Slavery has a long and complex history in Scotland. While slavery was not as widespread in Scotland as it was in other parts of the British Empire, there is evidence that various forms of unfree labor existed in the country for centuries. Tracing the origins of slavery in Scotland requires an examination of the shift from serfdom to other forms of bondage leading up to the 18th and 19th centuries when chattel slavery became more common.
Serfdom in Medieval Scotland
In the Middle Ages, the predominant form of tied labor in Scotland was a system known as serfdom. Serfdom emerged as a method for landowners to retain laborers on their land after the decline of the old Roman system of slavery. Serfs occupied an ambiguous position between freedom and slavery. While not owned as property, serfs were bound to the land on which they labored and required their lord’s permission to leave.
Scholars believe serfdom first appeared in Scotland sometime in the 12th century. The system was most extensive in the rural, lowland regions of the country. Wealthy landowners granted tracts of land known as “fiefs” to tenants in exchange for labor and rents. These tenant farmers would cultivate the land and perform other services for the landowner. In addition to working their own small plots, serfs were required to labor on the landowner’s property known as the “demesne.” Their labor obligations were usually organized through the corvée system, which required a set number of days working the lord’s land.
While serfdom restricted freedom in many ways, serfs in Scotland had some basic rights and privileges. They could not be sold apart from the land they worked. The system provided relative stability and serfs had access to their own plots of land to support themselves and their families. However, feudal lords still had significant control over serfs through labor, taxation, and inheritance laws that tied descendants to their parents’ tenancy.
Transformation to Other Forms of Unfree Labor
By the 14th century, serfdom in Scotland was starting to break down as a result of population declines caused by the Black Death and other socioeconomic disruptions. Wealthy elites began to transform the old system of serfdom into different forms of unfree, tied labor focused more on estate service and household work rather than field agriculture.
One of the new forms of bondage that emerged was known as “bondage tenure.” Unlike serfdom which tied workers to the land itself, bondage tenure bound workers and their descendants to the landlord or the landlord’s estate. In lowland Scotland, this often involved female domestic workers bound to serve at the manor house while their husbands worked the estate as laborers. The system became so expansive that in 1587, an act was passed ordering that no one in certain lowland districts could have more than four married estate servants.
Another form of bound labor that became increasingly common was collier serfdom. This involved the compulsory labor of coal miners who were tied to mining work. Coal owners were granted powers to forcibly detain colliers and compel their labor in the mines. Entire families and communities were bound to these arrangements through long contracts and restrictive settlement laws. Colliers occupied an almost enslaved status and could be bought, sold, or leased along with coal workings and other mining property. The conditions suffered by collier serfs were notoriously harsh.
Alongside these bonded labor systems, impressment became increasingly common beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Impressment allowed merchant ships to essentially conscript or abduct men and force them to work as sailors. While not directly tied to land, impressment severely constrained freedom through coercive contractual labor enforced through violence or deception.
Emergence of Chattel Slavery and Racial Slavery Ideology
During the 17th and 18th centuries, racial chattel slavery as seen in the Americas began to emerge in Scotland. This coincided with the expansion of the British Empire and Scotland’s increased involvement in colonies in the Caribbean and Americas where plantation slavery was widespread. However, slavery within Scotland itself remained relatively limited compared to the Americas.
There is evidence of small numbers of chattel slaves being present in Scotland in the 17th century. African slaves were sometimes brought back as servants by sea captains and merchants involved in imperial trade. In the Caribbean colony of Jamaica, some Scottish landowners established slave-dependent sugar plantations worked by Africans purchased in the transatlantic slave trade.
As racial slavery became more established in the British Atlantic world, some Scottish intellectuals began formulating racist justifications for the system. In his 1709 tract Good Old Cause, the scholar Charles Leslie claimed that slavery was justified for those he deemed as “brutish or ignorant.” The philosopher David Hume also wrote racist commentaries, describing black people as inferior to whites in his 1753 essay Of National Characters.
However, Scotland’s direct participation in the transatlantic slave trade was relatively minimal and emerged slightly later than in England. Only about 78 slave voyages were launched from Scottish ports between 1576 and 1775, representing less than 1% of Britain’s overall slave trading activity. The main Scottish ports involved were Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Leith.
This relatively small scale participation in the slave trade did not prevent many Scots from becoming heavily involved in colonial slavery in the Americas. By the mid 18th century, Scots owned nearly 30% of the estates in Jamaica and Scottish merchants dominated the slave economies of Tobago, Grenada, and Dominica.
Domestic and Agricultural Slavery
As American plantation slavery continued expanding in the 18th century, some limited forms of domestic slavery also emerged in Scotland itself. Wealthy Scottish landowners returning from the colonies sometimes brought slaves back with them as servants. Slavery gained some legal recognition when a 1701 ruling stated that masters could discipline slaves from the colonies under colonial, rather than Scottish, laws.
By the late 18th century, advertisements for slave sales also began appearing in Scottish newspapers, although on a small scale. Census records indicate there were only about 100 black slaves in Aberdeen by 1790. Another estimate suggests there were about 400 slaves in total scattered across Scotland around 1780-1820.
This domestic slavery tended to involve higher status personal servants rather than plantation field laborers. Female slaves were sometimes acquired to be dressmakers and personal maids. Male slaves served as butlers, cooks, or footmen. Some educated slaves worked as secretaries or accountants.
A small number of Scottish landowners also experimented with using slave labor in agriculture, mining, and industry rather than only as domestic servants. The most prominent example was Sir Archibald Grant who purchased enslaved laborers to work his estates in Dominica and Trinidad. After returning to Scotland, he put at least 17 slaves to work at his coal mines and farms at Monymusk in Aberdeenshire in 1784-1785. This caused some local controversy and lawsuits over the legality of perpetuating colonial slavery practices in Scotland.
Anti-Slavery Movement
As American slavery reached its height around 1800, an abolitionist movement began emerging in Scotland. Critics of slavery pointed to Scotland’s own history of unfreedom under serfdom and coal mining bondage to argue the nation should oppose new forms of slavery being practiced in the British Empire.
In 1792, the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed as one of the first abolitionist organizations in Britain. Led by philosopher William Robertson, the society gathered over 200 signatures urging Parliament to end the slave trade. Scottish thinkers such as James Beattie, Adam Ferguson, and Dugald Stewart published some of the earliest European critiques of racial slavery.
Thomas Clarkson’s influential 1786 essay on slavery drew on visits to Scottish port cities to gathering first-hand accounts of the slave trade. These Scottish abolitionist voices eventually helped spur the British Parliament’s decision to ban the slave trade in 1807.
Slavery itself would not be abolished in British colonies until 1833. Limited cases of domestic slavery persisted in Scotland even after this, but had largely disappeared by the mid 19th century. The popular opinion in Scotland moved firmly toward opposing bound labor and embracing free wage labor. However, the profits of the past slave system continued shaping Scotland’s economy well into the Industrial Revolution.
Conclusion
In summary, various forms of tied labor existed in Scotland from the Middle Ages through the 19th century. Serfdom and impressment gave way to estate bondage, collier serfdom, and eventually limited racial chattel slavery by the 18th century. While not as extensive as in other empires, Scottish merchants and thinkers contributed greatly to the British transatlantic slave system. However, Scotland also produced some of the earliest anti-slavery agitation. Understanding this complex history illuminates how slavery reshaped social relations in Scotland itself and its role in broader imperial networks.