SCHOLARS of early modern Scotland have long mused over the plethora of migrant destinations utilized by those tens of thousands of Scots who, for a number of reasons, either chose or were forced to leave their homeland.1 Their push and pull factors have long been discussed and include economic opportunity or necessity, political considerations, coercion, conflict, and, as Christopher Smout alludes to in this volume, climate change. Taken together these migration triggers have led to claims that Scotland was the country with the highest levels of migration in Europe.2 This in turn has implications for our understanding of the state of the Scottish economy and society, as the more inflated the migration figures are compared to the notoriously inaccurate population statistics, the more significance is attached to such problems of economy and society.3
Scottish population movement overseas, the role and place of the Treaty of Union of 1707 in determining the destination of Scottish migrants, and other issues are much-debated topics.4 The non-specialist might be lured into thinking that an alteration to the principal migrant destinations followed immediately after 1 May 1707. This is due, in part, to the historians’ short-hand term ‘post-1707 period’ or similar derivations used as markers to cover extensive periods of time, often without either qualification of a start or an end date. Therefore, there remain questions to be answered as to where Scottish migrants actually went and at what junctures. The Dutch demographer Jelle van Lottum has argued, for instance, that after the Union ‘the number of southward migrating Scots … increased’, not so much to England but especially to North America and the Caribbean as well.5
Van Lottum’s observation is factually correct but does not give qualification to show that this migration followed on from earlier expeditions into the Americas. As Tom Devine points out, Scottish colonial schemes in the Americas in the seventeenth century had ended in disaster at Darien in Panama during the mid to late 1690s, while ‘penetration of the English empire by stealth after 1707 turned out to be much more effective and profitable’.6 From then on the movement of people out of Scotland and into the Americas grew to be one of the largest out-migrations Scotland has ever known. Thus the non-specialist may be left with a feeling that there was a changing axis of migration from Europe in the east to the Americas in the west, or, put more bluntly, that one dynamic replaced another. However, this transatlantic shift does not fully assess the often long periods between the end of phases of larger-scale migration to Europe and the Union of 1707, nor the time it took after the Union for a meaningfully great westward migration to take place. Indeed, it fails completely to consider an end point (if there was one) for migration to Europe post-1707. There are other problems too. We need to take care not to confuse qualitative data with quantitative information. Small groups of successful migrants can skew the picture of migration significantly. Likewise substantial but less visible groups run the risk of being downplayed owing to their lack of discernible impact in their new host societies. Here we need only think of the numbers of often nameless female migrants who barely register in the historical record.7 But that does not make them unimportant in terms of the history of Scottish migration nor of that of their host destination.
In this chapter we consider significant episodic migrations to given locations, and ask whether such waves to one place were actually a supplement to, or a replacement of, migrations to another. As the works of numerous scholars have previously shown, Scots had been sojourning or migrating to Europe in ever-increasing numbers from the early medieval period.8 Several main locations emerge as host destinations for Scottish populations and, depending on what one believes, the nations and locations that benefited from significant Scottish immigration even by the sixteenth century might include France, Poland-Lithuania, Ireland, the Low Countries, and England—though migration to the latter has been woefully under-researched.9 The reasons for the movement of people to each of these areas varied and could be determined by close cultural ties, military alliances, or simply commercial necessity—a feature that reveals itself in many of the destinations concerned. Of the greatest importance here is that we must be extremely careful not to bulk all these European migrations together to suggest a steady and continuous outward flow of Scots to the Continent. We have to view each wave of migration on its own merits to establish the origins of the movement, its limitations, and assess the reasons why it either came to an end or at least declined from a perceptible flow to a more limited trickle.
This chapter aims to provide an overview of Scottish migrant destinations from the Reformation until the middle of the eighteenth century. It establishes general chronological and geographical patterns that will allow future assessment of the impact of the British Union, rather than to assume that it was a watershed in Scotland’s migration history.
