The Making of the Minch: French Pirates, British Herring, and Vernacular Knowledges at an Eighteenth-Century Maritime Crossroads

Abstract

Contemporary maps and charts all name the sea basin between the northern Outer Hebrides and the Scottish mainland opposite as the Minch. The hydronym, however, does not appear on record before the eighteenth century, either on printed maps or in indigenous Gaelic oral tradition. This chapter traces the creation of the Minch, from its apparent origins as a byname used by French privateers in the War of the Spanish Succession, through vicissitudes and variations at the hands of cartographers and hydrographers alike, to its re-creation in the later eighteenth century as an umbrella term designating a new maritime cultural landscape focused upon deep-sea fisheries. The Minch is a cultural crossroads, whose very name reflects involvement in wider national and international political and economic frameworks.