mary Elizabeth Frederica Stewart-, Lady Hood (1783–1862), chief of clan Mackenzie’, ONDB (Oxford, 2004–20), online, May 2016, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-26521 (accessed 13 March 2020).

25

Mackenzie was one of the one third of colonial governors drawn from Scottish landed

gentry provided with elite employment in the Imperial administration.24 He owned over

2,700 acres of plantations in what he tellingly called the ‘Lewis of the East’ and is

memorialised at Fortrose cathedral (see Figure 1.4). 25 Another individual is James

Douglas Fletcher (1857–1927) who, with the fortune he had made in Ceylon tea and

rubber, both modernised and grandly extended Rosehaugh House (Figure 1.5) –

complete with giant Buddha and elephant statues – and acted as Avoch’s local

benefactor.26 These two examples show that the Highlands already had strong personal

and economic connections with Ceylon by the early twentieth century.

24 Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 16. 25 Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, p. 42; Devine and McCarthy, ‘Introduction’, p. 11; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, p. 205; Stan Neal, ‘Imperial Connections and Colonial Improvement: Scotland, Ceylon, and the China Coast, 1837–1841’, Journal of World History, Vol. 29, No 2 (2018), p. 225; Patrick Peebles, ‘Governor J. A. Stewart Mackenzie and the Making of Ceylon’, in T. M. Devine and Angela McCarthy (eds), The Scottish Experience in Asia, c. 1700 to the Present: Settlers and Sojourners (Cham, 2017). The phrase is particularly telling when read in connection with the Isle of Lewis’ quasi-colonisation by the Scottish opium baron Sir James Matheson – whom he bought the island from his friends, the Seaforth Mackenzies, in 1844 – and the aborted ‘improvement’ efforts by the Viscount Leverhulme, an English soap magnate and philanthropist, in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century respectively. See, for example, Richard Davenport-Hines, ‘Lever, William Hesketh, first Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), soap manufacturer and philanthropist ONDB (Oxford, 2004–20), September 2004, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-34506 (accessed 26 March 2020); John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, ‘To Be Free and Independent: Crofting, Popular Protest and Lord Leverhulme’s Hebridean Development Projects, 1917–25’, Rural History, Vol. 7 (1996); Richard J. Grace, ‘Matheson, Sir (Nicholas) James Sutherland, first baronet (1796–1878), merchant and politician’, ONDB (Oxford, 2004–20), September 2004, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37746 (accessed 26 March 2020); James Hunter, Last of the Free: A Millennial History of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 341; Neal, ‘Imperial Connections’, pp. 217–19; T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830–1950 (London, 1997), p. 75. 26 HCT, ‘Rosehaugh Tea and Rubber Company’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-planters/planters-registry/rosehaugh-tea-and-rubber-co-ld--11123596.html (accessed 7 April 2020); Historic Environment Scotland (hereafter HES), GDL00326, ‘Rosehaugh’, http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/GDL00326 (accessed 13 June 2019); Ross and Cromarty Heritage, ‘Avoch and Killen History – Rosehaugh House’, http://www.rossandcromartyheritage.org/Community/Avoch-Killen/History/Rosehaugh-House.aspx (accessed 13 June 2019); Ross and Cromarty Heritage, ‘James Douglas Fletcher’, http://www.rossandcromartyheritage.org/Community/Avoch-Killen/Folk/James-Douglas-Fletcher.aspx (accessed 13 June 2019). For more on Rosehaugh House see Hilda, Hesling, Magdalene Maclean, Kathleen MacLeman and John Mills, Rosehaugh: A House of its Time (Black Isle, 2016).

26

Figure 1.4 Stone ornament above the Mackenzie memorial,

Fortrose cathedral © the author, 201927

Figure 1.5 J. Valentine and Company Greeting Card of Rosehaugh House, c. 1910 © Am Baile28

27 This stone carving – depicting a palm tree, a coat of arms and, most strikingly, two male, turban-clad slaves in fetters sitting on the ground – is situated above Governor Mackenzie’s marble memorial tablet. 28 Am Baile – Highland History & Culture, ‘Rosehaugh near Fortrose’, QZP40_CARD_0457, https://www.ambaile.org.uk/?service=asset&action=show_zoom_window_popup&language=en&asset=32384&location=grid&asset_list=41077,32384,32385&basket_item_id=undefined (accessed 14 June 2019). Rosehaugh House has been demolished in 1959 but the ‘massive buttressed retaining walls’ remain. There are also other buildings of historic value left on the estate. Canmore – National Record of the Historic Environment, DP 012240, ‘Rosehaugh House’, https://canmore.org.uk/collection/1235952 (2 April 2020); HES, GDL00326.

27

Agricultural improvement also linked Scotland and Ceylon. ‘Scotch practices’,

developed and tested in the Northeast and the Highlands, the ‘laboratory of empire’,

were exported to all colonies.29 Royal Botanic Gardens, like Edinburgh (Scotland) and

Peradeniya (Ceylon), were established throughout the Empire to test-grow imperial

crops and circulate seeds and specimens including Camellia sinensis – the tea plant.30

While eighteenth-century attempts to acclimatise tea in Scotland had failed, the colonial

construction of distinctions between Ceylonese ‘highlanders’ and ‘lowlanders’ that

mirrored Scotland remained present in Ceylon.31

Around the turn of the twentieth century, Ceylon estate management changed

from estates being solely run by overwhelmingly British, often Scottish, resident

managers like Taylor to estate amalgamations being managed by large agency houses.32

The agency overseeing MacEwen’s estates was Cumberbatch and Company in

Colombo, one of Ceylon’s ‘leading houses’ and representative of the London agents

Dickson, Anderson and Company, who later helped rescuing MacEwen’s estates.33

Up until then ‘the shares of most tea companies were held by the people who

opened up the estates, their friends and relatives, and were kept well within limited

circles’.34 This was also the case in the Rule/MacEwen family where Sir Alexander, his

family members, friends, business partners and the estate manager on site at Golconda

29 Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, pp. 85–6 and passim; McCarthy, ‘Scottish Colony’, p. 199; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, pp. 205–6; Neal, ‘Imperial Connections’, pp. 213, 215, 222–6. 30 Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, pp. 86, 89, 123, 138; MacKenzie, ‘Environment of Empire’, p. 155; MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Scots in the Imperial Economy’, p. 230. Tea originates from China but was in the 1830s successfully introduced in first India and then Ceylon (1860s) by the British to circumvent the reliance on Chinese tea. See Devine and McCarthy, ‘Introduction’, p. 6; Forrest, Hundred Years, pp. 44–56; Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, p. 127; McCarthy and Devine, Tea and Empire, p. 62. 31 Jonsson, Enlightenment’s Frontier, pp. 67, 108, 132; Neal, ‘Imperial Connections’, p. 225. 32 Mills, Britain and Ceylon, p. 63; Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, pp. 119–26, 149; Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 2, pp. 208–9; Moxham, Tea, pp. 167–8; Devine, ‘Scottish Empire of Enterprise’, p. 32; Wickramasinghe, N., Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History (London, 2014), p. 39. 33 HCA, D375/1/4/1, legal documents and correspondence re Clare Rule and Avon and Golconda estate, Power of Attorney (1908); D436/7/1, letter from 10 January 1991, p. 2; Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 2, p. 183; Allister Macmillan (ed.), Extracts from Seaports of India and Ceylon [1928], (New Delhi and Chennai, 2005), pp. 465, 470; Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, p. 152; Forrest, Hundred Years, p. 134. 34 Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 2, p. 208.

28

were all shareholders.35 MacEwen was company secretary and director since at least

1909 and was later joined by Robin.36 This demonstrates ‘that at the moment of “coming

home”, empire linked’ the MacEwens ‘to global circuits of production, distribution and

exchange’.37

At the height of British imperialism, Scottish investment had changed its outlook

from home to overseas and Ceylon became a top investment destination.38 By 1914

Scotland, with an estimated involvement equivalent to £110 per-head compared against

£90 for the rest of the United Kingdom, downright ‘revelled’ in foreign investment.39

Seventeen Inverness probates showed foreign assets compared to only two in 1867.40

The bulk of MacEwen’s inheritance was also in empire: preferential and ordinary shares

in the Avon and Golconda Tea and Rubber Company and Deltenne, Ouvah and Spring

Valley estates worth over £22,600.41

Most Ceylon tea was traded at London’s stock exchange and through Mincing

Lane brokers, but ‘shares of Scottish companies’ like Avon and Golconda were ‘dealt

to some extent at Glasgow and Edinburgh’, while Ceylon rupee shares like Deltenne

Company were traded at Colombo.42 Increasing prosperity ‘from 1922 to 1928 greatly

increased public interest in tea shares as an investment and broadened the market’.43 The

Rule/MacEwen portfolio is an example for these rising imperial investments from

35 NRS, BT2/ 6989 and BT2/ 13027; HCT, ‘Golconda’, https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-estates/estates-registry/golconda--4867.html (accessed 5 April 2020). 36 HCA, D436/7/1, letter from 10 January 1991, p. 2. 37 Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 21. 38 MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Scots in the Imperial Economy’, p. 247. Arguably investment at home was neglected. 39 Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707-1994, second edition (London, 1994), p. 70; MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Scots in the Imperial Economy’, p. 246; Christopher Schmitz, ‘The Nature and Dimensions of Scottish Foreign Investment, 1860–1914’, Business History, Vol. 39, No 2 (1997), pp. 45, 61. 40 Schmitz, ‘Scottish Foreign Investment’, p. 56. 41 NRS, SC29/44/67, pp. 876–7. 42 Ukers, All About Tea, Vol. 2, p. 208. Thus, Avon and Golconda papers are held at Edinburgh while the Deltenne papers are held at the Sri Lankan National Archive, Colombo if they have survived. 43 Ibid.

