DURING the nineteenth and twentieth centuries an estimated 3.25 million Scots left their homeland.1 Teasing out the volume, chronology, and profile of Scottish emigration, along with the causes of this movement, characterizes the work of many historians based in Scotland. Typically emphasizing a grim Scottish economy, such works have spawned overarching depictions of Scottish migrants as adventurers or exiles.2 These interpretations also appear in the countries where Scots settled and are connected to issues of migrant adjustment, including ethnic retention, assimilation, and contribution histories. Notably, much of this work focuses on a particular nation or region.3 Although a few studies incorporate the experiences of Scottish migrants in several destinations, these efforts are rarely explicitly comparative and fail to explicate differences between the countries of settlement.4 Indeed, the general impression of the historiography of the Scottish diaspora is that it is lacklustre, under-developed, and under-theorized. Some exceptions exist. Whereas early accounts of Scottish migration typically contained biographical or anecdotal portraits with little analysis, or used individual stories to supply colour, more recent work explicitly situates individual experiences within frameworks of ethnic networking, identity formation, and issues of history and memory.5 Studies of British emigration also offer fruitful comparative insights between the Scots and other ethnic groups.6
This chapter surveys the literature according to three overarching concerns evident from the extant historiography: the profile and pattern of emigration; its causes; and its consequences. Comparison is made with emigration from Ireland, not because the Irish diaspora offers the only fruitful means of contrast, but because much of the extant comparative work involving the Scots incorporates the Irish.7 Suggestions for further research appear throughout the chapter, while the conclusion meditates on promising methodological avenues of research and assesses the significance of the Scottish diaspora. A word of definition is required at the outset. Despite the politically loaded terms ‘emigration’ and ‘immigration’, in light of the strong flow of internal movement within Scotland, ‘emigration’ rather than ‘migration’ is used throughout this chapter to refer to movement to other countries. ‘Migrant’ rather than ‘emigrant’ or ‘immigrant’, meanwhile, is the preferred term utilized for the individuals emigrating and embraces those who moved on a temporary, permanent, or multiple basis. ‘Diaspora’ is likewise a contested term but is used in recognition of the many places to which Scots travelled and the ties that continued to link them to home.
Vague and inconclusive emigration statistics hinder attempts to establish the exact numbers of Scottish migrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore, the extant data fails to incorporate the flow from Scotland to England, does not account for return migration, and excludes Scots leaving from English ports.8 Nevertheless, there is general consensus on the broad characteristics of the volume, chronology, and direction of the outflow. In sheer numbers, at the very least an estimated 2 million departed from Scotland between 1825 and 1914 for non-European destinations, while 1.25 million left in the period after 1914. Several peaks can be discerned including 1881–90, 1901–10, and 1911–20 (with more than 200,000 emigrating), and 1921–30 when more than 400,000 departed.9 Between 1951 and 1981, 753,000 Scots (15 per cent of the total population) left their homeland. This latter figure comprised 398,000 venturing overseas, while emigration to England reached almost 45 per cent of the outflow.10 These statistics not only reveal an urgent requirement for a study of the Scottish diaspora in the period after the Second World War, but also the need for a scholarly investigation of the Scots in England.11
In sheer numbers the United States proved the most popular destination for Scots, followed by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The appeal of certain destinations, however, varied over time, with Canada receiving a greater percentage of the outflow in the period before the 1850s and between 1910 and 1929. How many Scots strategically entered Canada to gain access to the United States, however, is unknown. Australia and New Zealand were also periodically important, particularly during the gold rushes in the mid-nineteenth century (1853–64), while South Africa became more alluring towards the later nineteenth century and in 1935–8.12 Scottish migrants also moved to other countries, including England, during this era of mass emigration, but their experiences remain largely uncharted. Indeed, the manifest neglect of the Scottish experience in England and the United States is curious. A possible explanation is the attention given to more ‘exotic’ Continental European migrant groups. But also important are the proportions involved. For instance, the number of recorded Scottish-born migrants peaked numerically in the United States at 354,323 in the 1930 Census, but they never supplied more than 1 per cent of the total population. In New Zealand, by contrast, the Scots-born peaked in 1886 at 54,810, but contributed 9.5 and 19.7 per cent respectively of the total and foreign-born population at that time.13
