
Dr Thomas Tyson
Daiches-Manning Memorial Fellow, October - December 2024
Home institution: University of Cambridge
Tom Tyson is a historian of pre-modern Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge, where he also completed his undergraduate and master's degrees. His research focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of 'Gypsies' in Scotland from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. As well Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller history, the Scottish Reformation, and the Scottish Enlightenment, Tom is also interested in histories of marginalised people and places, the historiography of topographical and antiquarian scholarship, and historical anthropology.
Project title: From Enlightened Persecution to Romantic Racism: Scottish ‘Gypsies’ in the Long Eighteenth Century
My project explores the history of people labelled 'Gypsies' in Scotland during the long eighteenth century. It addresses both the perception and treatment of 'Gypsies' by Scottish authorities during the period, and the experience of Romanichal Gypsies and Scottish Travellers themselves.
The project considers two phases in the perception and treatment of Gypsies in Scotland in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first of these phases, from c.1700 to the 1770s, was marked by the continued prosecution and harassment of Gypsies by Scottish authorities. In England, legislation criminalising Gypsies had fallen into desuetude by the the eighteenth century; in stark contrast to Scotland, where Gypsies continued to be executed and sentenced to penal transportation. The second phase, from the 1780s to the 1830s, saw the abandonment of anti-Gypsy legislation and the emergence of a more paternalistic and romanticised conception of Gypsies. By the early nineteenth century, Scotland had become a centre of antiquarian, folkloric, and linguistic research on Gypsies, and highly racialised ideas about Scottish Gypsies found a global audience through the astonishingly popular and much-adapted works of Sir Walter Scott.
In exploring this history, my project is particularly attentive to the ways in which Gypsies were racialised during the period, considering how Enlightenment and Romantic discourses on race impacted Gypsies, and whether perceptions of Gypsies shaped contemporary ideas about race.