29

Scotland.44 As an English woman who died at her second home in London, Clare also

exemplifies individual wealthy Scottish residents, who split their estates in Scottish and

English assets and benefitted from investment opportunities in both countries.45

MacEwen travelled to Ceylon twice in the 1920s and Robin made a similar trip

in 1931. The absence of any mention of ‘tee business’ in their letters and postcards home

suggests that there was nothing out of the ordinary or remarkable in the ‘long journey’,

other than the odd ‘jungle fowl which was a shade less tough’ than the venison.46 On his

trip in 1923, MacEwen conducted his Council business from Ceylon – via ‘telegram c/o

Cumberbatch Colombo’ – and was informed about his success in the Inverness Town

council elections, from which he was excused for being ‘on business in Ceylon’.47 Both

men seemingly had a ‘splendid time’ at various estates. Robin, who also went on

sightseeing and climbed Sigiriya rock, ‘was greatly taken by Gammaduwa bungalow …

which is far better situated than Deltotte’ but noticed that ‘it must be very lonely with

so few [white] people in the district’.48 Empire was therefore present between the lines;

not least in many ‘cups of tea’ taken en route on board the train and the Bibby Line’s

steamer Oxfordshire, and in Ceylon.49 Sir Alexander seemingly kept up relationships

with two Ceylonese individuals afterwards; the Colombo lawyer F. J. De Saram and

another person who stayed at Kessock House in 1937.50

44 Devine, Scotland’s Empire, p. 334; Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 13. 45 NRS, SC29/44/67; Schmitz, ‘Scottish Foreign Investment’, pp. 59–61. 46 HCA, D375/3/11/1, on visit to Ceylon – correspondence from Alexander MacEwen to his wife and family (found together in an envelope labelled ‘AM’s trip to Ceylon’), 5 letters and 3 postcards sent en route from London, France and Egypt, and from Ceylon estates (1923); HCA, D375/5/1/2, letter from Robin MacEwen to his parents from Ceylon (1931); HCA, D436/3/1, p. 3. 47 HCA, D436/4/3, note on family letters from Malcolm MacEwen’s collection, with notes by Margaret MacEwen (n.d.), p. 1; The Inverness Courier, ‘Municipal Election – Ex-Bailie Macewen’s [sic] Candidature’, 2 November 1923. 48 HCA, D375/5/1/2, p. 1. 49 HCA, D375/3/11/1. 50 HCA, D375/5/3/2, Kessock House, North Kessock, visitor’s book (August 1936–December 1940), entry for 8 to 11 January 1937; HCA, D436/3/1.

30

In 1929, Malcolm took up a forestry degree in Aberdeen at the behest of his

father who wanted to send his son ‘out to Ceylon’ to ‘manage one of the tea

estates’.51This plan never came to fruition as shortly after the Depression had hit, in

1931, Malcolm dropped out of the degree ‘because the last thing [he] wanted was to

plant tea’.52 Later, however, he was involved in reorganising ‘the tea company after

some Mincing Lane Tea brokers had been called in to rescue it’.53

Inheriting tea shares during the inter-war years was a mixed blessing as it was a

difficult period for trade: tea prices fluctuated severely with steep falls in the early and

again in the late 1920s. Between 1929 and 1933, the international tea trade was

cartelised. Ceylon, India and the Dutch East Indies fixed export and expansion quotas.

By 1933, prices returned almost to average late-1920s niveau and remained stable until

1939.54

The 1925 inheritance had also included substantial shares in local Inverness

companies.55 MacEwen continued to run these firms, financed partially through his

imperial investments, and raised capital for further enterprises that benefited the

population of Inverness, the Highland region and visitors alike; among them ‘two

cinemas, a laundry, a nursing home, a sweet and lemonade factory and a bus network

stretching from Inverness to the remotest parts of Sutherland’.56 MacEwen’s hands-on

approach showed when he signed letters to Beatrice jokingly with ‘Bailie, Lawyer,

Vanman, Picture House Manager’ or just ‘the laundry-man’ in reference to delivery runs

51 Malcolm MacEwen, Greening, pp. 11–12. 52 Ibid., p. 13. 53 This refers to Deltenne; Avon and Golconda and the other estates where by then sold or incorporated. MacEwen, Greening, p. 45. 54 Breckenridge, Hills of Paradise, p. 149; Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘The International Tea Cartel during the Great Depression, 1929–1933’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 61, No 1 (2001); Geoffrey Jones, Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford, 2004), pp. 269–70; Rappaport, Thirst for Empire, pp. 266–76. Ceylon did not always adhere to the agreements, see Gupta, ‘International Tea Cartel’, pp. 145, 154–5. 55 NRS, SC29/44/67, p. 876. 56 MacEwen, Greening, pp. 7, 44.

31

he made on top of his office work.57 The ‘exotic names’ of companies like Deltenne,

Malcolm suggested ‘made an imposing show on the brass plates’ outside their office

building and ‘inspired confidence in the world-wide scope of the business transacted

inside’.58

Figure 1.6 Highland Transport Company advert, 193959

The Highland Transport Company, followed the ‘new trend’ for coach

tourism.60 Its coaches, according to an advert in the 1939 Inverness guide (Figures 1.6),

57 HCA, D436/4/2, pp. 2, 8; PCAM, letter from Sir Alexander MacEwen to Beatrice, 12 September 1916. 58 MacEwen, Greening, p. 44. 59 Inverness Courier Office, Guide for 1939 for Inverness, Culloden Moor and Clava Circles, p. 56. From the author’s private collection. 60 Miller, Inverness, p. 289.

32

ventured beyond ‘the ordinary haunts of man’ in ‘the acme of comfort’ and ‘at fares

within the reach of all’. 61 It is just one example of MacEwen’s twentieth-century

entrepreneurship and re-investment of imperial money at home that is analogous to the

Highland elite’s heavy engagement in empire throughout the previous centuries.62

Figure 1.7 Kessock House in North Kessock, Black Isle. Built in c. 1860 © the author, 201963

61 Inverness Courier Office, Guide for 1939, p. 56. 62 Devine, Scotland’s Empire, p. 334; Eric Richards, The Highland Clearances (Edinburgh, 2008), p. 51. 63 Kessock House and grounds remain outwardly – apart from a later added conservatory – largely unchanged compared with how it looked in the 1930s according to a photo in the house’s visitor’s book. See HCA, D375/5/3/2.The house was built in c. 1860 but the colonial-style veranda is an early-twentieth-century addition.

33

Despite ongoing income from the law firm, tea and local enterprises the

MacEwens downsized in 1936 as they were cash strapped. Kessock House (Figure 1.7)

was bought with a £850 loan.64 By 1939 MacEwen sold jewellery, including the ‘large

diamond star’ brooch and gemstones Beatrice had inherited from Clare.65 After his death

in 1941, the house was sold and most assets liquidised.66 Lady Beatrice was without

income – which might explain MacEwen’s humble gravestone (Figure 1.8). She, later,

described the inheritance as ‘one of the worst things that [had] happened’ to them.67 The

family’s apparent shame and sadness over their finances after Sir Alexander’s death

presumably contributed to their ‘Empire amnesia’.

Figure 1.8 MacEwen’s grave, Tomnahurich

© the author, 201968

64 HCA, D375/5/2/1; NRS, Property Search for Kessock House, North Kessock against Sir Alexander MacEwen (1936), p. 16; NRS, VR004200057, ‘MacEwen, Alexander M.’ (1940), No 29/51, ‘7 Annfield Road, House, Lethington’, valuation roll, Inverness burgh, ScotlandsPeople online (accessed 24 June 2019); NRS, VR 011500085, ‘MacEwen, Alexander M.’ (1940), No 441, ‘House and land, Kessock House’, valuation roll, parish of Knockbain, county of Ross and Cromarty, ScotlandsPeople online (accessed 24 June 2019). 65 HCA, D375/5/2/1, letter from Hamilton & Inches, Gold & Silversmiths, Edinburgh, providing a quote for three items of jewellery (1939); NRS, SC29/44/67, p. 882. 66 The bond – by the estate of Major Colin Lyon Mackenzie (1811–1881), former Inverness provost – was only discharged in 1943, when the trustees of Sir Alexander’s estate sold Kessock House ‘to Delta Muriel Duncan or Haig, wife of John Lindsay Haig’ of Glenurquhart. See NRS, Property Search, p. 18. 67 HCA, D436/7/1, letter from 10 January 1991, p. 1. MacEwen’s will showed ‘no effects’ to inherit. See National Probate Calendar, ‘MacEwen, Sir Alexander Malcolm of Kessock House’ (1942), GOV.UK Service - Find a will, https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Calendar#calendar (accessed 19 July 2019). 68 Alexander MacEwen was buried on 2 July 1941 at Inverness’ Tomnahurich cemetery. See The Times, ‘Funerals: Sir Alexander MacEwen’, 4 July 1941, p. 7.

34

Through using Ceylon tea as starting point, and ‘tea’ as a metaphor for empire,

this chapter demonstrates that national, regional and local British/Scottish histories are

‘imbricated in a world system fashioned by imperialism and colonialism’.69 Before

decolonisation ‘being imperial’ was integral to people’s lives.70 Scotland’s links with

Ceylon were demonstrably not limited to the Northeast but also included the Highlands.

MacEwen’s inheritance on one hand ensured the continuance of the family’s affluence

for half a decade – ‘the palmy days’ – and allowed MacEwen to run several companies

in Inverness that contributed to the area’s infrastructure, like the Highland Transport

Company. However, MacEwen was hit hard by the financial crash; he ended up cash-

strapped and could not recover his financial situation despite the subsequent economic

upturn from the mid-1930s. It is most intriguing that MacEwen, who commented on a

wide variety of personal aspects and issues relevant to Scotland did, seemingly, not

reflect on his own imperial entanglement. That Malcolm MacEwen dismissed the

Ceylon connection can partially be explained by the apparent shame over his mother’s

financial situation after her husband’s death. However, this denial is also evidence for

the cloud that overshadows people’s self-image and their perceptions of empire since

decolonisation. The phenomenon also shows in the absence of empire – other than as a

political entity – in MacEwen’s writings about imperial reform which are discussed in

the next chapter.

69 Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 21. 70 Ibid.

