Scotland and the Atlantic World (Atlantic History)

Introduction

For a small, resource-poor nation on the periphery of western Europe, few peoples had as conspicuous a presence in the world of the early modern Atlantic as did the Scots. Indeed, they would seem to have been outsized contributors to a whole range of activities in the Atlantic world: religion and education, migration and trade, medicine and botany, military affairs and imperial administration, and more—so much so that historians have begun to speak of a Scottish empire in the Atlantic. So extensive and so threatening did the Scottish presence seem that by the eve of the American Revolution, English people at home and North Americans in the colonies exhibited prominent instances of “Scotophobia.” Scots became famous for the extent of their loyalism during that conflict, even as Scottish influences became deeply embedded in the culture of British North America as it sought independence. Paradoxically, all of this occurred in spite of their having been relative latecomers to Atlantic involvement, and never dominant demographically. Yet their influence extended not only across the mainland British colonies that would become the United States, but also to the peripheries of settlement in Florida and the Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean and beyond, eventually reaching Britain’s Asian empire as well. Historians long attributed the activism of the Scots to the 1707 Union of Parliaments, which, in creating a new United Kingdom opened up the American trade to Scottish participants in what was now a British empire. More recently they have come to recognize its roots in Scotland’s long history as an uncommonly migratory nation whose people regularly and prominently involved themselves abroad, including an unusual number of prominent and educated people. Indeed, as a poor and peripheral nation of the fringes of Europe, Scots had long before recognized that in order to develop their trade and find economic and cultural opportunities they would have to travel abroad to find them, and so Scots developed a skill for networking and a portable culture well suited to overseas involvement. That culture of Enlightenment proved to be influential overseas as well. It was in fact the very connectedness of Scots with places abroad on the European continent in the 17th century that limited their early involvement in the Atlantic world, and Atlantic traveling and trading never fully replaced those earlier connections.

General Overviews

For many years the history of Scottish involvement overseas was dominated by hagiography, by histories of the accomplishments of those of famous names of Scottish descent, from John Paul Jones to Andrew Carnegie, within the British empire as well as in the independent United States. Only in the second half of the 20th century did scholars begin to take an objective look at those contributions and, instead of simply celebrating them, to try to analyze what made them possible. A turning point was the July 1954 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly, devoted entirely to Scots and early America, including, among several noteworthy essays, Clive and Bailyn 1954, which attributed those affinities to the similar positions of Scotland and British America as England’s “cultural provinces.” It raised the question as to why Scotland seemed so connected to North America. The result was to turn historians’ attention to the Anglo-Scottish union, and what Clive and Bailyn assumed was the sense of cultural inferiority Scots felt, and the goal of emulation. Those themes were picked up by many, including Richards 1991, which pointed out as well that provincial status could be a strength as well as a weakness. The dual result was discussed in the literary field by Hook 1975. The introductory essay in Sher and Smitten 1990 and Murdoch 2010 represent a general survey of the literature of the field, and a substantive summary statement, respectively. They and other works have argued that Scottish-American contacts had their origins well before the union, and that more important than supposed similarities between the positions of Scotland and the American colonies as cultural provinces were the increasing number of active interconnections between them. By the beginning of the 21st century, the historiographical emphasis was more on provincial empowerment than inferiority and led to such works as Fry 2001 (cited under Beyond North America) and Devine 2003 emphasizing Scots as dominant forces in Britain’s empire, especially in the Atlantic. Landsman 2001 attempted to broaden the field beyond the thirteen colonies and beyond mainland North America, a task also pursued by Fry and Donovan 1995 and Macinnes, et al. 2002, both cited under Primary Source Collections. Macinnes and Williamson 2006 looks at the extent to which Scotland’s longstanding European connections helped provide an entrée into the Atlantic world through the influence of other European powers.

