Two Glasgows: Scotland, Linen and Clothing the Enslaved
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The street names of Glasgow’s Merchant City are a permanent reminder of the personal and corporate fortunes that were made on the back of the tobacco trade. What is much harder to extract from the annals of history, are the names of the enslaved people on whose lives these fortunes were made. This talk will show how tracing textiles, particularly coarse linen that was produced in Scotland and shipped across the Atlantic, can help us to understand the enslaved experience, Scotland’s role in it and, in some cases, identify the enslaved individuals whose labour and lives are woven into the fabric of Glasgow.
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