35

Chapter Two ‘At Hame’ with the Empire: 1 Alexander MacEwen,

Nationalist Imperialism and Imperial Reform

Chapter One discussed Alexander MacEwen’s entanglement in both the imperial and

local economy and highlighted the everydayness of empire. Chapter Two now moves

on to demonstrate MacEwen’s awareness of the wider connections between Scotland

and empire and his advocacy for imperial reform. Most scholars and commentators

focus on MacEwen’s political roles and portray him as a ‘notable’ but somewhat

nondescript ‘public figure’ that boosted nationalist prestige in Scotland’s ‘far north’.2

Historians have highlighted the books of the conservative nationalist Andrew Dewar

Gibb as ‘classic works’ of 1930s Scottish nationalist literature while MacEwen’s

writings go largely unmentioned.3 MacEwen’s ‘still lively and relevant’ thought on

empire is possibly best captured in the 2009 Scotsman article ‘Plus ça Change’, but has

thus far been overlooked elsewhere.4 Historians of twentieth-century empire, Britain

and Scotland, like MacKenzie, Devine, Finlay and Glass, as well as Andrew Thompson,

Jimmi Østergaard Nielsen and Stuart Ward, largely focus on two periods: (a) the surge

in popularity of Scottish Nationalism during the inter-war years; and (b) the Nationalist

rise in electoral credibility in the 1960s during the period of ‘imperial decline’.5 This

1 The author took the liberty to transfer and translate Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose’s notion of being ‘at home’ with the Empire into Scots; for the inspiration see Hall and Rose (eds), At Home with the Empire. 2 HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, p. 1; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 88, 95; H. J. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism (London, 1969), pp. 159, 163–164. Historiography on the ‘Establishment nationalist’ MacEwen is largely limited to 1930s Scottish politics or, in Miller’s case, Inverness history and MacEwen’s involvement in communal politics. See Cameron, ‘MacEwen’; Finlay, Independent and Free, pp. 96–146; Richard J. Finlay, Modern Scotland, 1914–2000 (London, 2004), p. 112; Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, pp. 159–67; Miller, Inverness, p. 291; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, p. 28; James Mitchell and Gerry Hassan, ‘Leadership of the SNP’, in James Mitchell and Gerry Hassan (eds), Scottish National Party Leaders, pp. 11, 15. 3 Hanham, Scottish Nationalism, p. 163; John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine, ‘Introduction’, in John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine (eds), Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2016), p. 7. 4 The Scotsman, ‘Focus: Plus ça Change; a Change for the SNP and the Rest of Us’ (2009). 5 Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 85–7; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 87–9; Devine, ‘Break-Up’; Finlay, Independent and Free, pp. 96–186; Finlay, ‘National Identity’, pp. 280–316; Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’; MacKenzie, ‘Brexit’, p. 578; MacKenzie Glass, ‘Introduction’, p. 1; Østergaard Nielsen and Ward,

36

chapter takes a new approach; it interprets the 1930s as a time in which – simultaneously

– Scottish nationalism gained popularity and the Empire came temporarily back into

focus.6 Chapter Two argues that MacEwen’s thought, which largely originates from this

period, exemplifies the intellectual framework in which people engaged with empire at

the time; analysing it vitally contributes to today’s considerations on Scotland’s place

within the imperial setup. The argument is structured along the discussion of five main

strands: the period of economic downturn and renewed interest in empire in which

MacEwen wrote; parallels with Ireland in MacEwen’s advocacy for the Monarchy;

MacEwen’s attitude towards imperial trade; the Empire’s utility in boosting Scotland’s

political clout; and nationalist stances on empire and ‘race’. The analysis illustrates

MacEwen’s vision for Scotland’s place in a reformed British Empire and highlights his

impassioned plea for revitalising the Scottish self-confidence.

MacEwen’s conception of Scotland’s place in empire was shaped by a renewed

debate about the idea of ‘Greater Britain’.7 In the late nineteenth century the economic

downturn had triggered moves toward a rapprochement between the constituents of the

white, English speaking, parts of the Empire.8 In the period in which MacEwen wrote,

around and after the Depression, the inter-dependency between metropole and the still

‘Cramped and Restricted’, pp. 159–62; Østergaard Nielsen and Ward, ‘Three Referenda and A By-election’, p. 201; Thompson, Empire Strikes Back. One exception is Finlay’s 1992 article which discusses Scottish nationalism in the imperial context. See Finlay, ‘For or Against’ and ch. one, footnote No 28. 6 James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world, 1783–1939 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 459, 472. 7 ‘Greater Britain’ commonly stands for the period of widespread popular imperialism in Britain between c. 1880s–1960s. See Belich, Replenishing, pp. 459, 472. The term was coined by the English politician Charles W. Dilke (1843–1911) in his eponymic 1868 travelogue. See Charles Wentworth Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-speaking Countries during 1866 and 1867, Vol. 1 and 2 (London, 1886); Belich, Replenishing, pp. 11, 70, 180, 204, 209; Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, pp. 15–16; Andrew S. Thompson, Imperial Britain: The Empire in British Politics, c. 1880–1932 (Harlow, 2000), pp. 15–17. 8 For more on this see Felicity Barnes, ‘Bringing Another Empire Alive? The Empire Marketing Board and the Construction of Dominion Identity, 1926–33’, Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, Vol. 42, No 1 (2014), p. 63; Belich, Replenishing, pp. 70, 209, 462, 456–78.

37

loyal Dominions, whose white denizens largely continued to endorse their Britishness,

further tightened.9

For MacEwen, the concept of Greater Britain was useful to rationalise calls for

Scottish independence within an imperial framework. In ‘Rebirth’, as well as in

Scotland at School (1938), MacEwen rejected ‘the doctrine that Unionism and loyalty

are synonymous terms’.10 He dismissed ‘the absurd suggestion’ that self-government

would weaken Scotland’s imperial ties and its loyalty towards Crown and empire as

‘freedom and constitutional government has not diminished the loyalty of the

Dominions’.11

Figure 2.1 A. M. MacEwen (centre) accompanying the royal couple on their stroll through An Clachan, 3 May 193812

9 Belich, Replenishing, pp. 209, 461–2; Phillip Buckner, ‘Introduction’, in Phillip Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, 2010), p. 5. 10 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 33; HCA, D375/3/3/3, Alexander M. MacEwen, as Chairman of the Inverness Education Committee, Scotland at School: Education for Citizenship (Edinburgh, 1938). 11 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 33; HCA, D375/3/3/3, p. 40. 12 Postcard (still picture from newsreel) from the author’s private collection.

38

As monarchist, MacEwen also thought it impossible that Scotland could be

‘disloyal to the Royal House which she placed on the throne’.13 Inspired by the pamphlet

The Kingdom of Scotland Restored, MacEwen envisaged a ‘ “dual monarchy” ’ sharing

‘ “joint concerns” ’ like defence, diplomacy and empire. 14 This argument was

remarkably similar to the one made earlier by the Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. As

monarchist separatists both MacEwen – shown in Figure 2.1 with the royal couple – and

Griffith were in the minority.15 This demonstrates that MacEwen’s thought was not

without parallel and that there was a Gaelic nationalist connection MacEwen could

explore when he travelled to Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State as part of a

Scottish delegation studying home rule in around 1934.16

As much as MacEwen avowed his loyalty to Crown and empire, he became

increasingly impatient with the constitutional setup and announced Scotland’s intention

‘to be very disloyal to a so-called Union, which is broken whenever it suits the

convenience of the British Parliament, and appealed to whenever that Parliament wishes

to keep Scotland in fetters’. 17 ‘Rebirth’, therefore, progressively argued for self-

government by the Scots ‘without relinquishing their interest in [the] wider international

and imperial questions’. 18 These suggestions were not unprecedented. Similar

arguments for home rule ‘as part of the larger plan of constitutional reform’ had already

13 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 33. 14 George Malcolm Thompson’s pamphlet The Kingdom of Scotland Restored (c. 1930) is quoted in: MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 16–18. 15 Griffith (1871–1922), Sinn Féin’s founding father, drew parallels between Hungary’s continued loyalty to the Habsburg Empire and the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy and Ireland’s potential future relationship with Britain in The Resurrection of Hungary (1904). See David G. Haglund and Umut Korkut, ‘Going Against the Flow: Sinn Fein’s Unusual Hungarian “Roots” ’, International History Review, Vol. 37, No 1 (2015), p. 54 and passim. 16 HCA, D375/3/8/1/2, ‘Self-Government in Practice’, report of a delegation to northern Ireland, the Irish Free State and the Isle of Man to study self-government (no date); HCA, D375/3/8/2/1, ‘Home Rule in Operation’, newspaper cuttings on the Nationalist delegation’s visit to Northern Ireland etc.; HCA, D375/3/13/5, passport belonging to Sir Alexander MacEwen (1934); James Hunter, ‘The Gaelic Connection: The Highlands, Ireland and Nationalism, 1873–1922’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 54, No 158 (1975), pp. 184–204. 17 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 33. 18 Ibid., p. 109.

39

been made by the Scottish Home Rule Association and by Labour. 19 MacEwen’s

thought was, therefore, not ground-breaking, but since he wrote when the British Empire

was still fairly intact, his approaches could be seen as radical.

Not British patriotism – to MacEwen an oxymoron – but the economy primarily

drove a Greater Britain.20 The Empire Marketing Board (EMB), established in 1926 to

foster free trade between Britain and the Dominions aimed to ‘bring the empire alive’

again by encouraging British consumers to ‘BUY EMPIRE GOODS FROM HOME

AND OVERSEAS’ (Figure 2.2).21 Parallel, serious political attempts were made to

reorganise the imperial economy and raise its competitiveness with Germany and

America. The Ottawa Agreement, struck after the Imperial Economic Conference in

1932, radically changed tariff policy through introducing ‘imperial preference’, which

temporarily increased inter-imperial trade and consolidated the Greater British

economy.22 ‘Self-protection and the severe economic crisis … have made us realise the

need for a closer economic union between Britain and the Dominions’, MacEwen

explained.23 Ottawa did not act as ‘prelude to a Federal Parliament’, though.24

19 Douglas Young, ‘A Sketch History of Scottish Nationalism’, in Neil MacCormick (ed.), The Scottish Debate: Essays on Scottish Nationalism (London, 1970), pp. 11–13. 20 MacEwen, Thistle Rose, p. 111. 21 For more on this see Barnes, ‘Another Empire’, p. 62. 22 Belich, Replenishing, pp. 458, 469–71; Douglas McCalla, ‘Economy and Empire: Britain and Canadian Development, 1783–1971’, in Philipp Buckner (ed.), Canada and the British Empire (Oxford, 2010), p. 256; Gupta, ‘International Tea Cartel’, p. 146. 23 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 130. 24 Ibid., p. 131. Despite the shared history and longstanding networks, Greater Britain did never formally take shape in a federal constitution or customs union between Britain and the matured ‘sister nations’, but existed informally for a while, concealed by concepts like ‘British Empire’, ‘British Commonwealth’, ‘wider “Anglo-Saxondom” and ‘Britannic realms’. See Belich, Replenishing, pp. 209, 458–9; Thompson, Imperial Britain, pp. 16–17.