Generalizations about the socio-economic profile of the Scottish migrant flow are also tentative. Yet despite divergences according to destination, such as unskilled labourers veering to Canada and Australasia and skilled artisans to the United States and South Africa, the overarching profile is of a flow from Scotland that was male dominated until the First World War, generally skilled, and literate, and mainly from the Lowlands.14 The broad profile of Irish emigration during this period, meanwhile, is characterized by gender parity, fewer marketable skills, and more illiteracy.15 These broad approaches, however, hide various deviations. Looking at Scottish emigration regionally reveals that highlanders were more likely to move en masse whereas lowlanders moved in small family groups or as individuals.16 By the mid-twentieth century, about one-quarter to one-third of Scots left in family groups and a disproportionate number continued to be skilled.17
This movement from Scotland took place during an era of mass European emigration. Between 1815 and 1930, central and western Europe experienced unprecedented mobility with an estimated 60 million people leaving for overseas shores. By contrast with countries such as Italy and Ireland, which respectively lost a recorded 9.9 and 7.3 million between 1815 and 1930, numerically Scotland was a minor player in the outflow. Per head of population, however, Scotland was regularly placed in the top three countries experiencing substantial emigration, and by the time of the interwar period, topped this emigration league table (Table 27.1).18
Comparison of these statistics has led to Scottish emigration being portrayed as a paradox. While other factors have been put forward to deepen this alleged puzzle, the central conundrum surrounds the movement of Scots from an urban industrial economy rather than an agrarian one: ‘Heavy outward movement from backward and poor rural societies such as Ireland and Italy was not unexpected.’19 There are, however, problems with this interpretation. First, the paradox assumes that Scots in the immediate decades after the mid-nineteenth century should be satisfied residing in the world’s second most urban, industrial country. This, however, elides the more personal reasons that individuals had for moving, and the pressures of critical problems such as overcrowding in urban districts which were associated with Scotland’s booming industrialization and urbanization, and which provoked some Scots to seek better lifestyles elsewhere.
Second, we need to consider such figures comparatively. Taking Dudley Baines’s emigration league table and comparing it with Tom Devine’s rates of urbanization (indicative of industrialization) for 1850, it is indeed apparent that Ireland’s high emigration per head of population occurred from a country with low urbanization. Yet Switzerland and Austria, with lower rates of urbanization than Ireland, had low emigration rates. Meanwhile, Italy in 1850 was a middling urbanized country, yet its emigration figures for 1871–80 are low.20 It is also instructive to compare an urbanization table for 1910 with Baines’s table (see Table 27.2). Certainly some countries with low urbanization, such as Finland, Sweden, Austria, Norway, and Ireland, had moderate to high emigration rates, but other countries with low to moderate urbanization had low emigration rates, such as Switzerland, Belgium, and Denmark. Most instructive is Italy, which tops the emigration league table in 1901–10 but is more urbanized by 1910 than many other countries, including Ireland and Norway which also feature in the top four countries of emigration in Baines’s table.
Table 27.1 Annual average overseas emigration rate per 1,000 population
Table 27.2 European urbanization, 1910–11, and emigration rate, 1901–10
Further demonstrating the idea that emigration was not the preserve of agrarian-oriented economies (and urban-industrial Scotland according to the ‘paradox’) is comparison with England, the most industrialized country in the world in the mid-nineteenth century. Regularly found among the top five countries losing their population to emigration (until 1891 onwards), England’s presence in Baines’s league table also shows that urban industrial Scotland, the world’s second most industrialized nation at this time (as noted above), is not an anomaly in this regard. Certainly, when aggregating data over the long run Scotland’s proportional loss of people was substantially more than England’s, but this was primarily due to heavy emigration in the twentieth century. An alternative impression arises when analysing statistics by decade (see Table 27.1). For instance, in the decades prior to 1901, apart from 1851–60, England’s population loss was not wildly dissimilar from Scotland’s; indeed between 1871 and 1880 for every 1,000 people England lost 4.0 to Scotland’s 4.7. These figures are not as extreme as when compared with Ireland’s loss of population. Yet just as problematically these conflations create distortions, and more intriguing are the comparisons evident each year. As Table 27.3 shows, Scotland’s rate was higher for the period before the early 1860s, but stark differences only arise from 1905 onwards, at which point for every 1,000 people Scotland’s rate is double or more that of England (and Wales).
