The Glengarry Cairn and Highland loyalism in the British Atlantic world

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the early 1840s, a monumental cairn was built on an island in the St Lawrence River by the Glengarry Highlanders Militia who were stationed in eastern Upper Canada and western Lower Canada during the Rebellions of 1837–1838. The cairn was officially raised to commemorate the Glengarry Highlanders’ supreme commanding officer, Sir John Colborne and to acknowledge the role the Glengarry Highlanders played in supressing the Rebellion. However, as a product of early Victorian Highlandism and its association with three generations of a transatlantic Highland regiment, the cairn was also a physical representation of the historic Highland Scottish military contributions to the British imperial project in the Atlantic world.