Abstract
This article analyses the 1692 Glencoe massacre, in which royal troops slaughtered dozens of members of the Scottish highland clan Macdonald, as a complex lieu de mémoire. Its complexity stems from several factors. First, it is linked to two conflicting narratives, one of them interpreting the massacre as a result of a clan feud, the other claiming it to be a crime ordered from ‚outside‘. Second, conflicting concepts of ‚nation‘ within the United Kingdom have played a role, as well as the fact that Glencoe is at the same time a cultural, political, commercialised and diasporic lieu de mémoire. The massacre served to assure – at different times – Britons (or specific British partisans) of their high level of civilisation, Scots of their oppression by the English, Macdonalds and Campbells of their affiliation to intercontinental solidarity groups. From a conceptual point of view, the case study shows that lieux de mémoire should be analysed departing from their memorial complexity rather than from a preconceived identity (as has been done in many studies influenced by Pierre Nora’s concept of national history). At least three dimensions should be attended to: differing narratives linked to one lieu de mémoire as well as their performative materialisation as memorial culture, different groups participating in the culture linked to a specific lieu de memoire,and different social subsystems impacted by a lieu de mémoire.
Koller, Christian