Please note the date for this additional seminar. Dr Anthony Neal will present his seminar in the usual Wednesday slot on 12 July.
An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Valerie Wallace (Daiches-Manning Memorial Fellow in 18th-Century Scottish Studies 2022-23; University of St Andrews)
The Case of William Macao: Alienness, Subjecthood and Legal Pluralism during Britain’s Reign of Alarm
William Macao (c.1753–1831) was the first immigrant to settle in Scotland from China. Born around 1753 in an unknown part of China, at some point he met David Urquhart, a Scottish medical doctor working in Bengal, and boarded an East India Company ship docked in Macau. Urquhart employed Macao, whose birth name is unknown, as his servant and they travelled back to Urquhart’s Braelangwell estate in the Black Isle in the 1770s. Macao’s life demonstrates how Britain’s Asian empire reached to the heart of Scottish domestic society. Macao moved to Edinburgh where he had a successful career as an accountant, married a Scot, and became a Kirk elder. Macao assimilated well, yet, as one of the only Chinese people in Scotland at this time, he was still identified by his physical distinctiveness. Macao’s alienness became the subject of an important legal case when he attempted to secure British citizenship through the courts. Though the Scottish Court of Session declared Macao to be a naturalised Scotsman, the House of Lords denied Macao his British citizenship. This microhistory of the little-known Macao case reveals the limits of anglo-Scottish integration and the exclusionary nature of Britishness during a time when the fear of migrants was acute.
Click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86535202023
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2