Roots/Routes of Empire: Mary Seacole and Scottish-Caribbean Identity

Abstract: This article examines the overlooked role of Scottish ancestry in the making of an imperial subjectivity in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857). Mary Seacole's claim of having "good Scotch blood" (11) is integral to the imperial self-hood that emerges from her memoir, underpinning two of its key features. One is the centrality of blood ties and kinship—roots—as the basis for a communal belonging based not on a putative homeland but on a common ancestry, as Seacole lays claim to being a Scotswoman on her father's side. The other is the role of imperial networks—routes—as her subjectivity is shaped by the conduits that determined the circumstances of her birth and upbringing and that also set the terms for her celebrated career as a globetrotting nurse/doctress and sutler. Tracing Seacole's roots and routes makes visible the transimperial links between Scotland and the West Indies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—links that shaped a Scottish-Caribbean identity.