40

Figure 2.2 ‘Highways of Empire’, EMB propaganda poster, by MacDonald Gill, c. 1927 © NA25

MacEwen’s proposals for Scotland’s future place in empire were not mere

visions but were considered, reasonable and practical.26 He proposed, for example, that

‘Scotland’s share of imperial expenses’ – ‘assessed on her taxable capacity’ – ‘would

be settled through a Joint Exchequer Board’.27 ‘Even if this involved some sacrifices,

the moral effect of Scotland having to pay her own way would be enormous and would

provide a valuable economic stimulus’, MacEwen presumed.28 He further suggested

‘having commercial representatives in the chief European capitals and in America and

the Dominions’.29 Despite his own involvement in the imperial economy through his

shares in Ceylon tea which, by 1939, still paid some dividends, MacEwen never actively

promoted Colonial goods in his writings.30 His argument for strong commercial ties and

custom-free imperial trade always emphasised Scottish services, manufacture and

produce.31

25 National Archives, Kew, CO 956/144, ‘Highways of Empire; Artist: MacDonald Gill’, c. 1927. 26 Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 89, 93, 95. 27 HCA, D375/3/2/8, pp. 68–70, 109; MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 90. 28 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 90. 29 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 85; Finlay, Independent and Free, p. 132. 30 HCA, D375/5/2/1. 31 HCA, D375/3/2/8, passim; HCA, D375/3/8/1/5, Scottish National Party, Scotland’s Road to Prosperity, party leaflet (Inverness, c. 1934); HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, pp. 1, 2.

41

In Towards Freedom MacEwen outlined what drove his reform proposals:

imperialism as ‘form of economic nationalism’ by design needs ‘colonies’, he argued,

and continuously gives ‘fresh impetus’ to ‘the unholy game of the exploitation of

coloured races’ which fuels ‘social, economic and political unrest’.32 MacEwen wanted

to break this cycle of ‘imperialistic aggression’.33 He agreed that some ‘evil practices

… ascribed to nationalism’ originate from imperialist capitalism, but found

counterarguments against self-government that used these parallels ‘quite irrelevant’.34

MacEwen’s example shows that although popular imperialism declined, empire still

played a vital role in the political discourse in which not only unionists remained loyal

imperialists.35

To assess whether MacEwen’s aversion against imperial ‘aggressions’ sat, to

him personally, well with his own colonial economic entanglement would be

speculative. 36 The MacEwens were, as highlighted in Chapter One, seemingly

indifferent toward their imperial entanglement. MacEwen’s apparent lack of reflection

in this respect might not be extraordinary though. These aspects were, generally, not

given much thought as most citizens were neither overly in favour nor particularly

adverse to the Empire. It was ‘simply there’ and the control the British exerted over

their colonies was something people could, and did, just ‘live with’ in their day-to-day

lives.37 This suggests that Sir Alexander did not consider his personal situation when he

32 Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, Towards Freedom: A Candid Survey of Fascism, Communism and Modern Democracy (Edinburgh, 1938), pp. 18, 22. 33 Ibid., p. 22. 34 Ibid., pp. 19, 95. 35 Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 19. 36 MacEwen, Towards Freedom, p. 23. No evidence of a personal reflection on MacEwen’s imperial entanglement has to date been found in either the archival, the published or any privately collected primary-source material. See also Chapter One. 37 Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2, 21, 23, 25.

42

used empire as tool for his progressive politics but did only ‘think imperially’ when it

came to its structural reform.38

In MacEwen’s ideology, Scottish statehood and empire were, as demonstrated,

not mutually exclusive but complementary. MacEwen argued that while the influence

of Scots on the Empire is beyond question, it was about time that the Scottish nation

would play its part.39 Both MacKenzie and Mackillop make very similar arguments

today: many Scottish individuals actively participated in the Empire; Scotland retained

distinctive systems of law, banking, education and church; the Scots kept a different

outlook and distinct identity – still they ‘remained a nation without a state’.40

MacEwen saw nationalism as ‘the basis of internationalism’ and his reforming

imperialism did not stop him from simultaneously having ‘a European outlook’.41 He

is, therefore, exemplary for the twentieth-century strand of powerfully imperialist-

nationalist politicians and thinkers that reconsidered Scotland’s position and suggested

that it was time to restore its state as an independent global player. Over centuries

Scotland had bolstered its stance in the world through varying alliances, like the Auld

Alliance with France.42 During the inter-war years this ‘makeweight’ function was

fulfilled by the Empire, which ‘seemed to offer Scots (so far as some nationalists were

concerned) the status of a global people worthy of a separate state’. 43 MacEwen,

therefore, did not just ‘study’ ‘Scottish Affairs’; his analysis of Scotland’s present

38 Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 39 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 32. 40 MacKenzie, ‘Brexit’, p. 578; John M. MacKenzie, ‘Essay and Reflection: On Scotland and the Empire’, The International History Review, Vol. 15, No 4 (1993). Mackillop makes his argument in the context of the participation of Scots in the East India Company. See Andrew Mackillop, ‘Locality, Nation, and Empire: Scots and the Empire in Asia, c. 1695–c. 1813, in John M. MacKenzie and T. M. Devine (eds), Scotland and the British Empire (Oxford, 2016), p. 59. 41 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 32; MacEwen, Towards Freedom, p. 7. 42 MacKenzie, ‘Brexit’, p. 578; MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, p. 231; John M. MacKenzie, ‘Empire and National Identities: The Case of Scotland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 8 (1998), p. 228; MacKenzie, ‘Essay and Reflection’, p. 738. 43 MacKenzie, ‘Brexit’, p. 578; MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Introduction’, p. 7.

43

condition and engagement with the concept of nationalism enabled him to reimagine

Scotland’s place in empire and the wider world.44

The assisting role and disproportionate influence the Scots played in establishing

and shaping the Empire was widely acknowledged in the twentieth century.45 The

Scottish stake, however, was interpreted differently by divergent strands within the

nationalist movement. The liberal MacEwen and his SNP-internal rival and successor,

the ex-Conservative Paisley-born law professor Andrew Dewar Gibb (1888–1974), for

example, showed rather different attitudes. 46 Despite being entangled in empire,

MacEwen did not overuse the Scottish role in his arguments. Gibb, however,

highlighted the Scottish contribution in Scotland in Eclipse (1930) and Scottish Empire

(1937) to argue for Scotland’s entitlement to its imperial share.47 As ‘Scottish interests

are bound up with every colony’, preserving Scotland’s status ‘as a Mother-nation of

the Empire … at all costs’, was Gibb’s priority; receding from this ‘unique position’ by

assuming ‘what is called Dominion Status’ would have been ‘an unthinkable decline’.48

44 HCA, D375/3/2/8, title page. 45 For the Scots’ self-proclaimed status as ‘empire builders’ and their prominent role in empire see Andrew Dewar Gibb, Scottish Empire (London, 1937); Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 13; Alexander Malcom MacEwen, ‘Note by Sir Alexander MacEwen, Chairman, Highlands Committee, Empire Exhibition, 1938’, in HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders; MacKenzie, ‘Brexit’, p. 578; MacKenzie, ‘Essay and Reflection’, p. 721; MacKenzie, ‘National Identities’, pp. 221–3; MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Introduction’, pp. 14–18; Østergaard Nielsen and Ward, ‘Cramped and Restricted’, p. 162. 46 Ewen Angus Cameron, ‘Gibb, Andrew Dewar (1888–1974), ONDB (Oxford, 2004–19); Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 89–90; Catriona M. M. Macdonald, ‘Andrew Dewar Gibb’, in James Mitchell and Gerry Hassan (eds), Scottish National Party Leaders (London, 2016), pp. 106–7; Young, ‘Scottish Nationalism’, p. 15. 47 Gibb, Scottish Empire, p. vii. 48 Andrew Dewar Gibb, Scotland in Eclipse (London, 1930); pp. 186–8.

44

Figure 2.3 MacEwen and Gibb’s 1930s monographs49 © the author, 2019

MacEwen too stated decidedly that ‘Scotland has no intention of relinquishing

her share in Imperial affairs’.50 Instead of stressing a supposed Scottish entitlement and

the dominance of the metropole, however, his reforming ideas involved all parties –

metropolitan and colonial. That MacEwen, proposed ‘a great Federation of free peoples’

sharing close economical, commercial and cultural ties and ‘an Imperial Parliament in

the true sense of the term’ suggests that the empire he envisioned was racially

inclusive.51 Unlike Gibb, MacEwen was prepared to share a political platform with the

Dominions.

49 From the author’s private collection. 50 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 109. 51 Ibid.; MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 128–31.

45

Much of the inter-war Scottish unionist/nationalist debate around empire used

longstanding racialist ideas that worked both for and against Scottish involvement in

it.52 That the term ‘race’ was ambiguous and laden with many ill-defined connotations

shows in a comparison of the two nationalists’ writings (Figure 2.3); where Gibb held

on to hierarchical race-based structures and Anglo-Scottish superiority, MacEwen

emphasised status equality, ‘partnership’ and ‘friendship’ among nations. 53 These

different attitudes to race, and MacEwen’s recognition of the shortcomings of

imperialism, set the two politicians apart.54

MacEwen, despite inevitably and frequently using the term ‘nationalism’,

deeply disliked it and its associated racialist connotations. ‘If instead of “Nationalism”

we speak of “Nationhood” we are’, the political thinker suggested, ‘more likely to arrive

at a judgement unbiased by political prejudices’. 55 After all, ‘in nations, as in

individuals, its character which counts’. 56 Where MacEwen called out Hitler’s

‘murders’, Gibb expressed ‘respect’ and ‘intense admiration’ – and is still ‘haunted’ by

these flirts with anti-Semitism and fascism as well as by his anti-Irish sentiments.57 In

stark contrast to Gibb, the SNP’s Scottish Reconstruction, authored by MacEwen and

others, emphasised that ‘Scottish Nationalists do not advocate a policy of racial

exclusiveness’. 58 MacEwen’s proposal of a civic and inclusive nationalism

demonstrates that the discourse around empire and race ‘provided for Scots a powerful,

52 Colin Kidd, ‘Race, Empire, and the Limits of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Nationhood’, The Historical Journal , Vol. 46, No 4 (2003), pp. 873, 875, 877–8, 880, 881–3, 888, 892. 53 Gibb, Eclipse, p. 187; HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, p. 2; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, p. 95; Hall and Rose, ‘Introduction’, p. 8; Kidd, ‘Race’, p. 877. 54 MacEwen, Towards Freedom, p. 23. 55 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 14. 56 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 26. 57 PCAM, letters from Sir Alexander MacEwen commenting on Eric Baume; to the Ministry of Information (26 October 1940) and The Inverness Courier (3 November 1940); MacEwen, Towards Freedom, pp. 75, 76; Cameron, ‘Gibb’. For the full quote of Gibb’s remarks from 1939 see Finlay, Independent and Free, pp. 197–8; Liam Connell, ‘Scottish Nationalism and the Colonial Vision of Scotland’, Interventions, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2004), p. 259. 58 Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, John MacDonald MacCormick, Thomas Hill Gibson, Scottish Reconstruction (Glasgow, n. d), p. 7.