Although Scottish migration to Europe can be dated back much further, the religious changes of the mid-sixteenth century provided a fresh and powerful impetus, opening new destinations while altering existing relations with others, such as France, Scotland’s main ally until 1560. Jane Ohlmeyer has claimed that ‘the onset of the Protestant Reformation shattered Scotland’s close relationship with France (enshrined in the “Auld Alliance”)’, although that epoch-defining perspective has recently been challenged in the most comprehensive research into the subject.10 For sure the once substantive Garde Écossais entered into a period of decline after 1560, reducing it from a full regiment to a symbolic guard of around one hundred men.11 Subsequently, many Scottish troops sought out alternative overseas service in places where their new-found Protestantism (if that was their main motive) could be best served. That said, it would be quite wrong to think that Scottish Protestants did not also seek service under Catholic monarchs, or that Catholics would not also serve the Protestant powers.12
Motives and rationale for migration were not static. Thus while France had become an unpopular choice for Scottish soldiers in 1560, it became popular for Catholic refugees, scholars, priests, and merchants. Furthermore, under her Protestant King Henri IV, a new levy of Protestant Scots was undertaken in 1589.13 While this support is less than surprising given Henri’s Protestant sympathies (he only converted to Catholicism in 1593), sanctioned levies were, occasionally, also allowed to countries often more hostile to Britain.14
Without doubt 1560 changed certain aspects of Scotland’s relations to Europe, though not always as thoroughly as one might expect. As contemporary recruitments show, military contacts between Scotland and the Catholic powers did not cease with the Reformation. Nor can we simply refer to Protestant or Catholic countries. England and the Dutch Republic harboured substantial Catholic populations while France had many Protestant enclaves.15 Enforced exile was experienced by Scottish religious and political refugees after regime-changing events in 1639, 1651, 1660, 1689, 1715, and 1745. At each traumatic episode individuals were either exiled, fled, or were forced by circumstance to leave Scotland in fear of persecution by a regime they opposed. Often the simplest way for migrants to find employment was through military enlistment, but the service chosen was seldom random or motivated simply by financial inducements.
The religious upheaval of the post-1560 period informed the choice of destination for the military Scot. With the outbreak of the Dutch Revolt against Spain in 1568, thousands of Scots joined the struggle in support of their Calvinist brethren.16 The Scots Brigade remained as a permanent part of the Dutch military structure until the outbreak of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1780, having early on earned their collective soubriquet as ‘the Bulwark of the Republic’.17 There is no doubt that these soldiers earned their pay in foreign service, but the loyalty of the Scots Brigade was ultimately to their British monarch, as evidenced by the British Crown’s right to prioritize their deployment when required. This was demonstrated in a number of campaigns where the Brigade was flagged as ‘British’ and moved out of the Netherlands into Germany, Bohemia, or back to Britain on behalf of the House of Stuart.18 That the soldiers could equally prioritize their confessional concerns over dynastic loyalty was demonstrated during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Scots in the 1690s were also serving in increasing numbers in the Protestant (albeit Lutheran) armies of Denmark-Norway and Sweden. In the 1570s, 1,600 Scots were levied for Sweden, after which a regular and unbroken stream of companies and regiments enlisted into Swedish service.19 The ever-growing Scottish presence in Sweden was complicated by the re-establishment of the Scottish-Danish alliance in 1589, for that treaty stipulated mutual support in all wars. The numbers of Scots in European armies, particularly the Danish and Swedish, increased dramatically after the Bohemian Revolt in 1619, albeit not immediately. Rather, numbers in these armies were maintained, while volunteers also enlisted in the various contestant armies of the Thirty Years War that were more immediately engaged in the conflict—the Bohemians, the Dutch, and, for a minority, the Spanish Habsburgs.20 By the war’s end in 1648, some thirty thousand had fought in Germany on behalf of Sweden, although high rates of attrition meant the actual numbers in Swedish service at any one time were far smaller than this figure suggests. As a result, recruiting for Sweden continued until the supply of soldiers all but dried up in 1638. However, several thousand Scottish troops remained in Swedish service rather than return home. They formed a main migrant pool of soldiers on the Continent along with the Dutch Brigade in the Netherlands and the Régiment de Douglas in France, which itself was composed of the remnants of the ten thousand Scots who enlisted in that country in the 1630s and 1640s.21
