Plantation: Its Process in Relation to Scotland's Atlantic Communities, 1590s–1630s

Abstract

The article sets the Scottish and British Crown's colonizing measure vis-a-vis the Scottish communities of the North Atlantic arc within a broader imperial framework. Underlying such course of action was the articulation of a rhetoric as a vital linguistic tool for its plantations' raison d'etre. The study delineates key aspects in the major plantation schemes of Scotland that were implemented between the 1590s and 1630s. Both the internal colonizing project of Lewis and the external ones of Ireland, briefly, and Nova Scotia, will be primarily assessed from the bottom-up perspective of the maritime communities of the northern Highlands. Distancing themselves from the governmental rhetoric, these ventures helped reconfigure clan allegiance and dynamics in the Lewis case, and reposition the role and identity of these far-northerners in the Irish and Nova Scotia plans as well as in redefining these enterprises' nature.