46

but ambiguous, metanarrative which underwrote a wealth of constitutional possibilities,

including [different kinds] of nationalism’.59

The fascist threat from the Continent, however, changed the political mood in

Scotland and MacEwen’s responses. In 1938 MacEwen still explored how imperial

reform could benefit a putative independent Scotland. He argued – tentatively and

against the backdrop of electoral ‘apathy’ and abating demand for nationalist solutions

– that England and Scotland should share rights and responsibilities for ‘jointly created’

imperial issues.60 By 1939, however, when he penned Act Now For the Highlands and

Islands (Figure 2.4) together with John Lorne Campbell, MacEwen had resigned these

hopes and, instead, called to action on the welfare of the Highlands and Islands.61

Figure 2.4 Act Now For the Highlands and Islands62

59 Hunter, ‘Gaelic Connection’, p. 203; Kidd, ‘Race’, pp. 891–2. 60 MacEwen, Towards Freedom, pp. 91, 93, 121–34. 61 Alexander Malcolm MacEwen and John Lorne Campbell of Canna, Act Now For the Highlands and Islands (Edinburgh, 1939). 62 Ibid. From the author’s private collection.

47

MacEwen argued that Scotland needed to reinvigorate the ‘consciousness of a

national life’ and ‘a national spirit’ through reviving ‘common history [and] traditions’,

and through having ‘common aspirations’ like improving education and preserving the

Gaelic culture and language in the Highlands.63 In arguing that ‘only after recapturing

some sense of their distinctive identity will Highlanders be psychologically equipped to

take on the task of creating something better from the wreckage of the past’, Professor

James Hunter, in On the Other Side of Sorrow, makes a very similar argument for the

need of a revival of Scottish cultural self-confidence today.64

Chapter Two used a different angle to explore the deep and complex Scottish-

Imperial connections by using Sir Alexander MacEwen as exemplar for the framework

through which people wrote. The analysis of MacEwen’s intellectual legacy

demonstrates that inter-war Scotland was still comfortably ‘at home’ with the Empire

and acts as a reminder that Scottish nationalism and imperialism were not mutually

exclusive. In the period’s Scottish nationalist discourse, which revolved around empire

and race, MacEwen’s language was much less laden with negative connotations than

that of, for example, his contemporary Gibb. MacEwen wished to reform the British

Empire, to address its shortcomings and to continue Scotland’s vital role, but within a

federation of equal nations represented by a truly Imperial parliament under a shared

monarchy – and with a large degree of self-governance brought about through a

strengthened sense of nationality and a revitalised Scottish cultural self-confidence.

While Chapter Two, therefore, argues that MacEwen’s reformist ideas aimed to shape

63 HCA, D375/3/2/8, p. 20; MacEwen, Towards Freedom, pp. 9–7, 137. 64 For Professor Hunter’s argument for a revival of cultural self-confidence in the Highlands see James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands (Edinburgh, 2014), pp. 38, 215; Alastair McIntosh, ‘Foreword’, in James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands (Edinburgh, 2014), pp. xxvi–xxxiv, xxxix.

48

an imperial framework in which a repositioned Scotland could address its economic and

societal shortcomings, Chapter Three proceeds to a discussion of MacEwen’s practical

engagement for the Highlands and Islands in the imperial context – as it would indeed

be ‘a profound mistake to seek to divorce the thinker, the visionary, and the man of

action’.65

65 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 15.

49

Chapter Three ‘Re-inspiring Scotsmen’: 1 Alexander MacEwen,

Highland Development and the 1938 Empire Exhibition

While the previous chapter analysed MacEwen’s thought on imperial reform and

Scotland’s place in empire, Chapter Three demonstrates his efforts as part of a

movement that used both modernity and tradition together to address the so-called

‘Highland problem’. The case of MacEwen, a prolific writer and one of the most vocal

advocates for self-help in 1930s Scotland, powerfully illustrates that nationalism and

modernism were complementary, interacting elements in the wider argument for

regional renewal. 2 MacEwen was heavily involved in organisations that aimed to

improve the Highland situation, like the Gaelic Society of Inverness, the Highland

Reconstruction Association (HRA) and the Highlands committee for the 1938 Glasgow

Empire Exhibition. 3 Much has been written about twentieth-century Highland

development, but MacEwen’s activism, particularly his role at Glasgow in 1938,

remained largely unexplored thus far.4 This chapter addresses this historiographical gap.

1 This expression is borrowed from the Scottish National Development Council’s remark on ‘ “The need for re-inspiring Scotsmen” ’, as quoted in MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, appendix iv, p. 193. 2 MacKenzie, ‘Self-help’, p. 125; Margery Palmer McCulloch, ‘Introduction’, in Margery Palmer McCulloch (ed.), Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland 1919–1939, Source Documents for the Scottish Renaissance (Glasgow, 2004), p. xiii. 3 The Highland Reconstruction Association formed in 1918 to promote development and investment in labour-intensive industries and influence government policy so that the region could recover from the First World War. See HCA, D375/3/9, on the Highlands Construction Association (1920–c. 1924). Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 98–99; Miller, Inverness, p. 291; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, p. 283. MacEwen also advocated for educational reform, particularly for the improvement of the education of young adults in the Highlands and Islands through establishing Danish-style folk high schools after N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). While interesting, this aspect lies outside the scope of this analysis. For more on it see HCA, D375/3/3/3, p. 39; HCA, D436/4/2, passim; Neil M. Gunn, ‘Sir Alexander MacEwen: Philosopher, Patriot and Beloved Leader’, obituary in the Scots Independent, August 1941; MacEwen, Towards Freedom, pp. 137–9, 187, 188, 190; MacEwen, Greening, pp. 9, 10; Palle Rasmussen, ‘The Folk High School: Denmark’s Contribution to Adult Education’, in Leona M. English and Peter Mayo (eds), Learning with Adults: A Reader (Rotterdam, 2013), p. 219. MacEwen’s role in the 1930 Highland exhibition has also been omitted to concentrate on the imperial aspect. 4 Noteworthy exceptions that mention MacEwen’s efforts in some detail – though not in connection with the Empire exhibition – are Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, pp. 14–15, 17–9, 23; Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 87, 90–1; Ewen Angus Cameron, ‘ “Outside the Ranks of Those Who Stand for the Traditional and sentimental”? Lachlan Grant and Economic Development’, in Ewen Angus Cameron and Annie Tindley (eds), Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871–1945 (Edinburgh, 2015), pp. 84, 86, 98; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, pp. 98–9.

50

It analyses MacEwen’s argument for Highland development alongside the Highlands

committee’s contribution to the 1938 Glasgow exhibition and argues that the 1930s

debate about Highland modernity and development happened in an imperial context.

Chapter Three first introduces both the ‘Highland problem’ and the Glasgow exhibition

and, then, links both through discussing four key aspects: arguments for a Highland

development board; calls for Highland regeneration and industrialisation; emphases on

Gaelic language and culture in the 1938 Highland exhibit and throughout the movement;

and reflections on the Clachan in the Committee’s publications.

Since the mid-eighteenth century, the Scottish Highlands and Islands were –

particularly by outsiders – deemed permanently stunted due to unspecified inherent

faults of the area and its inhabitants. The term ‘Highland problem’ encompassed this

supposedly predestined underdevelopment and migration-induced population

haemorrhage.5 Being singled out as inhabitants of a region labelled ‘depressed’ and

‘derelict’ diminished the Highlanders’ self-confidence and overshadowed their empire-

wide success.6 Subsequent initiatives to alleviate the situation did not address the area’s

specific circumstances, like large distances, difficult terrain and low population.7

5 James Hunter, ‘History: Its Key Place in the Future of the Highlands and Islands’, Northern Scotland, No. 27 (2007), p. 4; Katie Louise McCullough, ‘Resolving the “Highland Problem”: The Highlands and Islands of Scotland and the European Union’, Local Economy, Vol. 33, No 4 (2018), pp. 421–3, 425, 426, 433. 6 HCA, D375/3/8/1/5, pp. 1, 2, 4; HCA, D375/3/8/1/7, Scottish National Party, Derelict Scotland: The Facts about Scotland’s Plight, party leaflet (Glasgow, c. 1934); MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 43–64; MacEwen, MacCormick, Gibson, Scottish Reconstruction, p. 3; Ewen Angus Cameron, ‘The Scottish Highlands: From Congested District to Objective’, in T. M. Devine and Richard J. Finlay (eds), Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 153; Richard J. Finlay, ‘National Identity in Crisis: Politicians, Intellectuals and the “End of Scotland”, 1920–1939’, The Historical Association (1994); Hunter, ‘History’, pp. 4, 6–9; McCullough, ‘Resolving’, p. 422; MacKenzie, ‘Self-help’, pp. 123–125. 7 For more on this see, for example, Cameron, ‘Congested District’, pp. 155–6; McCullough, ‘Resolving’, pp. 421, 423, 427, 433.