The Cromwellian conquest of Scotland in 1651 made it hard for many to return, and significant numbers of refugee Scottish soldiers remained abroad. Scots of all persuasions looked to escape the ‘Cromwellian Usurpation’, and indeed the option of foreign service over imprisonment was offered by the English authorities to those Scots still in arms as an enticement to end their uprising. So it was that another Scandinavian enlistment occurred in 1655–6.22 The Anglo-Dutch wars also saw Scottish numbers in Dutch service swell. An in-depth study of the Scottish presence in Dutch service has warned against overplaying their numbers in the seventeenth century. However, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the total increased dramatically and during ‘Queen Anne’s time’ some two thousand Scots appear to have been in Dutch maritime service.23 At the same time, the Scots Brigade in the Dutch Republic remained at full strength. There were also some individuals who put themselves up for hire to whomever would pay them.24
A significant military and political migration occurred after William of Orange gained the ‘vacant’ Scottish throne in 1689, leading to an exodus of Stuart supporters to the Continent. The Scots among these and the subsequent exoduses of 1716 and 1746 enlisted in armed forces as far afield as Russia, Ukraine, Prussia, Finland, Sweden, and France, though final numbers have yet to be established.25 Nonetheless, in France, Scots could still be found serving in military units until the 1770s.26 While those loyal to the House of Stuart found refuge in sympathetic countries, others could also find service abroad so that, for example, the navy of Russia could host both Jacobites and pro-Hanoverians, sometimes simultaneously.27 Nonetheless it was fitting that the last regular Scottish military force in Continental Europe was one of the first established, the Scots Brigade, finally ‘nationalized’ as a Dutch regiment in 1782.28 Importantly, Scottish military migrants overseas could serve as ethnic anchors, encouraging or supporting civilian contacts between Scotland and the Continent.29 However, in the post-1707 period, the majority of Scottish servicemen who fought across the globe did so as part of the British Army, Royal Navy, or the private forces of the East India Company.
Commercial developments pre-1707 were arguably as significant as the martial migrations to Scotland and Europe. A case study of Bordeaux reveals that commercial interaction was undertaken by a small group of successful commercial agents rather than a large established community such as was found at the same time in Rotterdam, Bergen, Gothenburg, or Stockholm.30 Recent research confirms that Franco-Scottish commerce did not rely so heavily on the establishment of large communities centred on guilds, brotherhoods, or stranger churches. Rather the numbers of Scottish agents were lower, albeit the trade they conducted was in many cases far more substantive, particularly in French wine.31
The difference in commercial methods between the northern and southern migrant communities is interesting, particularly when we consider the pedlars thought to have flooded into the Baltic countries. Several contemporary estimates claimed that some thirty thousand Scottish families lived within the commonwealth in 1620–1 alone, with the number rising to fifty thousand by the middle of the century.32 Regardless of the truth of such statistics, the mere belief in their accuracy has drawn the attention of scholars ever since.33 Yet, the most recent scholarship by Peter Bajer has revised the figure of actual migrants downwards to five or six thousand in total throughout the period 1600–1800.34 Despite a wealth of scholarship in both English and Polish highlighting the lower numbers, some scholars cling to the inflated statistic of thirty thousand and even suggest ‘it is a slightly conservative estimate’.35 The simple, but fundamental mistake made here is failing to separate the native-born Scottish migrants from their progeny; confusing born-Scots who moved away with ethnic-Scots growing up in the host-country of their birth, and in the process clouding issues of population history and Scottish demography.36 Moreover, Maria Bogucka has argued that the numbers of pedlars have been grossly exaggerated and that records from Danzig suggest a more sophisticated, higher-status merchant was more common than traditionally understood; a conclusion endorsed by Bajer.37 With both many fewer migrants and of higher status, new appraisals are required about the conditions both in the native and host societies that produced and received these migrants. The commercial opportunity afforded to these migrants is self-evident, but surprisingly religion could also be a factor. The mixed confessional nature of the migration allowed Scots to choose parts of the commonwealth as appropriate to their faith. Nowhere was that more evident than in the Lithuanian town of Kedainiai.
