From "Normal" to "Formal" - the kilt's place as a Highland garment

[ThistleDown]

Contact with Europeans, and the new trade that swiftly developed between the two groups, rapidly altered the life styles of the natives. This was seen among the Eastern Woodland nations as early as the 1600s. The Indians quickly became dependent upon the manufactured European items they received via the fur trade: steel-bladed tools and weapons, firearms, iron cooking vessels, woolen blankets, the list goes on. Native garb was also affected over time as mass-produced items replaced traditional ones as "civilization" marched westwards.
I'm not sure that the experience of New World inhabitants being rather suddenly impacted by technological newcomers was mirrored in the Highlands. The Highlands were considered somewhat remote, but were never cut off from the remainder of Europe, and trade was an ongoing state of affairs, was it not?

Thanks, Brian, that is wonderful information.

There is a certain parallel to be drawn. You are of course correct that there was trade between the continent and the Highlands prior to the last half of the 18C, but that trade was not between the common people of either. In another thread we were discussing the clothing of the shopkeeping and merchant classes in the Highlands, but the merchant class was never a kilted one and they were the men who had contact with the Low Countries, the Hansiatic League, France and England.

What I was trying to show here is the quite sudden change that took place in a native culture, its dress and, ultimately, its language when Europeans came on the scene. And Europeans from England and Edinburgh were just as foreign to the common Highlander of the 17C and 18C as were people from Hamburg or Rome.

We shouldn't try to isolate the kilt or the buckskin leggings from the cultures in which they were worn. It was the cultures of both societies that changed, with their clothing to follow.

"Native garb was also affected over time as mass-produced items replaced traditional ones as "civilization" marched westwards." That appears to have been the case in the Highlands, as well. With the construction of roads and access to the remote parts of the country, the enforced peace between neighbours, the cutting of the powers of the chiefs, the sudden loss of security for the common folk and a well-displayed attitude of disgust by everyone who came among them -- the march of "civilisation" into the Highlands -- or the central and western parts of America.

Hard on its heels came the cheap manufactured goods of the Lowlands, England and the Continent.

Rex

[macwilkin]

Rex,

Since you brought up the First Nations, a very interesting & similar discussion occurs in Colin Calloway's "White People, Indians and Highlanders: tribal peoples and colonial encounters in Scotland and America".

T.

[ThistleDown]

Rex,

Since you brought up the First Nations, a very interesting & similar discussion occurs in Colin Calloway's "White People, Indians and Highlanders: tribal peoples and colonial encounters in Scotland and America".

T.

Thanks, Todd. I've read reviews but not the book. "First Nations"? Well done. For those not familiar with this term, First Nations is the collective name adopted by the aboriginal peoples of Canada.

Rex