51

1930s Scottish politics and society were dominated by the severe depression that

hit the Highlands disproportionally. 8 Land reform, previously key, dropped in

significance. Instead demands to tackle pressing issues from joblessness to housing and

transport together – and locally – increased.9 MacEwen, who through decades in local

government, knew the area’s distinct conditions intimately, contributed to this discourse

that embraced ‘a new modernity’.10 To dispel notions of faultiness, MacEwen stated

that ‘Scotland is sound [and] only asks to develop a Future … worthy of her traditions

of Self-Help, Courage and Freedom’.11

MacEwen’s public engagement culminated in his contribution to the 1938

Glasgow exhibition which was expressly pitched as ‘an Empire exhibition’ – ‘not a

Scottish exhibition’ – though deemed ‘worthy’ of both.12 As King George VI said in his

opening speech: ‘The exhibition is an empire undertaking but … owes its origin, and to

a great extent its execution, to the people of Scotland’.13 MacEwen, as chairman,

became the figurehead of the Highlands committee and was present at the cutting of the

first sod at Bellahouston park on 19 March 1937 and the royal couple’s opening-day

stroll through the Clachan on 3 May 1938 (Figure 2.1).14

8 A post-war boom, expected for the 1920s, never happened; instead emigration peaked. During the 1930s the economy was further damaged and Scotland-wide unemployment numbers soared. For more on this see Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 11; Cameron, ‘Congested District’, pp. 154, 157; T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History (London, 2012), p. 318; Finlay, ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 78; Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism, p. 281; MacKenzie, ‘Self-help’, pp. 123, 124, 125–6; Miller, Inverness, p. 291. 9 Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 11; Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 86, 88, 281; Cameron, ‘Congested District’, pp. 153, 155; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, p. 99. 10 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 43; Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 11; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, p. 99; Finlay, ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 78. 11 HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, p. 3. 12 The Times, ‘Empire Exhibition in Glasgow: First Sod Cut On Site’, 20 March. 13 British Pathé, The Empire Exhibition Opened by H. M. The King’ (1938), Pathé Gazette Newsreel, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIwvvYYNDUc (accessed 14 March 2019), min. 1:09–1:30. 14 HC (eds.), ‘An Clachan’, p. 1; MacEwen, ‘Note’; The Times, ‘First Sod’; British Pathé, Empire Exhibition Opened by H. M. The King’, min. 4:05–4:22; Reuters News Agency, King George VI and the Queen Touring the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow (1938), Reuters-Gaumont British Newsreel, British Pathé, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/VLVABK3ZRY06LVMPG42BD6XWEGBS0-KING-GEORGE-VI-AND-THE-QUEEN-TOURING-THE-1938-EMPIRE-EXHIBITION/query/1938+empire+exhibition (accessed 10 October 2019), min. 1:03–1:17.

52

Bellahouston’s exhibition ended a successful series of ‘great exhibitions’ in the

Empire’s ‘Second City’.15 In line with EMB and Ottawa objectives, the Exhibition was

designed to emphasise Scotland’s imperial links, lift people’s morale, boost industry,

trade and employment, and to bring the Empire closer to the Scottish public.16 That

Scottishness and empire predominated despite a supposed ‘international’ aspect

indicates Scotland’s enduring imperial vision.17

Figure 3.1 Hugh Quigley’s Plan, cover, 193618

15 Its predecessors were held in 1888, 1901 and 1911. See MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, pp. 101; MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, pp. 226–7, 229; MacKenzie and Devine, ‘Scots in the Imperial Economy’, p. 230. 16 The Times, ‘First Sod’; Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, pp. 213, 215; Finlay, ‘Continuity and Change’, p. 80; Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 17; MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, p. 101; MacKenzie, ‘Self-Help’ p. 1; MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, pp. 226, 229; MacKenzie, ‘National Identities’, p. 228. 17 MacKenzie argues that these exhibitions were primarily about negotiating imperial identities. See MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, pp. 227, 231. 18 Hugh Quigley, A Plan for the Highlands: Proposals for a Highland Development Board (London, 1936). From the author’s private collection.

53

MacEwen and the wider 1930s development movement newly addressed issues

the HRA and publications like H. F. Campbell’s Highland Reconstruction (1920) had

already discussed in the 1920s.19 Encouraged by MacEwen, the Scottish economist

Hugh Quigley (1895–1979) joined the debate.20 His Plan for the Highlands (1936,

Figure 3.1), inspired by Lachlan Grant’s ‘New Deal for the Highlands’ (1936), argued

for the region’s ‘re-equipment’.21 Together with the laird of Canna, MacEwen later also

devised a ‘Ten Year Plan’ that emphasised transport, agriculture, fishing,

hydroelectricity and tourism.22 These new approaches to the ‘Highland question’ would,

once realised, soon take effect, MacEwen argued.23 Therefore, they were introduced to

a larger – imperial – platform in 1938.

Highlands and Highlanders (Figure 3.2), argued in favour of establishing a

Highland development board. The Reverend Thomas M. Murchison emphasised ‘the

special circumstances in the Highland area’ that ‘require special treatment’ as ‘Highland

reconstruction can be achieved on an adequate scale only by tackling the various

problems comprehensively and not in isolation’.24 The cleric argued for creating ‘a

single authoritative body’ to plan and direct ‘Highland reconstruction and development’

from within.25

19 Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, ‘Foreword’, in Hugh Quigley, A Plan for the Highlands: Proposals for a Highland Development Board (London, 1936), p. 3; Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 30. MacEwen was the Association’s secretary in the early 1920s. See ‘MacEwen’, in Scottish Biographies, p. 465; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, p. 98. 20 Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, pp. 17–23. 21 MacEwen, ‘Foreword’, pp. 3, 6; Hugh Quigley, A Plan for the Highlands: Proposals for a Highland Development Board (London, 1936), pp. 9, 27–35; Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 17. For more on Dr Grant (1871–1945) and his ‘New Deal’ see Lachlan Grant, ‘A Selection of the Writing and Speeches of Dr Lachlan Grant: Section 6, Highland Development’, in Ewen Angus Cameron and Annie Tindley (eds), Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871–1945 (Edinburgh, 2015), pp. 175–228. The term ‘New Deal’ was borrowed from the Tennessee Valley development scheme. See Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 17. 22 HCA, D375/3/8/1/9, pp. 2–3; MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 43–64. This ‘Plan’ offered concrete advice for prioritising and addressing the issues. See MacEwen and Campbell, Act Now, pp. 7–43. 23 MacEwen, ‘Foreword’, pp. 4, 5, 6; MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. xii, 195, 197–236; Quigley, Plan, pp. 36–41, 42–47. 24 The Reverend Thomas M. Murchison, ‘Wanted – A Broader Outlook: The Highlands To-day and To-morrow’, in HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders (Glasgow, 1938), p. 100. 25 Ibid.

54

Figure 3.2 Title page of The Highlands and the Highlanders, 193826

Progressives saw industrialisation and hydroelectricity, if not as panacea, then

at least as major means of introducing modernity to the Highlands.27 The Elgin-born

railway engineer Alexander Newlands (1870–1938) devoted his chapter in Highlands

and Highlanders to the ‘modern economic aspect’ of using naturally provided

waterpower.28 The Caledonian Power bill Newlands argued in favour of was, however,

rejected by Parliament.29

Not only Westminster opposed. Waterpower, and industrialisation generally,

had local opponents too. Frustrated, MacEwen criticised apathetic ‘Highland

26 HC (eds), Highlands and Highlanders. From the author’s private collection. 27 HCA, D375/3/12/5, Alexander M. MacEwen, Caledonian Power Scheme and Highland Development, pamphlet (c. 1932); Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, p. 89. 28 ‘Newlands, Alexander’, in Scottish Biographies 1938 (London and Glasgow, n. d.), p. 591; Alexander Newlands, ‘Water Power in the Scottish Highlands: Its Modern Economic Aspect’, in HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders: The Past and Future of a Race (Glasgow, 1938), pp. 122–41. 29 Newlands, ‘Water Power’, pp. 138–41.

55

Gentlemen’ who clung to an idealised past, objected to progress and argued that the

Highlands should ‘pursue their “natural development” ’. 30 To increase Highland

employment, he argued, people needed to tolerate local factory building: ‘I don’t like

factories and machinery [either], but … the modern electrically driven factory is a very

different thing from the old steam factory’.31 While these statements were well received,

some were content with leaving Highland policy to the Government and, moreover,

portrayed MacEwen as ‘foreigner’ meddling in Highland business.32

MacEwen, a member, praised the establishing of the Scottish National

Development Council and local industry boards as ‘the first attempt since the Union to

give national expression to Scotland’s industrial needs’. 33 While efforts like

MacEwen’s also helped to increase the popularity of hydroelectricity, large-scale

realisation and the setting-up of a local body was delayed. 34 The ‘fixation with

“preservation” ’ waned slowly; some public and official resistance – as visualised

through the character of ‘the Ghillie’ in the 1943 pro-hydropower propaganda film

Power for the Highlands – remained beyond the 1930s. 35 Opposition was, only

overcome subsequently when the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and the

Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB) were created in 1943 and 1965

respectively.36

30 Gaelic Society of Inverness, ‘Annual Dinner’, in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Vol. 38, 1937–1941 (Inverness, 1941); Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 90–1. 31 Ibid. 32 HCA, D436/7/2; Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 9; Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, p. 281. 33 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 23; ‘MacEwen’, in Scottish Biographies, p. 465. For more on the Scottish National Development Council see MacKenzie, ‘Self-help’. 34 Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, p. 90. 35 NLS, Reference No 0279, Power for the Highlands (1943), dialogue by Neil Gunn and Roger MacDougall (Paul Rotha Productions, sponsored by the Ministry of Information for the Scottish Office), https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0279?search_term=hydro&search_join_type=AND&search_fuzzy=yes (accessed 23 October 2019). 36 Hydroelectricity schemes at the time not only provided reliable energy but encouraged other forms of investment and enterprise in the Highlands. See Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, p. 8. After speaking to ‘two US soldiers’ about the Tennessee Valley Authority’s hydroelectricity scheme and the prospect of ‘work for the boys when they come home’ from the war, the Ghillie changed his mind. See NLS, Ref. No 0279,

56

Another key priority in Highland development was to address the decline in

Gaelic speakers and perceived loss of Gaelic culture. 37 After the ever-increasing

anglicisation of the Highlands from the eighteenth century, the persecution of Gaelic-

speakers after Culloden, the replacement of Gaelic in both education and everyday life

in the nineteenth century, and the language’s further demise through emigration,

English became widely seen as means for social and economic advancement.38

The Inverness Gaelic society, established in 1871, was ‘by far the most

important institutional manifestation of the Gaelic revival’.39 MacEwen, the society’s