Using simplistic industrial/agricultural divides to posit the idea that Scottish emigration is a paradox therefore becomes problematic. As Baines earlier argued in relation to European emigration more broadly, ‘The general view that emigration was related to a lack of industrial development in a particular country is also not necessarily true.’21 Indeed, it is more likely that transport innovations, the spread of information, and recourse to finances, among other factors associated with industrialization, were more likely to facilitate emigration. In Continental Europe, for instance, expansion of the railway and access to ports made emigration more practical, features common to Scotland.22 Indeed, future research might compare emigration from certain districts in Scotland with the expansion of the rail network from the 1840s to see whether the penetration of the railway into certain districts generated peaks in emigration. We also need to identify those features that are distinctive about emigration from Scotland. One potential difference, though again not as striking when compared with Ireland, is that the flow from Scotland before 1900 was disproportionately skilled compared with a stronger flow of labourers from England.23 In the absence of extensive statistical data, however, even this suggestion is speculative, but it does highlight the need for studies that examine the occupations of those leaving. Also vital to consider are the regions and specific localities that migrants left and the timing of those outflows.24 Indeed, fine-grained longitudinal studies of migrants from particular localities would offer immense insight into such issues, particularly if undertaken within a comparative context with migrants from other nations. Just as critical, however, is to consider why so many Scots did not emigrate, for even at its peak in the interwar period Scotland only lost an average of 9.2 people for every 1,000.
Table 27.3 Total emigration per 1,000 people, 1853–1930
In explaining Scottish emigration, the extant historiography typically emphasizes expulsion and grim domestic conditions. Movement from the Highlands, for instance, is frequently located in a context of overpopulation, few resources, pressure on the land, little demand for labour, and the sheep economy. Agricultural restructuring in the Lowlands in the nineteenth century also created dislocation.25 Scottish emigration in the twentieth century is likewise situated in an economic framework characterized by the decline of heavy industry, the imposition of foreign tariffs, low wages, rife unemployment, the collapse of international markets, and the failure of industry to diversify.26 Much of the historiography, then, has focused on a mono-causal interpretation of gloomy economic forces in Scotland inducing emigration, in which the ‘journey from Scotland often began with failure at home’.27 If emigration from Scotland is largely associated with a lack of economic opportunities, in Ireland, by contrast, mass emigration was seen as a damning indictment of British government policy. Yet the extent to which specific structural factors influenced particular individuals remains unknown.
Despite this bleak portrait of Scotland, it was a land sought by other diasporic groups such as the Irish and Italians whose experiences are among those covered in Chapter 26. Yet the numbers who were seasonal migrants or sojourners before moving overseas remains unknown. Key here also is that ethnicities such as the Irish counted among the migrant flow from Scotland, a feature which requires greater investigation. Moreover, groups such as the Irish, particularly those bound for North America after the Great Famine of the 1840s, are portrayed as exiles, a term also used of some of Scotland’s migrants, particularly those associated with the Highland clearances.28 Further examples of movement from Scotland fitting this conceptualization of forced migration include the transportation of convicts to Australia and the migration of handloom weavers.29 Scottish emigration in the twentieth century is also viewed in dark terms. Nationalists considered that a lack of self-government caused emigration and blamed England. The inflow of Irish and English migrants to Scotland further strained opinion.30
An alternative but equally sweeping evaluation surrounding the determinants of Scottish emigration is found at the other extreme, that of adventurers, or ‘Scots on the make’, with its emphasis on successful, entrepreneurial Scots, many of whom were governors, administrators, politicians, and explorers. This approach arises predominantly from a focus on the ‘contribution’ history that Scots made in their new lands, allegedly aided by their clannishness and Protestant work ethic.31 It is an interpretation that continues to dominate much of the historiography of the Scots abroad, with a recent contribution claiming ‘the story of enterprising Scots remains one of the absolutely central narratives of Canadian history’.32
As well as conditions in Scotland, several other broad factors help explain Scottish emigration: a culture of mobility built on movement in preceding centuries; high rates of internal migration that extended to emigration; greater awareness of overseas destinations through letters and propaganda; and the transport revolution.33 Scotland’s political position in the Union with England also facilitated the lengthy Scottish engagement with and settlement throughout the British Empire. Although most Scots self-financed the move to their new homelands, also influential in shaping some emigration from Scotland were immigration subsidies and incentives. Those moving to the British Empire, for instance, could avail themselves of many inducements including colonization schemes, predominant in the nineteenth century, and assisted and nominated passages that spanned both centuries. Assistance continued into the twentieth century with the Empire Settlement Act of 1922 and a £10 assisted passage after the Second World War proving particularly influential. Those moving to the United States, by contrast, were unable to avail themselves of such subsidies and made their own way, sometimes financially aided by friends and family already settled abroad. Cheaper and shorter voyages over time facilitated such journeys. The lures of gold and land grants likewise attracted numerous Scots—as well as migrants of other ethnicities—to various countries, particularly New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Immigration policies enacted in potential destinations in the twentieth century saw the destinations to which Scots gravitated alter; an assessment of the changing character of these varied policies might assist in explaining the attraction of Scots to particular destinations during certain periods. In 1924, for instance, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act was implemented which restricted the entry of migrants to the United States according to a quota system.
