Traveling Gaels: Coloniality and Dislocation in the Gaelic Atlantic

Abstract: Our essay studies three early-nineteenth century autobiographical texts written by young Scottish Gaels who narrate their sense of dislocation in the 'Gaelic' Atlantic. Dugald MacNicol's journal (1809–1813), written entirely in Gaelic, describes leaving Argyll for Barbados as a young army officer. Memoirs of Charles Campbell (1828) was written in a Glasgow prison, after Campbell had murdered his wife in a fit of insanity, following his service on a Jamaican slave plantation. William MacGillivray's English-language Hebridean journal (1817–1818), describes the author's sojourn, while a student, on the island of Harris. We examine these journals in the context of Romantic-era travel literature and conclude with thoughts on the relationship between an increasingly stressed Gaelic culture at home and the emergence of a 'Gaelic' Atlantic within the British imperial world.