‘Necessary reading for our moment’

As more of us become increasingly willing to confront our history and try to understand where some of the western world’s wealth and power came from David Alston’s new book is indeed ’Necessary reading for our moment’. David was the first curator of the Cromarty Courthouse Museum and is a preeminent Scottish historian. In 2007 he, together with graphic artist and printmaker John McNaught. created a stunning exhibition in the Courthouse to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the African Slave Trade.

Now he is publishing the results of further research into the Highland links to the African Slave Trade and the plantations in the Caribbean which depended on enslaved labour for their profits, not just for the plantation owners but also the overseers, administrators and craftsmen who worked on the plantations. ‘Slaves and Highlanders’ is published by Edinburgh University Press on 31.10.21. You can buy the book from our shop, together with Margot Henderson’s poetry commemorating the abolition of the African Slave Trade.