Historicising Robert Burns's Jamaica, 1786–1834

This article re-evaluates Robert Burns's connections with Jamaica, 1786–1834. New insights are gained via an inter-disciplinary methodology that examines cancelled sojourns in 1786, as well as comparisons with Scots who did go to colonial Jamaica. Burns's correspondences and literary outputs are sampled, as well as shipping, legal and plantation records. This facilitates comparative analysis of interconnected narratives: Burns's plans to go ‘owre the sea’; ‘three voyages’ to Jamaica; publishing the Kilmarnock and Edinburgh Editions; the ‘Jamaica bodies’; and how such connections with Caribbean slavery are imagined today. This article establishes a model with implications for how Burns and Caribbean slavery is interpreted in civic Scotland.