Enlightenment, education and India: Sir John Macpherson and King’s College, Aberdeen

This article explores the connections between the Scottish politician and colonial administrator Sir John Macpherson (c.1744-1821) and King's College, Aberdeen. A native of the isle of Skye, John entered the English East India Company’s service in 1769. A member of the supreme council of Bengal, he eventually became Governor-general of India in 1785.  Like his friend and kinsman James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and his own father, the Rev. John Macpherson of Sleat, John was educated at King’s College. The influence of Aberdeen scholars on both men was not only intellectual, but political. Aberdeen provided the Macphersons with powerful networks of Indian patronage. Among John’s friends was Roderick Macleod, philosophy professor and sub-principal of King’s whose correspondence reveals a common range of colonial and antiquarian interests shared with the Macphersons of Sleat. Moreover, the relations between John’s family and subprincipal Dr Hugh Macpherson, also from Skye, exemplify Aberdeen’s pivotal role in providing opportunities abroad for families from the western isles. This article also examines John's neglected role in the foundation of the Inverness Academy. His correspondence contains a real manifesto for exporting human and cultural capital from the Highlands to the East Indies. Partly funded by a group of Highland nabobs in Bengal, the Academy provided education for young Highlanders in a range of topics (language, finance, arts) in order to qualify them for entering universities while offering a secular alternative to the SSPCK. Finally, specific attention is given to John's sponsoring of a scholarship for Gaelic-speaking students at King's, showing the fruitful interactions between Aberdeen, the Gaelic Enlightenment and India in the 1790s and 1800s. Such preoccupations reposition Aberdeen not only as a natural centre for educationbut also as a crucial step towards the participation of the Scottish Highlands to the British Empire in the second half of the 18th century.