For the 10th year, Vancouver TAIWANfest is creating a conversation with a different national culture. Over the Labour Day weekend from September 5 to 7, the festival will present Dialogue With Scotland in downtown Vancouver. It includes lectures, performances, exhibitions, and a film all focusing on Scottish culture or the country’s historic ties to Taiwan.
One of the featured speakers will be scholar Leith Davis, director of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is the author and co-editor of eight books on Scottish, Irish, and British literature and culture, including Jacobitism and Cultural Memory, 1688-1830. Cambridge University Press published this illuminating literary treatise as part of its Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections series.
Davis’s talk on Monday (September 7) at the Annex is entitled Before Outlander: Remembering the Jacobites in Scottish History. Also at this event, the Sybaritic String Band members Sheila Allen (fiddle), Scott Alpen (bodhran), and Rob McGregor (mandolin) will offer a musical perspective on the Jacobites, who struggled in vain for a century to restore the House of Stuart to the British throne.
Jacobitism and Cultural Memory, 1688-1830 opens with a Dutch Protestant nobleman, William of Orange, landing on the coast of Devon with his army in 1688. They marched to London to overthrow the ruling Catholic Stuart king, James II/VII, father of William’s Protestant wife, Mary.
James fled to France in response to the attack. Mary ensured that her husband William would have a German Protestant successor to the throne, George I of the House of Hanover. She arranged this over dozens of Catholics in her family who were ahead of him in line.
“For a significant percentage of the population of the British Isles, however, who became known as the Jacobites (from the Latin for James, Jacobus), William and the Hanoverian monarchs who succeeded him were usurpers,” Davis writes. “Over the course of the next century, Jacobites in all four nations of the British Isles plotted continuously to restore the Stuart dynasty, drawing on international support when possible.”
Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Charlie, tried and failed to recoup the Crown in a Jacobite rebellion centred in Scotland in 1745. Davis tells this story while also describing how differing views on Jacobites were presented through nearly 150 years of literature, poetry, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, and popular songs.
Importantly, she highlights why Jacobitism has been marginalized in literary history. And the author addresses the role of media and music in shaping historical perceptions and group memory.
Charles Edward Stuart, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Charlie, was stymied in his 1745 attempt to retake the British throne for the House of Stuart.
Jacobite restoration efforts continued for a century
Moreover, Davis reveals how differing forms of storytelling—whether literary, manuscript-based or oral—unfolded in different ways in Scots Gaelic areas, Irish Gaelic communities, and English-speaking regions across the British Isles.
“Oral and manuscript traditions were particularly prominent and highly valued in the geopolitical peripheries of the British Isles,” Davis emphasizes.
Davis points out that there is a widespread “misapprehension” that Jacobite activity was confined to three outbreaks of armed conflict—the initial resistance in Catholic Ireland in 1688 after William of Orange landed in England and the armed risings of 1715 and 1745.
Instead, she demonstrates that “there was constant Jacobite activity taking place during the time between the arrival of William of Orange and the death of Charles Edward Stuart in 1788, as the Jacobites were engaged in continual efforts to overthrow the sitting monarchs”.
“These efforts included diplomatic discussions and negotiations with European players as well as plans for military interventions,” she writes.
It’s a fascinating exploration of the intersection of literature, history, and memory. Furthermore, Jacobitism and Cultural Memory, 1688-1830 remains relevant today. Some might see parallels in deepening political polarization in the modern era characterized by sharply competing narratives amplified over different platforms.
The lecture by Davis along with the musical performance is far from the only slice of Scotland at Vancouver TAIWANfest. Exhibitions in the downtown core will reveal the role that Scottish missionaries played in bringing western healthcare and education as well as red brick buildings to Taiwan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Mimi Sung earned a PhD at the University of Edinburgh with a 316-page thesis on the changing Scottish Presbyterian missionary vision of India and China.
Taiwanese theologian places spotlight on Scotland
Plus, a theologian and academic from Taiwan, Mimi Sung, will discuss her research into connections between Scottish and Scottish-Canadian missionaries and Taiwan’s emergence of as a modern society. All events are free, including a film depicting Scottish photographer John Thomson’s visit to Taiwan in 1871.
There will also be community performances and workshops with a Scottish twist. One such example is Keeling’s Work and Story Songs at 2:30 p.m. in šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square (north of the Vancouver Art Gallery) and 4:30 p.m. in the 700 block of Granville Street on Saturday. Siblings Corrina and Jessica Dawn will help people learn and sing traditional Gàidhlig waulking songs that go all the way back to Gàidhealtachd in Scotland.
“Gàidhlig is part of a wider family of six surviving Celtic languages that also includes Irish, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, and Manx,” the Vancouver TAIWANfest website states. “Despite more than 200 years of attempted erasure by colonial forces, the language has been preserved through literature, music, and oral storytelling and songs.”
In addition, Vancouver TAIWANfest will present two performances by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society of Vancouver. The first will be at 1 p.m. on Saturday (September 5) in šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énḵ Square (north of the Vancouver Art Gallery). That will be followed by another display of social dances from Scotland at 3:15 p.m. on Sunday (September 6) in the 700 block of Granville Street. Also on Sunday at the same location, Shot of Scotch Vancouver will demonstrate Scottish Highland dance at 2:30 p.m.
Vancouver TAIWANfest held its first Dialogue with Hong Kong in 2016. That was followed in successive years with Dialogues with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Organizers paused the dialogue series in the pandemic year of 2020. But they resumed over the next five years with a focus on South Korea, Indonesia & Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, and then Portugal.
All of this reflects the true purpose of Vancouver TAIWANfest. These dialogues are never one-way exchanges—they are about building meaningful, reciprocal connections between communities, cultures, and people.
Vancouver TAIWANfest will present Before Outlander: Remembering the Jacobites in Scottish History at 4:30 p.m. on Monday (September 7) at the Annex (823 Seymour Street).
TAIWANfest runs from September 5 to 7 in downtown Vancouver. For more information, visit the Vancouver TAIWANfest website. Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and Instagram @PancouverMedia.