In the 1630s, some Scottish Calvinists feared that the Kirk in Scotland was ‘backsliding’ towards Rome under the direction of an autocratic monarch who had made his contempt for royal challenge quite explicit during his 1633 Scottish Parliament.38 It is interesting to note that contemporaneously with events in Scotland the town of Kedainiai in Lithuania witnessed a small ‘plantation’ of Protestant Scots followed by a more sustained chain migration.39 Crucially here, the creation of a Scottish oligarchy in Kedainiai in the second half of the seventeenth century masks the fact that immigration had actually reduced dramatically; instead second-generation Scots were coming to the fore.40 This was a trend across the commonwealth. There is consensus among scholars of the subject that the Scottish brotherhoods and guilds were in decline by the 1640s.41 Waldemar Kowalski has determined that ‘Scottish mass migration to the Polish Crown seems to have come to an end by the 1660s’, while Bajer has observed that the Lublin-Scots were last mentioned as an identifiable ‘nation’ in the commonwealth in 1681.42 Migration to Poland-Lithuania did not cease at this time, but it did slow considerably in comparison to the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, leaving a substantial community of ethnic, if not native-born Scots.
At the same time migration to Poland-Lithuania peaked, locations closer to home also saw an influx of migrants. The notorious ‘Plantation of Ulster’ saw the arrival of as many as thirty thousand Scots between 1609 and 1641 with a mission to ‘plant civility’ through Scottish enclaves.43 The Scots chose not to limit themselves to the official settlements that the monarch had set aside for them in the north of Ireland.44 Indeed, these settlements were treated effectively as points of entry, undermining their very existence as Scottish enclaves. Many Scots quickly moved to the more commercially lucrative centres in Ireland, especially Dublin and Cork. Many others dissipated into the wider diaspora beyond the Stuart kingdoms; thousands arrived in Scandinavia with Scottish regiments in the first half of the seventeenth century and many more moved on to the Americas in the eighteenth.45 A large Scottish community did survive in Ulster, though neither in the form nor with the results envisaged either by the king or presumably by the original planters themselves; at least some of the civilizing ‘Planters’ turned out to be Scottish Catholics.46
The establishment of trade networks was a fundamental feature in the migration process. Scotland produced a variety of products including coal, fish, salt, and leather, goods all previously dealt with by scholars of commerce in great detail. In order to exchange them the Scots developed a factoring network across Europe. Officially, the most important Scottish commercial agent in Europe throughout the early modern period remained the Conservator of the Scottish staple at Veere in the Dutch Republic.47 Since the mid-sixteenth century a Scottish Conservator had remained there, and all Scottish trade in staple goods was theoretically targeted to that city exclusively. Throughout the seventeenth century a small but vibrant Scottish community remained in the town with their own social and religious institutions, and the last Conservator did not leave office until 1799.48 However, to focus only on the staple goods being exchanged at Veere would be to miss the important commercial developments being made by Scottish entrepreneurs elsewhere in the Dutch Provinces, especially in Rotterdam, and elsewhere on the Continent. For example, the second half of the century saw the Scots achieve their greatest influence in Swedish commerce.
