Pilar Girvan

Pilar joined the Centre for History as a PhD student in October 2022. Her thesis title is 'Testing the protest paradigm: exploring everyday forms of resistance in the Highlands and Islands, c. 1780-1930'. 

A gorgeously sunny morning in Edinburgh, and there I was, eagerly ensconced in the occasional rustlings and murmurings of the National Records, pouncing on disparate mentions of poaching, trespass, sheep-theft and small-tenant discontent within the numerous letterbooks of the Duke of Gordon’s witty estates factor, Rev. Anderson. By closing time at 4.30pm it felt like I’d spent the day at Anderson’s shoulder; not only was I starting to find a patchwork of resistance, I also felt like an apprentice in nineteenth-century estate management. My evening was spent in retelling snippets of resistance as if they were anecdotal stories garnered from my day – apparently my scholarly enthusiasm was palpable, especially when I got to the parts regarding leniency shown to subsistence poachers versus cracking down on ‘gentlemen poachers’, the ‘mischievous depredations’ committed on one of the Duke of Gordon's houses  (the nature of which I’ve yet to learn), and the ‘troublesome’ and ‘burdensome’ Ferryman by which  ‘it was never intended’ Rev. Donald MacCole ‘should suffer dying by him’ (the tone of Anderson’s letter suggests MacCole might be over-reacting). 

As is evident, engaging with archival material is a new and exciting experience for myself. As my background (in geography and feminist studies) has been predominantly theory-based, I’ve become something of a sponge for concepts and theories. Whilst this can be a definite boon, I’ve found my recent archival immersion allows me to step away from focusing on some of the theoretical complexities and rabbit holes I’ve encountered in my reading. It's therefore been intriguing for me to realise, perhaps paradoxically, that this move towards the archives has led to some instinctive consolidation of my erstwhile conceptual thinking without the mental somersaults I was previously employing. I'm excited to see how this all comes together when I shortly begin drafting a preliminary analysis!