Jacobites, Jamaica and the Establishment of a Highland Catholic Community in the Canadian Maritimes

Abstract

This article uses the sale of Glenfinnan and Glenaladale in 1773 to explore how the colonial ambitions of an elite catholic family connected the northwest Highlands and Islands of Scotland with Jamaica in the Caribbean and St John's Island (Prince Edward Island) in what would later become the Canadian Maritimes. It highlights two equally significant Highland pasts at play—colonised and coloniser—and posits that they can never be fully reconciled. Each past stands as a testament to the reality of imperialism. It establishes important markers about the need to think of the longevity of the impact of the money earned in the Caribbean and how its influence was often felt across generations. While this is essentially a case study of one family cluster, the patterns that emerge of how money was earned, spent and re-invested in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is representative of many others.