Networks with Scandinavia, the Baltic, the Dutch Republic, and France continued long after the 1707 Union, albeit much diminished, and were not immediately replaced by Scots trying to grab a share of England’s economic wealth or any dramatic shift west across the Atlantic.49 It should be stressed that in terms of numbers, commercial migrants are dwarfed by the military ones. Some perspective is provided when we consider that there were probably twice as many Scottish soldiers in Scandinavian military service in a five-year period (1627–30) as there were commercial migrants in the Americas and Poland-Lithuania combined throughout the entire seventeenth century.50 And that was even before the largest of the recruiting drives for the Thirty Years War had begun (1630–8). This is not to say that commercial migrants were less important. In terms of repatriation of capital and the continuance of lifeline commerce, that is certainly not the case. But in terms of simple migration statistics, the evidence speaks for itself.
Following the 1560 Reformation, Scottish exiles became involved with running or establishing religious houses across the Continent, to train and support a Scottish Catholic clergy. The most important of the French colleges were those at Douai and Paris, while others were situated in Rome, Ratisbon (Regensburg), Madrid, and Valladolid.51 Some Scots also moved to the Italian Peninsula to study, either at the Scots College at Rome (founded 1600) for theological reasons, or to study medicine at the University of Padua.52 In addition to training Scottish priests, the Scots Colleges also offered university education to those denied it at home through the enforcement of oaths designed to exclude Catholics. However, it was not only the exiles who chose to go abroad for higher education. Again here, France is instructive: the issue of religion was not always that straightforward in France, as Henri IV’s conversion of convenience demonstrated. The country hosted many Protestant institutions, which Scots both attended as students or worked at as academics.53 Furthermore, the Scots College in Paris would admit Protestant students, as they did even in 1638 at a time when religion was once more at the forefront of the Scottish mind. Recent scholarship has clearly shown that religion would not necessarily inhibit such enrolments, commercial contacts, or continued friendships.54 Similarly, Leiden, although originally founded in 1575 as a Protestant institution, attracted significant numbers of Scots from a variety of religious backgrounds.55
The Thirty Years War proved to be a devastating conflict in educational terms as well. As Howard Hotson has argued, the death and destruction of the war impacted on academia by diverting students away from the Baltic and German universities towards those in Scandinavia, Poland-Lithuania, and especially to the newly established University of Leiden in the Netherlands. It would be the end of the golden era for the universities of the Holy Roman Empire and resulted in a dramatic and lasting change in the direction of Scottish educational migration.56 A new type of student also emerged in this period. Perhaps surprisingly, opportunities presented themselves for children of Scottish soldiers during the Thirty Years War. Some would follow their fathers to the Continent and gain an education as part of their parent’s participation in a specific army. In Sweden their numbers certainly account for many of those ethnic Scots who ended up in Swedish institutions either during or after the war. But one has to look further south in Europe to find Scots actively seeking out an educational institution rather than simply attending one close to hand.
Leiden particularly benefited from the redirection of international students in the first half of the sixteenth century. Scottish students, although among the first to arrive after the university’s foundation in 1575, only began to appear in great numbers in the middle of the seventeenth century.57 From the 1650s onwards, the Scottish presence at the four Dutch universities grew exponentially, aided by the establishment of Protestant exile communities that sprang up in the wake of the Stuart Restoration of 1660.58 These joined the existing Scottish–Dutch community made up of merchants, soldiers, sailors, and their families.59 Many exiles took the opportunity to improve their education, while enjoying the legal protection of their student status at the same time. A second wave of Scottish exiles arrived in the 1680s, coinciding with a first peak in Scottish student numbers.60
After the Glorious Revolution, the Dutch universities continued to attract substantial numbers of Scottish students. A Dutch degree was often no longer the main reason; instead time spent at a Dutch university became the starting point of a Grand Tour of Europe. Between 1680 and 1730, Scottish student presence at the Dutch universities reached its peak.61 In the context of the number of matriculations at the five universities in Scotland—Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, and King’s College and Marischal College in Aberdeen—around the same time, the Dutch universities were effectively a sixth Scottish university, especially when it is borne in mind that many more Scots studied there without ever matriculating.62 It is clear then that the 1707 British Union had a negligible effect on student matriculations, either for the Scottish Catholics who continued to go to their colleges abroad or to those scholars of medicine and law for whom the Dutch universities proved so enticing. When the numbers did begin to reduce, it was reflective of more opportunities within Scotland rather than through any direct consequence of Union.
