1. Emotions, family and empire : the Ogilvie-Forbes of Boyndlie Papers, 1740-1840
- Author
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Grey, Eloise, MacKnight, Elizabeth C., and Mackillop, Andrew
- Subjects
Emotions - Abstract
The project considers how emotions were part of the practice of family within the context of Scottish imperial sojourning. A view of emotions as being constructed, historically contingent and socially produced, rather than essential, is becoming a stable position in the field of the history of emotions. This thesis contributes to that body of academic literature through an empirical study of one gentry family's archive that takes a broad view, over several generations, of how emotions construction works and to what purpose. Drawing on the key findings of historians of Scottish gender and the family, this thesis places the relevance of empire more strongly into the production of gender and emotional dispositions. While Scotland's experience of the British Empire, from politics, to material culture, and the economy provide rich scholarship, the history of emotions in Scottish empire studies is relatively new terrain. The work also contributes to research on family life in arguing that affective ties between extended kin were critical to the social and economic interests of gentry families in north-east Scotland. The requirement to maintain such ties shaped the emotional disposition of individuals, at the expense of other affective ties and individual feelings. Such familial structures were the exigencies of a period of change in which families were the primary resource for economic and social survival.
- Published
- 2020