Sugar, Slave-Owning, Suriname and the Dutch Imperial Entanglement of the Scottish Highlands before 1707

This article uncovers the Scottish Highlands’ earliest-known overseas slave-owning circle and the imperial entanglement with the Dutch Empire and its sugar on which this depended. It thus provides a case study of the transnational, Dutch-influenced nature of commerce in a non-metropolitan part of northern Europe in the later seventeenth century. The article highlights two interconnected contemporary developments: the engagement of Highland migrants or exiles in the sugar-based enslavement of African and indigenous populations in Suriname; the region’s heavy reliance on the importation of sugar... Mehr ...