If the Williamite period of British history saw an increase in Scottish student migration to Europe and the continued participation of Scots in the military and civilian spheres on the Continent, although at more realistic numbers than previously suggested, what then can be said for any supposed ‘Transatlantic Shift’ around 1700 or 1707? Certainly the post-1689 period saw Scottish migration to the Americas develop into a more substantial stream. However, Scots had been leaving for the New World since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Benefiting from James VI and I’s British aspirations and his legal policy of post-nati citizenship, the first colonial venture was the short-lived settlement of Nova Scotia. In 1621 James had issued a charter covering the area from the St Croix to the St Lawrence rivers (henceforth known as Nova Scotia) and a year later on Cape Breton.63 Plans were drawn up for the establishment of a series of plantations that were to attract Scottish migrants, though none of these were executed until 1629. The settlement on Cape Breton Island came to a premature end when it was destroyed in a French attack later that same year. A second settlement at Port Royal survived but was forced to be given up in 1632 at the Treaty of St-Germain-en-Laye between Charles I and France. Attempts at reviving the claim came to little, although the name Nova Scotia survived.64 Scots also took an active interest in the Caribbean at around the same juncture. James Hay, the first Earl of Carlisle, was granted proprietorship of Barbados and other Leeward Islands in 1625. Scots soon became instrumental in the development of the island and were recruited as both administrators and planters, although their numbers remained very small. Much larger numbers appeared in the Caribbean as (forced) indentured servants during the Cromwellian and Restoration periods.65 Others left of their own volition and settled across the Caribbean and North America after their period of indentured servitude. In comparison to the larger settlements previously discussed, these initial ventures involved much smaller numbers, though it should be noted that they could either represent independent attempts at transatlantic settlement or be part of multinational endeavours.
Scottish activity in the Americas often arose as part of British or joint Anglo-Scottish ventures. David Dobson has demonstrated that from the earliest attempts to establish communities in Nova Scotia in the 1620s, there was never intended to be a mono-ethnic Scottish community in the Americas, although particularly Scottish institutions like the Scots’ Charitable Society of Boston Massachusetts were established to support them.66 He confirms the findings of previous studies which have highlighted that the English were an integral part of the Nova Scotia scheme from the outset, and were also initially intended to be involved in any plantation scheme to be undertaken by the Company of Scotland in the 1690s as well.67 Similarly, most English schemes involved numerous Scots and Irish—such as for instance the settlements along the Chesapeake—while members of these nations also found their way into other European colonies. Even Oliver Cromwell hoped to develop mixed colonies such as that on Pulau Run in the East Indies, which he ordered should be composed of sixty men ‘English, Scotch or Irish’.68 There were often sound reasons why Scots were included in these schemes; the English authorities in both the Americas, as well as in Ireland, saw the Scots in terms of a defensive barrier between them and the ‘savages’.69
Opportunities for Scots continued to develop in the second half of the seventeenth century regardless of a Stuart regime that is sometimes presented as hostile to Scottish involvement in transatlantic schemes. Thus Scottish interest in American colonial activities was given a new lease of life in the late 1660s as a result of the patronage of James, Duke of York (later James VII and II). They featured in his plans for his newly-acquired proprietary colony of New York.70 The well-documented ‘Darien Scheme’ in the mid-1690s to settle the isthmus of Panama was an even bigger fiasco, ending in the untimely deaths of several thousand Scots and the humiliation of many investors of the Company of Scotland.71 The settlement and eventual demise of this colony in the 1690s occurred almost contemporaneously with the establishment of the most successful Scottish colony in the Americas. This was the Quaker colony of East New Jersey, which enjoyed the encouragement and the protection of the English government. Between 1683 and 1685 several hundred Scots settled in Perth Amboy.72 They would eventually challenge the land patents of older English towns and appoint a Scottish governor, resulting in a counterclaim, after the Navigation Acts of 1696, which questioned the legitimacy of their status. The Scots won their case and the post-nati debate of the early 1600s had come full circle.