The role played by emigration agents in facilitating intending migrants with access to various inducements and the circulation of information about potential destinations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was also influential. In the nineteenth century this involved giving lectures, distributing pamphlets, displaying posters, and interviewing migrants. Similar tactics characterized the following century, with agents continuing to disseminate leaflets and booklets, place advertisements in newspapers, and prepare articles in newspapers.34 Agent activity likewise operated in conjunction with other forms of propaganda, and debate surrounds the importance of boosterism versus personal letters and contact in spurring emigration.35 Future research assessing variation in agent activity throughout the homelands and different forms of boosterism according to the target population would be illuminating. How various settlement countries were portrayed in such literature and how it varied in the European homelands would offer an interesting exercise.
Scottish migrants have also been grouped according to broad categories that seemingly explain their emigration, such as military men, administrators, explorers, gentlemen, and missionaries. The more extensive flow of non-professional migrants included the poor and agriculturalists as well as reluctant and female migrants. Indeed, a key area of future investigation is the extent to which personal decisions to emigrate were shaped by gender, a heavily under-researched aspect of the Scottish diaspora and Scottish history more generally. Scottish women moving to New Zealand, for instance, have been termed reluctant migrants, subject to decisions made by husbands and fathers. Fear of the voyage, apprehension about their destination, and the sadness of leaving kin also seemingly added to their aversion. Such unwillingness, however, was apparently more evident in the early years of settlement in New Zealand, with an inclination to emigrate more significant by the 1880s due to recognition that emigration improved the marital chances of a Scottish girl.36 Future research in this sphere may establish to what degree Scottish women’s emigration reflects competing explanations of their Irish counterparts: for marriage or work.37 The apparently larger flow of married Scottish women, and a comparison of the destinations to which they gravitated, however, might generate more alternative satisfying explanations.
Conceptualized as ‘helping the helpless’, the emigration of children from Scotland, and Britain and Ireland more generally, as well as their experiences in the homelands, is a further avenue of exploration needed. Extant work has focused predominantly on orphan emigration, generating polarized debates about the effect of emigration on the children as well as their countries of origin and destination. On the one hand, the children were seen to be leaving dysfunctional and desolate physical surroundings for healthy environments, yet they came to be disparaged and despised in their new homelands.38 Their emigration was also deemed to solve labour problems abroad, but was similarly criticized as ‘a cynical strategy to delay state welfare provision at home’.39 This focus on orphan emigration, however, excludes the dominant flow of child migrants: those who voyaged with or to their parents; an area of emigration that requires analysis.
More recently, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences, including a focus on concepts such as transnationalism and migrant networks, have influenced historical explanations of Scottish emigration. Highlighting the linkages between countries of origin and settlement, these transnational ‘social spaces’ include familial, economic, political, and religious ties that transcend the borders of nation states. Communication exchanges, flows of information and remittances, and the role of social networks are all fundamental areas of analysis.40 Personal connections frequently proved essential in the decision to migrate, with evidence that the Scots, like some other nationalities undergoing profound emigration, had robust formal and informal networks which provided intending migrants with advice, funds, and information before and after emigration.41 These potential migrants secured advice about various destinations from their contacts already settled abroad or those who had returned. Those connections could similarly act as sponsors of further emigration, though there is less evidence that the Scots sent remittances back home as with their Irish counterparts. The presence abroad of family and friends also lessened the emotions surrounding a migrant’s departure.42 Yet the extent to which more formal Scottish associational networks sought to promote emigration, as in the case of members of the Orange Order in Ireland who were encouraged to settle at Katikati in New Zealand, requires investigation.43
Greater emphasis on alternative methodologies such as comparative investigations and more systematic deployment of personal testimonies enhance efforts to explain emigration beyond the utilization of official sources, propaganda, and ephemera. We still await, however, sustained analyses of the correspondence exchanged between Scots during the nineteenth century, as undertaken for their Irish counterparts.44 The twentieth-century Scottish flow, meanwhile, is illuminated by the deployment of oral testimony, which reveals a range of reasons prompting emigration including demographic pressure in households, economic conditions, health concerns, better lifestyle, climate, discrimination, the search for adventure, and wanderlust. While some analysts remain sceptical of the validity of such reminiscences, oral histories offer an important insight into the migration experience, with migrants retrospectively attributing a number of reasons for which the decision to leave was made.45 Whether personal letters from the nineteenth century offer similar insight into these reasons remains to be seen. Regardless, recourse to such material demonstrates the complexities associated with the decision to emigrate. Comparative studies of Scottish and Irish migrants in the twentieth century, meanwhile, reveal that the most striking contrast surrounding motivation was a greater attribution by the Irish to political factors in spurring their departures.46 Transnational and comparative approaches may help illuminate a fundamental, but little explored, question in diaspora studies more generally: why more people stay rather than move. Exploring this issue also promises to enhance our knowledge of Scotland’s domestic history considerably, throwing light on such topics as fertility, nationalism, and culture.