Chief (1933), and others refuted the common assertion ‘that Gaelic was of little practical

value’: Gaelic language and culture was, MacEwen argued, vitally important to protect

Highland heritage, learn from history, liberate the ‘national expression’, and benefit

from positive side-effects of bilingualism.40

MacEwen highlighted the Gaelic movement’s successes and admired ‘the

energy and perseverance’ of An Comunn Gàidhealach but criticised the organisation’s

seeming emphasis on entertainment while doing ‘very little to foster Gaelic … in

everyday life’.41 MacEwen asked ‘all who can’ ‘to make some effort to acquire the

min. 01:30–11:30. For the HIDB and its subsequent replacement by Highlands and Islands Enterprise in 1991 see Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, pp. 12, 233; Ewen Angus Cameron, ‘Highlands and Islands Development Board’, in Michael Lynch (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2011); Cameron, ‘Congested District’, pp. 153, 154, 162–3; McCullough, ‘Resolving’, pp. 423, 428. 37 The decline of over 80,500 Gaelic speakers in the Highland counties in the previous four decades even exceeded the area’s total population loss of nearly 68,500 between the censuses of 1881 and 1931. Between 1911 and 1931 alone, Scotland-wide numbers of Gaelic-speakers shrunk by nearly 54,000 to 130,080. See MacEwen, ‘Foreword’, in Quigley, pp. 3–4; MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 198–9; Finlay, Modern Scotland, p. 160. 38 Finlay, Modern Scotland, p. 160; Richards, Highland Clearances, pp. 51–2; Hunter, Sorrow, p. 207; Smout, Century of the Scottish People, pp. 83, 219. 39 Hunter, ‘Gaelic Connection’, p. 182. 40 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 12, 22–3, 197, 205–6; Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, p. 87. Cited from ‘Extract from a speech given by Dr D. J. Macleod, H.M.I.S., at dinner of the Gaelic Society of Inverness on 8th April 1932’ as quoted in MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, appendix to ‘The Highland Problem’, pp. 237–9. On MacEwen as Chief see Mairi A. MacDonald, ‘History of the Gaelic Society 1871–1971’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Vol. 49 (Inverness, 1971). 41 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 198–9.

57

language’ and ‘create a genuine Gaelic atmosphere’.42 Leading by example, he started

learning Gaelic aged fifty-six and gained according to his friend, the Highland novelist

Neil M. Gunn (1891–1973), language proficiency ‘surprisingly’ fast. 43 MacEwen

refrained from defining ‘true’ Highlanders through their language, but argued that

‘unless Gaelic can be made a living tongue throughout the Highlands … the days of the

typical Highlander are numbered’.44

The low priority given to it in education, increasingly turned Gaelic into ‘the

Cinderella’ among the Empire’s languages, but its relatively little literature remained

valuable to its readers.45 In the Highlands committee’s publications and on site, Gaelic

was well represented: the guidebook (Figure 3.3) emphasised its presence through both

Gaelic-speaking ‘inhabitants’ and literature on sale.46 The introduction to Highlands

and Highlanders was in Gaelic, and a chapter solely devoted to Gaelic literature quoted

poetry and prayers, which shows the importance given to the language in representing

the Highlands.47

42 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, pp. 205–6. 43 Gunn, ‘Philosopher, Patriot and Beloved Leader’; Cameron, ‘MacEwen’, p. 87; Francis Russel Hart and J. B. Pick, Neil M. Gunn: A Highland Life (London, 1981), pp. 63, 112–14, 130; MacEwen, Greening, p. 7. Sir Alexander was also fluent in French, see MacEwen, Greening, p. 7. 44 MacEwen, Thistle and Rose, p. 204. 45 W. J. Watson, ‘The Position of Gaelic in Scotland’, The Celtic Review, Vol. 10, No 37 (1914), pp. 79–81. 46 HC (eds), ‘An Clachan’, pp. 2–6. 47 Rev. Donald Lamont, (Dòmhnull Mac Laomuinn), ‘Facal-Toisich [Foreword]’, in HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders: The Past and Future of a Race (Glasgow, 1938); W. J. Watson, ‘The Gaelic Literature of Scotland’, in HC (eds), The Highlands and the Highlanders: The Past and Future of a Race (Glasgow, 1938). Highlands and Highlanders’ subtitle and MacEwen’s remarks on the ‘validity of the race’, again, demonstrate the 1930s use of racialist language discussed in Chapter Two and are examples for a common usage of the term ‘race’ during the period: here, it stands for the people of the Highlands. See MacEwen, ‘Note’; Kidd, ‘Race’, pp. 878, 887; Birnie, ‘Scottish Office’, pp. 19–20.

58

An Clachan was a mock Highland village constructed at the 1938 Empire

Exhibition – a version of rural Highland life ‘modelled on existing dwellings’ with

‘admirably reproduced’ thatched cottages, pipers, spinning ladies, ‘a burn and a loch’

and ‘a chief’s castle’ (see Figures 3.4 and 3.5).48 The guidebook takes the reader on an

imaginary stroll through this ‘picturesque part of the Exhibition’, to displays of ‘Home

Industries’ like tweed weaving, and into ‘the ferryman’s cottage’ which ‘internally’

offered ‘modern’ living standards.49 Mixing modernity with so-called ‘native villages’

as ‘crowd-pullers’ was common in exhibitions like these.50 The Committee expected

‘thousands of visitors’ and indeed the ‘ “Highland village in the heart of Glasgow” ’

became with twelve million visitors the most popular and profitable of Bellahouston’s

1938 exhibits.51

The 1938 Highland exhibit, was accompanied by a plethora of paraphernalia and

souvenirs on sale in ‘a little white-washed shop’, and postcards could be send from the

‘real’ Post Office (see Figures 3.3–3.7). 52 Overlooked by the futuristic Tower of

Empire, the Clachan, displayed within the dramatically modernist architectural context

of uniform Art Deco pavilions (see Figure 3.7), combined ‘national romanticism’ with

‘imperial renewal’ and embodied 1930s marketing and propaganda.53

48 MacEwen, ‘Note’; Reuters News Agency, King George VI and the Queen Touring the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, min. 1:03–1:17. For the ‘mock’ aspect and the artificial backdrop of the loch on film see British Pathé, The Empire Exhibition Opened by H. M. The King’, min. 4:21; Reuters News Agency, King George VI and the Queen Touring the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, min. 1:06. 49 HC (eds), ‘Official Guide’, pp. 1–6. 50 Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, p. 219; Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 528; MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, p. 227. 51 MacEwen, ‘Note’; Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, p. 224. 52 HC (eds), ‘Official Guide’, pp. 2–3. 53 Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, p. 213; MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire, p. 101; MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, p. 229; MacKenzie, ‘Self-help’, p. 143.

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Figure 3.3 The ‘Official Guide’ to An Clachan, 193854

54 HC (eds), ‘Official Guide’. From the author’s private collection.

60

Figure 3.4 Postcard ‘The Clachan, Empire Exhibition’, with piper, 193855

Figure 3.5 Postcard ‘The Clachan & Sea Loch, Empire Exhibition’, 193856

55 From the author’s private collection. 56 From the author’s private collection.

61

Today, these villages are often read as deliberately constructed to powerfully

contrast modernity and backwardness. 57 This was not the intention at the time.

MacEwen described An Clachan as ‘probably one of the most distinctive features of the

Exhibition … and symbol of Highland life’.58 He found it ‘fitting that the Highlands,

which have contributed so much to the Empire, should have a place of their own in this

Empire Exhibition’. 59 The Clachan, as the exhibition’s ‘cultural centrepiece’,

symbolised ‘a historically distinctive genius … that could be reconstituted in the modern

world’.60 The emphasis put on cultural distinctiveness could be seen as deliberate ‘self-

othering’ to justify demands for the political autonomy of the Highlands.

Figure 3.6 Posted greeting card with ‘Clachan Post Office’ sticker, J. Valentine and Son, 193861

57 MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, p. 227. 58 MacEwen, ‘Note’. 59 Ibid. 60 MacKenzie, ‘Second City’, p. 229. 61 From the author’s private collection.

62

Figure 3.7 ‘Official Letter Card of Empire Exhibition’, unposted, 193862

62 From the author’s private collection.

63

The companion book connected past, present and future – tradition and

modernity – as other publications had done before.63 Through dedicating part one to

‘The Old Highlands’ and part two to chapters on ‘Land Settlement and Industry’, ‘Water

Power in the Highlands’, ‘Transport and Communications’ and ‘Economic

Possibilities’, the contributors did ‘not only give a striking picture of the past’ but dealt

‘in a practical and suggestive manner with the problems which concern the Highlands

to-day’. 64 Highlands and Highlanders ostensibly offered what people needed: ‘A

Broader Outlook’.65

Through fusing past achievements with a prospective prosperous future

throughout their physical exhibit and their publications, the Committee attempted to

regenerate public enthusiasm for the Highlands in empire.66 This linkage between

introducing modern industries and a revival of Highland tradition is seemingly at odds

with today’s common assumption that ‘becoming modern’ means demolishing tradition

– in the inter-war Highland reconstruction movement modernity and tradition went hand

in hand.67 This ties into demands for a revival of cultural self-confidence discussed in

Chapter Two and James Hunter’s present-day argument for history’s ‘key place’ in the

future of the Highlands and Islands.68

Scholars today use the 1938 Glasgow exhibition as case study to examine both

imperial propaganda and the popular cultural construction of the Highlands that became

Scotland’s accepted ‘heritage’ and ‘official’ expression of identity.69 With its artificial

loch, props and the mock-Hebridean blackhouse, the Clachan, to some, epitomises

63 Like, for example, MacEwen, Thistle and Rose and Quigley, Plan. 64 MacEwen, ‘Note’. 65 HC (eds), Highlands and Highlanders, part II, pp. 91–162. 66 Finlay, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 19. 67 Burnett, Modern Scottish Highlands, pp. 15–16; Vernon, Distant Strangers, p. 1. 68 Hunter, ‘History’. 69 Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’; Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’.