Historians agree that over the course of the seventeenth century some 7,000 Scots left for the Americas.73 Some 4,500 of those went to the Caribbean in various capacities.74 Their numbers need to be adjusted when we take into account those present in other European colonies, most notably the Dutch. It is important to stress that the Dutch Republic relied on foreign employment for its imperial ventures. Scots certainly served in Brazil and were active along the Wild Coast and in the Caribbean, where they played a role of significance in the early years of Dutch activity, in particular in the various attempts to settle in Tobago.75 They also served in the Dutch East Company (VOC).76
Scots were also among the first settlers to arrive in New Netherlands in the 1620s and 1630s. Like their counterparts in the Old World, they obtained trading rights and were effective in joining Dutch society. By the time the colony was conquered by the English, a number of successful Scots were living in New Netherlands and held important positions in its administration. They often arrived indirectly, but could find countrymen in whichever part of the North American continent they travelled. But that they arrived there from locations already playing host to more substantial Scottish enclaves should serve to remind us that Europe still had a role to play as the major recipient of Scottish migrants both up to and beyond the Union of 1707.
Bearing the above caveats in mind, and the consensus of historians who study the topic, it is abundantly clear that the British Union of 1707 did not immediately impact upon the numbers of Scottish migrants either leaving for the European continent or arriving in the Americas. T. C. Smout and Ian Whyte, among others, have previously argued that the Union of 1707 was an important episode in Scotland’s history but not decisive and ‘economically marginal’.77 The same appears to be true with regard to the impact of Union on emigration. The first post-Union venture in the Americas, the re-conquest of Nova Scotia, occurred in 1712, followed a year later by the taking of St Kitts.78 However, large-scale Scottish migration to Nova Scotia did not really begin until the later eighteenth century, while the massive migration to Cape Breton only took place a century later.79 Douglas Hamilton has observed that migration to any part of North America only significantly began to increase in the mid-1730s when the first highland settlements began to appear in Georgia (New Inverness, later Darien) in 1735. These were followed by settlements in New York in 1738; Cape Fear, North Carolina, in 1739; and the Chesapeake from the 1740s. In the Caribbean the real change was brought about by the acquisition of the Windward Islands in 1763, leading to further migration and settlement.80 However, as Christian Auer has demonstrated, the same trigger of ‘political exile’ as observed in several migrations of the seventeenth century found currency again in the eighteenth century after the passing of the Transportation Act of 1718.81
One of the problems raised in compiling a survey essay like this is how to manage the information and particularly how to address the ‘numbers game’ which underpins some of the basic assumptions suggested in the introduction. We have been careful throughout this essay to avoid speculative statistics, but only draw on figures that have been reasonably well verified. Previously, benchmark research studies have tabulated numbers of Scots thought to have migrated to a particular location and added these together to give a total estimate of Scottish migrant numbers.82 Not only has recent scholarship challenged the statistics for some particular locations, but the historians concerned have failed to consider the sheer mobility of the migrants themselves between migrant destinations. The same Scots could and did turn up in more than one location and in several different capacities, leading to the possibility that they can be counted several times over. Complicating matters further, the foreign-born Scots appear to have been just as mobile as their native-born countrymen and find their way into migrant statistics for the wrong reasons. Closer scrutiny of the actual place of birth of self-identifying Scots suggests that fewer individuals left Scotland than was previously believed, while the Scottish communities abroad had a larger foreign-born, ethnic Scottish component.