A key puzzle, however, remains. Given that studies of migrants from many other countries identify similar explanations for emigration, why did Scots leave home? The answer likely lies in studies that move beyond broad explanations to focus on emigration during specific time periods in particular localities, taking into account individual movements and motivations in the context of a range of socio-economic, cultural, and political conditions at home and abroad. Conditions and connections with particular destinations are also critical and facilitate a more complex and nuanced interpretation of emigration from Scotland. Indeed, such accounts must recognize that decisions to emigrate were not made immediately or spontaneously, and that considerable planning and organization was necessary. As such, we need to identify conditions in the months or years prior to departure which may have influenced decisions. As Lorna Carter reminisced of her decision to leave Scotland in the mid-twentieth century, ‘It was a bad winter the winter before, just months before, and I thought I’ve had enough of this.’ Having elected to leave, though, there was an element of spontaneity in the selection of her destination: ‘I wrote to New Zealand House and Australia House and whichever one was going to answer me first I was going’.47 The reasons behind the final choice of destination, with so many competing options to choose from, is an ongoing critical avenue of enquiry. More detailed work on the profile and patterns of Scottish emigration, conditions at home, attractions in the new lands, and a range of facilitating factors would help illuminate the determinants of the outflow more fully.
Two central themes to date characterize studies of Scottish migrant settlement: assimilation and ethnic retention; and contribution history. Proponents of the assimilationist view of Scottish migrants typically perceive Scots as ‘invisible ethnics’ who assimilated to their new lands because of their Protestant faith and support for Empire.48 As an early scholar of Scottish emigration put it, the Scots ‘always had a great gift for assimilation’.49 This is partly attributed to the Scots not needing to defensively assert their ethnic identity, as did the Irish.50 The assimilation view also arises from a focus on settlers rather than sojourners, emphasis on the decline of visible signs of ethnic retention, and concentration on the assimilative policies of white settler colonies of the British Empire, even though Scots moved globally. The appropriation of Scottish ethnic symbols by others also contributes to this interpretation.
The Scottish presence in varied occupational groupings similarly suggests that they infiltrated and assimilated into their new homelands, connecting migrants with a further key element of the assimilation historiography: that of contribution history. In Australia, Scots were disproportionately found in commerce and industry, and in politics, law, and journalism.51 Scots in New Zealand were likewise considered to be over-represented as entrepreneurs, bankers, manufacturers, engineers, and large landowners, with a Scottish contribution seemingly found in several spheres: economic, cultural, literary, educational and religious, and political.52 So too in the United States it is claimed that the Scots ‘had an impact that often extended far beyond their numbers’.53 The disproportion is also evident when comparing Scottish participation in Empire compared to their share of the British population, as Esther Breitenbach indicates in this volume (see Chapter 28). Yet the general lack of comparative work with other ethnic groups leaves us unaware of the depth of this Scottish influence in particular regions and countries, rather than in the Empire as a whole.
If, however, such disproportionate contributions are validated, the question remains as to why the Scots had such an impact. In a study of the American West, a Scottish emphasis on education is stressed in conjunction with other factors: ‘A sense of adventure, a self-confidence, a familiarity with harsh landscape, a work ethic, an individualism that combined nicely with group loyalties, and, often, a set of industrial or agricultural skills set Scots apart from many of the other immigrants.’54 Scottish over-representation in government in Australia, meanwhile, is attributed to a Scottish education, civic-mindedness, Presbyterian ethos, prior success, and national characteristics.55 In the absence of comparative studies, there are problems with such explanations, as Mary C. Waters indicates in a chapter on social, psychological, and character traits in her influential Ethnic Options. The respondents to her questionnaires, she reveals, believed that certain characteristics, traits, and behaviours could be found among specific ethnic groups. What Waters divulged was that general values and beliefs were highlighted, such as family, education, hard work, and loyalty to God and country, but respondents felt these were confined to their ethnic group. By adopting a comparative approach, Waters points to such values being universal and concludes: ‘Researchers who concentrate or study one ethnic group at a time do not see how widespread and common such values are.’56 While transnational linkages are found among other migrant groups, they perhaps offer a more useful explanation for Scottish adjustment. The time at which the Scots arrived and their size and proportion compared with other migrant groups would equally have played a part.
