The real story of Scotland’s connections to transatlantic slavery has been lost to history and shrouded in myth. There was even denial that the Scots unlike the English had any significant involvement in slavery. Scotland saw itself as a pioneering abolitionist nation untainted by a slavery past.

This book is the first detailed attempt to challenge these beliefs. Written by the foremost scholars in the field, with findings based on sustained archival research, the volume systematically peels away the mythology and radically revises the traditional picture. In doing so the contributors come to a number of surprising conclusions.