Nothing quite like honourable defeat

Roddy Martine talks...

MOMENTOUS events are frequently shaped by defeat, not victory. The aftermath of tragedy creates new beginnings. Such a new beginning took place following the two failed Jacobite Uprisings of the 18th century, and the Highland Clearances that followed them.

Ask yourself. Where would America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand be today if Charles Edward Stuart had triumphed on Culloden Moor?

I started thinking about this recently having had the pleasure of dining with Celeste Ray, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Shamefully I had not at that stage read her marvellous book Highland Heritage – Scottish Americans in the American South which, in my opinion, goes a long way towards explaining the expatriate psyche, not just in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina upon which it focuses, but wherever Scots have immigrated over the last three centuries.

What Celeste is essentially pointing out is that the identity embraced as “Scottish” by these communities is not so much based on a contemporary outlook on Scotland as a whole, as on an historical “Highland” identity, irrespective of where their ancestors actually originated from. And it has everything to do with the romance of the doomed. Like the Battle of the Alamo, or the Last Days of Pompeii, there is nothing better than a catastrophe for attracting the popular imagination, especially if there is a touch of tartan with a few sad songs involved. Davey Crockett ...

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• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 12
• Page : 7
• Words : 704