The Return of the Native: James MacPherson, Improving Strategies and Clanship Imagination in Late Eighteenth-century Badenoch

Abstract

This paper examines a neglected facet of the life of the poet and colonial agent James Macpherson (1736–1796). Better known today as the ‘translator’ of Ossian, James Macpherson was also a political writer and MP who enjoyed a long association with the East India Company (EIC). In the 1780s, James returned to his native Badenoch, bought an estate, and played a decisive role in the reconfiguration of the area through military recruitments, land arbitration and new strategies of landownership and improvements. Studying James Macpherson's relation to land and kinship reveals a more complex and ambivalent man than previously acknowledged in existing literature. Drawing from official and private records, as well as Gaelic material, this paper uncovers the extent to which his reestablishment was the product of his imperial activities, as was visible in the reinjection of external capital in land. James's political connections in London were instrumental in assisting Duncan Macpherson (later of Cluny), son of the exiled Macpherson clan chief, in recovering the forfeited estates. Enjoying popularity with his tenants, James was reluctant to impose purely commercial improvements: his considerable East Indian profits provided him with financial emancipation from unpredictable land revenues and the ability to preserve his image of a paternalist landowner locally. However, this paper also engages with James Macpherson's ideology and recreation of a mythical past serving his own interests. Offering valuable help to the entrepreneurial Macpherson gentry also involved in India and America, James took a decisive role in offering advise and support to large-scale improvement projects. His adoption of a lavish lifestyle and conscious use of entertainment, made possible by the influx of colonial wealth, enabled him to challenge the old social order, juxtapose himself with the Cluny Macpherson and recreate a post-clanship culture serving the interests of the colonial gentry. The controversial perception of James Macpherson, whose role oscillated between that of nouveau riche and ‘clan champion’, sheds a new light on the impact of the British Empire on Badenoch, and the Highlands at large. A closer look at his reestablishment in Badenoch, a county traditionally seen by historians as an example of effective management without mass depopulation, provides new perspectives on the intersection of late-eighteenth century empire, improvement, and clanship.