Here, we have been able to show that particular periods witnessed episodic outflows of Scotland’s population and that some of these at least can be tied in with specific events. There was a relative decline in migration to Europe, which was not paralleled by a significant transatlantic movement until after 1760.83 It is hard to distinguish patterns, however, other than to note that some of the migrations were enduring (Scottish Catholics to the European Colleges) or disproportionally large (participation in the Thirty Years War), while the importance of others (Scottish students in the Netherlands) have been overplayed due to their relative impact. This was both in terms of their scale relative to Scotland’s population and compared to migrations by other ethnic groups, such as for instance English or German migrants to the New World. That said, the process of systematically documenting migration from Scotland to particular locations has been dramatically advanced in recent years. For the pre-Union period, rigorous research in European archives has altered perceptions of the scale of the migrations. In some cases (Sweden), we have to revise figures up after research has demonstrated it was Stockholm and not Gothenburg that proved the main commercial magnet, although the numerical adjustment, from sixty to three hundred Scots, is less impressive than the percentile increase of 500 per cent. In others (Poland-Lithuania), we have now to considerably revise statistics down—perhaps up to 85 per cent. And as this particular exodus has given rise to speculation over the condition of Scotland, a new evaluation of the social issues at home is required as clearly there was not the great ‘push’ out of migrants that was once believed.
Within this reassessment, regional differences within Scotland must be examined next. A first analysis from the Scotland, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe (SSNE) Biographical Database shows the North East (from the River Tay to the Moray Coast) as the largest migrant-producing region, followed by the Northern Isles.84 An additional analysis of Scottish testaments kept in the Gemeentearchief Rotterdam confirms the status of the North East followed by Edinburgh, the Lothians, and Fife, while the Northern Isles virtually drop off the radar.85 What little is known about student statistics for the Netherlands show Fife as the most important migrant-producing region, followed closely by Aberdeenshire.86 In the west, the majority of migrants to Ulster were natives of Galloway, Ayrshire, and southern Argyllshire, including the islands of that county. Few areas of the country, therefore, did not have experience of some emigration, though further and systematic research is required before any suggestions can be made regarding the regional economic and social influences in Scotland.
Whilst older migrant destinations have attracted fresh research, ‘new’ locations are being treated with more scholarly considerations than previously. Research into the Scots in Spain and Portugal is ongoing, while pilot studies have now been completed and published for Scottish migration into locations as diverse as the Italian Peninsula and South and South East Asia.87 We can now look to a number of these host locations in turn and find some interesting comparisons and contrasts with other groups; the Scots with the Jews in Poland-Lithuania, or between the Scots and the Germans in Sweden. Some interesting comments have already been made on the general similarities and differences between the Scots and their Irish, Norwegian, and Dutch contemporaries in the early modern period.88 There are still some important gaps that need filling: England is deserving of several studies, with London alone presenting a willing scholar an enormous undertaking. Similarly, we know that Hungary played host to a vibrant Scottish community in the early modern period, though to date the challenge of mapping the Scottish—Hungarian diaspora has not been met.89 Furthermore, while it is clear that there is an advanced understanding of the numbers and locations of Scottish migrants to the Americas on either side of 1707, the same is not true for many European destinations. While we do have some interesting and general contributions, the scholarship on Europe as a Scottish migrant destination in the eighteenth century has not been covered in the same depth as for the century before. To fully contextualize when the European destinations ceased to be attractive and actually gave way to the Americas, this will have to be a necessary task. Europe, it appears, is ripe for a series of fresh archival challenges.
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—— and Mackillop, A., eds., Fighting for Identity: Scottish Military Experience, c.1550–1900 (Leiden, 2002).
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