Perceptions of ethnic retention, meanwhile, are often associated with community studies of highlanders abroad, their presence being easier to trace due to the concentrated and isolated nature of much of their settlement, the continuing use of the Gaelic language, and the myths generated by highland migration. A sociological study of the relocation of around eight hundred migrants who followed disenchanted preacher Norman McLeod from the Highlands to Nova Scotia to Australia, and finally to Waipu and its environs in New Zealand, is a striking, if unrepresentative, example of such work, which largely focuses on highlanders in Canada.57 Apart from the visibility of the highlander, some scholars suggest that the manner in which the Scots left home and the stories surrounding their collective departures played a decisive role in the formation of their ethnic identities abroad, with exiles (usually highlanders) more inclined than adventurers (generally lowlanders) ‘to cling to their Scottish roots’.58 Furthermore, when lowlanders did express their identity it was seemingly for economic advancement rather than the cultural solidarity sought by highlanders.59
Yet recent research, drawing on the example of New Zealand, suggests otherwise. Incorporating personal as well as public expressions of identity and blending insider and outsider accounts, it argues that Scottishness was expressed just as robustly by lowlanders and was not solely of cultural or economic significance but also of emotional value.60 Language and accent, for instance, were as important for lowlanders as highlanders, while various national characteristics comprising clannishness, frugality, and caution were attributed to the Scots abroad irrespective of regional origin. Scottish material tokens included dancing and music (particularly the pipes), festivals (especially New Year), dress (bonnets, kilt, and tartan), and food and drink (particularly whisky, haggis, oatmeal, and porridge). Indeed, Scottish migrants in New Zealand shared a preoccupation with their distinctive fare as exhibited by Gaels in Quebec and their counterparts voyaging to Australia.61 Yet the extent to which local conditions influenced similar or different constructions of Scottishness throughout the diaspora remains uncertain given the absence of comparative work.
Important here are studies of non-Gaelic-speaking Scots such as those who settled at Swan River in Australia. While this study is narrowly conceived, it indicates that Scots preferred to employ their fellow ethnics, work with them, and authorize them to tend to their affairs. It was, therefore, their overarching Scottishness as much as local ties that bound them together.62 The social dimension of ethnic networks among Scots, both highlanders and lowlanders, is also striking, and was often just as important as the practical and financial benefits provided by family and friends.63 These informal contacts frequently assisted newcomers with accommodation, employment, and money, and resemble those of other groups including the Irish.64 Whether other ethnic groups operated in similar ways or whether they were more inclined to prioritize closer connections rather than the broader ethnic group is an unresolved area of analysis.
Not all Scots relied on ethnic networks, and some, such as Mary Ann Archbald in the United States, deliberately avoided creating and nurturing such linkages, seeking instead interaction with native-born Americans descended from other ethnic groups. Yet Mary Ann sustained an ongoing correspondence with her old friend in Scotland, Margaret Wodrow, a network of two that fulfilled emotional and sentimental, rather than practical, needs.65 Scots in isolated settlements also operated without the support of such ethnic connections, although they too maintained contact with close connections living elsewhere.66 Whether or not Scots without such ties were more inclined to suffer mental stresses or be apprehended for crimes would also be a fascinating research agenda.
While commercial networks between Scotland and the destinations of diaspora have been highlighted,67 more formal networks included religious connections, and clubs and societies. Such contacts could be charitable or an entry into business and political spheres. Further research into the ways these networks differed according to their origins, development, function, and operation promises illuminating insight. A particular type of formal ethnic networking attracting attention throughout the Scottish diaspora is that of ethnic societies. While early histories were frequently undertaken by members to commemorate anniversaries, professional historians are pursuing more rigorous, analytical investigations. Such explorations highlight the divergent objectives, including a sense of Scottishness, among ethnic societies including St Andrews Societies and Gaelic Societies, as well as Burns Clubs and Caledonian Societies in various destinations. Membership has also been analysed, with some associations confined to Scots or particular elements of a Scottish ethnicity (such as the highland-born) while others were more open in their membership criteria.68 The absence of many membership rolls, however, hampers consideration of how widespread membership was as well as the ethnic origins of members. By contrast, the Orange Order, one of the major Irish ethnic societies to receive sustained analysis, was generally open to all ethnicities, though there were membership variations according to time and place. In some parts of the Irish diaspora, for instance, the Irish-born and their descendants dominated whereas elsewhere other ethnic groups were prominent among Orangemen.69 A key contrast of the ethnic societies of the Scots and the Irish, mirrored also in their ethnic periodicals, is the emphasis on cultural objectives among the Scots while Irish objectives were predominantly political.70 Still outstanding, however, is a global study of such institutions and periodicals to determine the extent of the difference as well as presence or absence of diasporic and transnational linkages.
