Alexander Selkirk 1704-2004Scotland and the

Cultural Perception of Islands

Ray Burnett Dícuil Institute of Island Studies

Outer Hebrides, Scotlandray@diis.ac.uk

Island Voyages: Charting a Passage

• Moment: 1704• Perspective: Scotland & the

Hebrides• Approach: landfalls & links• Focus: cultural perceptions• Aim: post-voyage reflections

The Moment: 1704

• Alexander Selkirk– Daniel Defoe– Robinson Crusoe

• 1707 Act of Union

• A Scottish

perspective– colonialism– subalternity– complicity

Perspective: Scotland & the Hebrides• MacPherson’s Ossian

– the Ossianic impact

• Issues– National Identity– Indigenous Culture– Island Landscapes

• The Ossianic gaze – the Sublime Savage

Voyages & Landfalls: Joseph Banks

• Voyages & Voyagers– Tahiti– Staffa

• Purveyors of the primitive– exotic Islanders– sublime Islands– concentric circles

Voyages & Landfalls: Johnson & Boswell

• the Hebrides August 1774– Bossie and the Doctor– Scotland’s Past - England’s

‘Other’

• Cultural waypoints– Monboddo’s monkeys– Formosa & Tahiti

• Enlightenment & Empire– Edinburgh– London

Voyages & Landfalls: James Cook• The Pacific August

1774– Cook’s parallel Voyage– New Hebrides– New Caledonia

•Cultural contacts– the third dimension– Forster’s prism

•Conversational silences

– Boswell and Cook

Islands of Empire: the binaries of colonialism

• R. M. Ballantyne– Coral Island

• Merchants– James Matheson

• Missionaries– Formosa &

South Seas

• Travel writers– Isabella Bird

The Binaries of Colonialism: R. L. Stevenson

• Background– Edinburgh– Lighthouses– Scott &

Balantyne

• Scottish Islands– Treasure Island– Kidnapped– Landscapes of

memory

The Binaries of Colonialism: R. L. Stevenson

• South Seas Islands– The Beach of Falesa– The Foreigner at Home

20th Century Islands: engaging modernity

• island essentialism– Celtic Twilight– outpost islands– the distilled nation

• exotic into comic– Whisky Galore– myths into caricature

• island retreats• The ‘island problem’

21st century: Selkirk’s Legacy• Crusoes

– ‘Robinson Crusoe’ Taiwan 2004

– postmodernity/late capitalism

• Castaways– ‘Robinson Crusoe Island’– ‘Castaway Island’– branding the Hebrides

• cultural capital

1704 – 2004:post-voyage reflections

• Perspective– the peculiarity of the Scottish

prism

• Cultural ontology of islands– the making of islands,

islanders, islandness– cultural cargoes

• Cultural transmission– landfalls of empire– texts of colonialism

• Changing Islands –Changing Worlds

– cultural landscapes– cultural identities

– sustainable communities–comparative island studies

–brokerage and outputs