Of a ‘lively dark eye’ or ‘chilly and tender’: Jane Austen, the Morality of Empire, and the Hidden Scottish Presence

In this talk Dr Désha Osborne draws on her current research, including an upcoming publication on ‘Jane Austen and Regency Whiteness’ and a larger ongoing project exploring the cultural and literary history of the Scottish presence in the ‘Ceded’ islands of the Caribbean in the late eighteenth century, and the mixed heritage children born out of forced or coerced relationships between Scottish men and enslaved/free African-descended women. Between 1811 and 1813 Jane Austen made several extended visits to London to stay with her brother Henry Austen and his family. Not far away lived James Hay and his family. In the late 1760s Hay left Scotland for the island of Grenada where he became an enslaver and sugar planter. James left Grenada after Fedon’s Rebellion in the late eighteenth century, bringing with him a ‘free coloured’ woman named Elizabeth Junor. On his death James left each of his children with Junor a small fortune each, along with control of his plantation in Grenada. While on the surface, the worlds of the extended Austen and the Hay/Junor families appear to never have converged, this talk gathers together archival research, published and unpublished writings by Austen to suggest that their presences have a subtle impact on her writing. This area of London, and the people who lived and visited there, can be viewed as a microcosm for a changing and expanding Empire and its effects on relations of power, identity, race, gender, love and family structures.