Another formal institution requiring investigation are the Churches to which Scots belonged, along with the internal religious life of migrants. Studies of the Irish diaspora emphasize this theme, and intriguing insights might be found in comparing the Scots with the English, particularly given the differences identified between Scottish and English forms of worship during the voyage to new settlements.71
Other avenues illuminating Scottishness abroad include analysis of Scottish material culture, with studies of the kilt revealing that it took on different aspects in distinct locations.72 Scottish influence on colonial and indigenous material cultures has also received attention.73 The naming of places, homes, businesses, public houses, animals, and individuals are also seen as expressions of Scottishness.74 A recent exploration of such features in Western Australia claims that Scots were not alone in these practices, with Irish, English, and Welsh settlers similarly adopting naming practices. Yet the Scottish names given to horses were more nationalistic than other ethnicities while Scottish clothing was distinctive with tartan and glengarrys. Some highland Scots expressed pleasure at encountering those speaking Gaelic.75 Similar evidence that clothing and language conveyed an ethnic identity for English migrants is seemingly absent. The naming of colonial landscapes, meanwhile, is linked to broader ideas about colonization and ownership, with Scots possessing ‘the land by naming it’. In other words, such naming was a symbol of possession by whites and dispossession of blacks.76
Interaction with and perceptions of other peoples is a further element of the consequences and impact of Scottish emigration requiring investigation. Where such studies have been undertaken, the focus is on highland engagement with indigenous peoples, often highlighting violence and brutality or parallel experiences of cross-cultural encounters.77 Highland encounters with the Kurnai of Gippsland, Australia, for instance, underscore issues of dispossession: ‘The heart of the tragedy is that these previously dispossessed Scots should come to inflict dispossession on others.’78 It is a theme echoed in respect of the Irish: ‘One of the fundamental stories of the Irish diaspora is of Irish emigrants choosing to do unto others what others had already done unto them.’79 Recent research on Scottish (and Irish) perceptions of Maori in New Zealand provides a more nuanced perspective, showing that Scottish perceptions of Maori were influenced by the time of writing, as well as the effect of place and occupation of the migrant. It also raises questions as to whether Scots were more likely to compare and be compared with Maori than English migrants, and if so why.80 This exploration is important in light of claims that a British assumption of cultural superiority and desire to civilize characterized Scottish attitudes towards Aborigines in Australia.81 As well as further investigation of Scottish migrants mixing with indigenous peoples, other cross-cultural engagement is needed, including encounters and interactions with Irish and English migrants.
Indeed, the issue of Scots identifying as British is frequently assumed rather than tested, often arising from a focus on elites and propagandists. In Canada, for instance, there was a distinct ‘paucity of the use of the term “British” to refer to customs, culture or the nationality of one’s friends and neighbours’.82 Missionary literature also privileged a Scottish identity over a British one.83 Recent research on the Scots in New Zealand suggests that Britishness among Scots was generally only fleetingly identified in connection with toasts at Scottish ethnic gatherings, during international conflicts, or visits by royalty.84 As imperial historian John MacKenzie contends, the British Empire, rather than ‘creating an overall national identity [Britishness] … enabled the sub-nationalism of the United Kingdom to survive and flourish’.85 This national Scottish identity could at times take priority over more regional, county, and local attachments.86
Less evident in the historiography is the sense of Scottishness articulated by the Scottish descent group, although Waipu’s highland settlement provides an interesting insight. While the original settlers expressed their identity through religion, language, and a desire to live as a community, it was only with later generations from the 1870s on that ‘a self-conscious acquisition and assertion’ of Scottishness came to be expressed through Scottish names, interest in Scottish writings, visible displays of Scottishness, and the establishment of the Caledonian Games.87 These visible displays of Scottishness were also appropriated by those without Scottish connections.88 In other cases, descent identity connects to alternative identities such as the popularity of the Scottish heritage movement in the American south being linked to a southern regional identity. In this association, emphasis is given to the lost cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie to mirror the military defeats of the American south.89 Given the propensity of intermarriage, consideration of why descendant attachments to certain ethnicities are chosen over others also requires investigation.