64

mounting fears of losing the ‘authentic Highland idyll’.70 Critics dismiss An Clachan as

a ‘wholly artificial’ ‘site of manufactured remembrance’ and ‘the most quixotic’ exhibit

of the Exhibition – an ‘outdoor pantomime’ envisioned by officials intoxicated by

Twilight literature.71 Its setting within hyper-modern surroundings is seen as indicative

for Scotland’s ‘troubled and schizoid state’.72

The Highlands committee, however, consciously used the ‘Black House’

symbolically for ‘Highland life which is rapidly vanishing’ and merited

representation.73 Organisers and contemporaries were aware of the danger that the

Clachan’s picturesqueness might veil the Highlands’ social and economic problems if

people wrongly assigned it fully to the past.74 Gunn, for example, asked visitors to

escape the exhibition and visit the real Highlands, where new technological

developments like hydroelectricity schemes were starting to take hold.75

In speaking about ‘exoticizing’ the Highlands and Islands, Lorimer implies that

the exhibit representing the area and its people was imposed from outside; instead it

originated from within.76 He also, seemingly, overlooks the contemporary side to the

Scottish contribution of ‘Bellahouston’s imperial extravaganza’; the ultra-modern

Scottish pavilions on Scottish Avenue that matched the Tower’s Art Deco style and

showed industrial exhibits.77 Technically, these were the main ‘Scottish’ exhibits as An

Clachan, initially, solely represented the Highlands and Islands. Only shortly before the

70 Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’. 71 Ibid., pp. 524, 527, 528, 529. 72 Ibid., pp. 524, 527, 528. 73 HC (eds), ‘Official Guide’, pp. 3–4, 7–8. 74 MacEwen, ‘Note’; Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 528. 75 Gunn, ‘Philosopher, Patriot and Beloved Leader’; Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 528. 76 Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 529. 77 Empire Exhibition Scotland, ‘Empire Exhibition, Scotland – 1938: Official Catalogue’ (Glasgow, 1938); Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, pp. 213–14, 216; Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 528.

65

exhibition’s opening it became part of the Scottish national narrative in which

modernity and ‘tradition’, the urban and rural, stood side by side.78

Through discussing 1930s approaches to solving Highland ‘problems’ along the

area’s contribution to the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition, Chapter Three

demonstrates that inter-war debates about modernity and development had an imperial

context. The exhibition gave the Highlands committee around MacEwen the possibility

to communicate their message to a bigger audience. Activists like MacEwen, Quigley

and the authors of Highlands and Highlanders contributed vitally to a new approach in

tackling Highland specific issues. The Committee’s publications connected economy

and culture and, together with An Clachan, epitomised the movement’s aim to introduce

modernity – represented by hydroelectricity and factories – whilst retaining tradition

and the Gaelic language. The 1930s literature discussed is worth mining for historical

evidence on various subjects – from waterpower to the Gaelic revival – and on

sentiments expressed during the period. Highlands and Highlanders should, therefore,

not be dismissed as ‘drearily presented little pamphlet’.79 MacEwen’s example shows

that nationalism and modernism were complementary, interacting elements in

arguments for national renewal within empire. While his far-sighted views found

followers, MacEwen’s ambitions for a revival of a cultural self-confidence did not

materialise immediately. The wider arguments by 1930s ‘re-inspiring Scotsmen’,

however, led to subsequent developments, like the founding of the NSHB and the

HIDB, and are echoed in today’s wider debates around Gaelic and the environment.

78 Britton, ‘Urban Futures/Rural Pasts’, p. 219. 79 Lorimer, ‘Ways of Seeing’, p. 528. The author owns a copy of Highlands and Highlanders and does, personally, not find the book with its green cloth binding, ‘modern’ golden gilt lettering on the spine and its rich content with black-and-white illustrations ‘drearily presented’ at all.

66

Conclusion

In March 1886, in a letter from Rangoon, Annie MacEwen (1841–1915, Figure 4.1)

asked her eleven-year-old son Alec ‘at home’ ‘to speak out more distinctly’ – later he

did.1 Thus, this dissertation could use the life and times of Sir Alexander MacEwen as

a case study to investigate several aspects in early-twentieth Scotland in which the

imperial affected the Highlands. Chapter One examined personal and economic links

between the Highlands and Ceylon, the nature and impact of imperial investment at

home, and the un-remarkableness and omnipresence of empire in society that

contributed to Empire forgetfulness. Chapter Two went on to explore MacEwen’s

intellectual legacy regarding his involvement in Scottish nationalism and his ideas on

imperial reform; and Chapter Three looked at Highland development through the lens

of the 1938 Glasgow Empire Exhibition. All this was done to support the argument that

both MacEwen and the Scottish Highlands merit more scholarly attention in Empire

historiography than they receive to date; as the archival, privately owned and published

documents on and by MacEwen are thus far largely unexplored. This analysis of aspects

related to MacEwen’s life aims to raise his profile. It demonstrates that there was more

to the man than the vacuous phrases usually describing him suggest – like ‘the ex-

provost after whom Macewen Drive in Inverness is named’.2 MacEwen is a starting

point from which to explore many aspects topical to the historiography of early-

twentieth-century Scotland and the British Empire, both at home and abroad, which is

why this dissertation and the research avenues it opens are relevant.

1 NRS, GD347/108, letter from Annie MacEwen to Alexander MacEwen, Rangoon 26 March 1886. MacEwen and his sister Mary (1871–1957) lived with Annie’s sister Elizabeth in England and France from a very early age. See HCA, D375/9/3, on Elizabeth (Elise) Sutherland-Taylor (1856–1918). 2 From the author’s experience after chats with archive staff, other researchers and members of the public.

67

Figure 4.1 Annie MacEwen, Alexander MacEwen’s mother3

Chapter One emphasises economic aspects in MacEwen’s Ceylon tea

connection, like negative consequences of the Great Depression on the wider imperial

economy and the MacEwens. MacEwen could, seemingly, not compensate the losses

and failed to profit from the following upturn – but kept on running local enterprises

that strengthened the Highland infrastructure. Tea is also a fitting metaphor for the

empire at home. Chapter Two shows that despite his aim to gain more Scottish self-

governance, MacEwen envisioned a reformed British Empire in which Scotland could

take part in a commonwealth of equal nations with a shared Monarchy. The last chapter

analyses Highland development in the context of empire and demonstrates that

throughout the Highlands committee, and in MacEwen’s take on the subject, modernity

and tradition went hand in hand.

3 HCA, D375/7/7/6, photographic portrait of Annie MacEwen by Whyte, Inverness (n. d.).

68

Through his birth in British India and ‘return’ to the Highlands as a young man,

MacEwen makes a great case study object for a variety of imperial aspects and their

impact ‘at home’. He is not one of the ‘classic’ returnees of earlier centuries that are

already widely discussed in the historiography on the Scots in empire. MacEwen’s

entanglement is more low-key and less obvious than histories telling us about, say,

military heroes or orientalised adventurers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries –

but MacEwen, the author would argue, is as interesting as any of them.

This dissertation uses MacEwen deliberately in three rather different ways to

demonstrate his versatility as object of study and it deliberately only touches upon the

more obvious aspects of MacEwen’s time in office and involvement in the Nationalist

parties.

The options for further research leading on from this thesis are manifold. All the

general themes discussed – from the Highland-British Ceylon connection over

MacEwen’s intellectual legacy to Highland development in the imperial context and the

Highland contribution to the 1938 exhibition – deserve further in-depth research to

cover aspects that lie beyond the scope of this dissertation.

This study was also not the place to discuss MacEwen’s ‘European upbringing’

and pro-Europeanness and to engage with Malcolm MacEwen’s statement that his

father had developed through his ‘unsettled childhood’ a ‘broader cultural outlook than

most’ of his contemporaries.4 Future research could therefore look, through MacEwen’s

writings and the Continental literature he read, into Scotland’s relationship with Europe

during the inter-war years.

4 MacEwen, Greening, p. 7.

69

Another interesting point that emerged from this research, but could not be

explored, is the intriguing relationship between Sir Alexander and Neil Gunn, as well

as parallels in their very different literature. This is something the author will start to do

research on in the coming months.

These suggestions are just some ideas that came to mind while scrutinising the

primary sources as, with a heavy heart, much had to be put aside to concentrate on the

question at hand. They show, however, that reducing MacEwen’s relevance to early

twentieth-century Scottish nationalism would be an injustice to him and the deeply

interesting period in Scottish history he lived in.

Figure 4.2 Studio portrait of Sir Alexander MacEwen, c. 1933

© Andrew Paterson/ SHPA5

5 Scottish Highlander Photo Archive (SHPA), 29684b, ‘Sir Alexander Malcolm MacEwen, Provost of Inverness 1925–1931’, studio portrait with pince-nez, by Andrew Paterson, Inverness (c. 1933), from a set of two, http://www.scottishhighlanderphotoarchive.co.uk/imageDetail.aspx?ID=10702.

70

What struck the author most while working on this dissertation is that

MacEwen’s intellectual legacy has aged remarkably well. His moderate and level-

headed arguments remain topical in the current political landscape and the continuing

debate on Scottish independence. MacEwen’s thought on empire and Scotland’s place

in the world challenges today’s tendencies to re-conjure the ‘good old days’ of the

British Empire.6 In the context of leaving the European Union, MacEwen stands for an

outward looking, not insular, Scotland and a truly global Highland identity.

It was challenging to finalise this dissertation during a worldwide pandemic that

most likely heralds the worst economic and social crisis the world has seen since the

1930s depression – which probably will, again, affect the Highlands and Islands even

more adversely than other parts of Scotland. Focusing on the relevance of Empire

history to further the understanding of Scotland’s imperial past and legacy in the present

was helpful, though. Perhaps this study adds, in a small way, something positive and

relevant to Scottish historiography on the early twentieth-century and to the debate

around finding new ‘makeweights’ to further strengthen the Scottish argument for the

future.

6 Ali Meghji, ‘ “The Sugar at the Bottom of the English Cup of Tea”: Centering Race-critical Studies in Brexit Britain’, The British Sociological Association – Everyday Society, posted 16 April 2019, https://es.britsoc.co.uk/the-sugar-at-the-bottom-of-the-english-cup-of-tea-centering-race-critical-studies-in-brexit-britain/(accessed 18 September 2019).

71

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