Return visits made to the homeland of their ancestors similarly provides insight into the sense of Scottishness held by the descent group. One of the most well-known episodes of descendant (and Scots-born) return migration to Scotland in the twentieth century concerned the return visits made by Scottish Americans throughout the 1920s and early 1930s in connection with the Order of Scottish Clans in America. The tourists spent about a month travelling through Scotland before returning to the United States. Similar trips home were made by Australian Scots and Scots in England.90 This roots tourism continues with more recent descendants attributing their return to Scotland to factors such as a romanticized landscape and culture, and a sense of homelessness.91
While developments in travel and technology as well as access to resources facilitate descendant visits, Scottish migrants also returned home temporarily or permanently. Yet return migration is a little-studied aspect of the Scottish diaspora, in part because the historiography focuses on successful migrants while return implies disappointment and a lack of success. There is also a problem with statistics, as it is difficult to quantify who is returning. Nevertheless, it is estimated that around one-third of Scots returned home.92 Other countries also experienced a rate of return of 20–40 per cent, though the return of Irish migrants was less common, estimated at only 10 per cent. Yet some groups who had strong rates of return migration also had strong rates of re-migration, that is, returning home and then moving on again. A focus on statistics, however, fails to incorporate those longing to return but who are unable to; nor does it distinguish between temporary, permanent, and multiple returns.
Twentieth-century Scottish migrants cite diverse reasons for return including illness and death; collective obligations; homesickness; and a desire to be home.93 These replicate some of the explanations put forward by those returning from Australia to Britain in the twentieth century: the responsibilities, needs, and desires of family relationships in Britain; economic and job-related factors; and homesickness. Such explanations fit with other European migrant groups who returned during the nineteenth century including failure; success in the new home; homesickness; a call to return to take over the farm; and rejection of life overseas.94 Further comparative work again has much to offer in this respect, as does the impact of returnees on the homeland. Not only would such comparative work embrace the impact of other ethnic groups on their homelands, but comparisons across time in Scotland would prove instructive. Did Scots returning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resemble or diverge from their counterparts who returned from other destinations in earlier time periods? To what extent would their experiences in diverse settlements, such as differing farming practices, have also influenced their impact back home?
Throughout this chapter various avenues for future research were raised; here, some broader methodological and conceptual points are offered. First, in order to explain divergences from one country or region to another and formulate a more integrated interpretation of the Scottish diaspora, comparative work across settlements is urgently required. Such comparison likewise needs to contrast the experiences of the Scots with other ethnic groups. Consideration of the benefit of comparing old and new migrations from the homelands and in places of settlement also has much to offer. Can we identify similar motivations across time? To what extent did Scottishness differ in the early years of settlement compared to more recent years, and how do the identities of new arrivals fit with the articulation of Scottishness and other identities by the multigenerational descent group? How different were the experiences of Scottish male and female migrants? Second, unlike the study of many other diasporas, investigation of the Scottish scattering is primarily the domain of historians. Yet contributions from sociologists and anthropologists, among others, and engagement with theoretical and conceptual concerns arising from the social sciences, will deepen analyses, particularly in examining Scottish emigration in the later twentieth century. Engagement with concepts such as colonialism, modernity, and the new imperial history may not only invigorate and give greater analytical vigour to studies of Scottish emigration, but will situate Scottish emigration in a broader, less introspective historiography. These avenues of enquiry seem necessary if scholarship of the Scottish diaspora is to escape accusations of relative insularity and under-theorization, and engage with scholarship on transnationalism and diaspora.
In the final analysis such explorations need to keep in mind a broader question: what is the comparative significance of the Scottish diaspora? In terms of the disproportionate outflow from Europe, Scotland was a key player, and further research is required into the quantitative character of emigration, the social composition of the migrant flow, and the causes of emigration across time and place to establish the ways they differed from or resembled those factors sparking emigration from other countries. The extant literature also suggests that the Scots were significant in the countries in which they settled, in some cases being disproportionately represented in a number of fields. Yet urgently required is ongoing research into the experiences of Scots in the destinations to which they gravitated, especially in those areas of settlement where academic accounts are required to balance extant popular studies, as in the case of England, or where most of the extant historiography is confined to the period before 1800, as with the United States. Assessing in what ways Scots were distinctive from other ethnic groups in their experience of migration would also illuminate their importance. Emigration is also significant to other themes in Scottish history including studies of gender, class, religion, politics, and cultural life. The current vibrancy of Scottish diaspora studies may therefore in due course provide answers to some of the key questions set out in this chapter.
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