Clive, John, and Bernard Bailyn. “England’s Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 11 (1954): 200–213.
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A pioneering work comparing Scotland and British America in the 18th century as cultural provinces of England, with a common sense of provinciality driving emulation of the metropolis in both places.
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Devine, T. M. Scotland’s Empire and the Shaping of the Americas 1600–1815. London: Penguin, 2003.
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An extended study of the ways in which Scots in the 18th century contributed to the expansion of the British empire, from North America to the Caribbean to Asia, wielding disproportionate influence in many realms, in the process making it very much a British rather than an English affair.
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Hook, Andrew. Scotland and America: A Study of Cultural Relations 1750–1835. Glasgow: Blackie, 1975.
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A pioneering literary survey noting the complexity of Scottish-American connections: a “fruitful harmony” and a “time of discord”; Scotland was portrayed both as a “land of learning” and a “land of romance.” All of those themes were taken up by later scholars.
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Landsman, Ned C., ed. Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas 1600–1800: Papers from a Conference to Accompany an Exhibition held at the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island, 1994. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001.
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A collection of essays derived from a 1994 conference on Scotland and the Americas at the John Carter Brown Library, in Providence, Rhode Island, the collection attempts to move the subject beyond Scottish connections with just the United States or even mainland North America to look at larger American and Atlantic connections.
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Macinnes, Allan I., and Arthur H. Williamson, eds. Shaping the Stuart World 1603–1714: The Atlantic Connection. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006.
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The product of a pair of conferences at the Huntington Library in California in June 2001 and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland in June 2002, this collection moved the subject of Scottish involvement in the Atlantic beyond the British world to explore involvements with varied European nations—those of the English, Spanish, and especially the Dutch, the great commercial power of the day. Scotland and England at times had overlapping agendas but also many rivalries in the Atlantic.
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Murdoch, Alexander. Scotland and America, c. 1600–c. 1800. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
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A detailed and well-conceived survey of the involvement of Scots with the Americas throughout the period, focusing both on migration and trade and on larger cultural influences. A good summary of the current literature. Of particular interest are chapters on Scots and slavery—as slave traders, slaveholders, and antislavery advocates—and on their connections with native peoples in the Americas.
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Richards, Eric. “Scotland and the Uses of the Atlantic Empire.” In Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire. Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, 67–114. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
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A survey of the involvement of Scots in the broader world of the Atlantic. Like most works of the time its focal point is the Anglo-Scottish union and its effects on Scotland’s situation, and it understates earlier connections and the influence of traditions of involvement overseas. Noteworthy for paying substantial attention to Highland as well as Lowland involvement.
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Sher, Richard B., and Jeffrey R. Smitten, eds. Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.
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Co-published by Princeton University Press. A pioneering collection of essays forms the first volume of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society book series; it looks at the many connections that formed between those societies around the themes of religion and enlightenment, with a special emphasis on Scotland native and College of New Jersey president John Witherspoon. An introductory essay by Sher placed it all in then-current historiographical context.
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Histories of Scotland

For a number of reasons, including the fact that Scottish history long appeared in university curricula within separate Scottish history departments, many of Scotland’s most prominent historians have regularly undertaken the writing of general histories of their country. Those who taught Scottish history were expected to be specialists in the whole. That occurred as far back as the early part of the 20th century in the writings of historians such as William Law Mathieson and Peter Hume Brown. That tradition made its way into the second half of the 20th century with Donaldson 1974, the work of a senior scholar whose general history traced the elements and institutions that led to “the Shaping of a Nation” as a distinct entity. At about the same time, Scottish historiography took a major turn, beginning with the publication of Smout 1969, which shifted the focus from prominent names and famous events toward the nation’s broader economic, social, and cultural trends. It was a reflection of historiographical trends toward what was called the “New Social History.” Social and economic history have continued to represent an important part of the story, although more recent histories, without abandoning social and economic history, have attempted to restore the political dimension to that narrative, and to integrate questions about nationhood for a people who gave up sovereignty in the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707. Those would include the widely used and detailed textbook Lynch 1999, the comprehensive and award-winning Devine 2000, and Houston 2008, an aptly named very short summary by a senior social and cultural historian. Scottish history has also been well served by historical series, such as the classic Edward Arnold publications of the New History of Scotland series, which combined politics with economic and social history. Mitchison 1983 and Lenman 1981 remain useful volumes from that series. There are several new series currently under way.

Devine, T. M. The Scottish Nation 1700–2000. London: Penguin, 2000.
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The definitive modern Scottish history by a leading economic and social historian. A trend-setter in placing Scotland within a European and international context. Addresses in particular the period of transformation from the mid-18th to the early 20th centuries.
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Donaldson, Gordon. Scotland: The Shaping of a Nation. London: David & Charles, 1974.
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An interpretive volume by a leading historian of his generation, focusing on the main structural elements that made Scotland distinctive: its long history of relations with England, the institutions of government, the church, the economy, and the law, and the history of the Scottish people.
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Houston, Rab. Scotland: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780199230792.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In this volume in Oxford’s very short introduction series, a social historian attends to a whole range of the largest themes in Scottish history, from the building of a nation and state to religion and Reformation, to economy and education to Scots and the world at large. Very readable with nice, concise narrative histories of all of its varied themes.
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Lenman, Bruce P. Integration and Enlightenment: Scotland 1746–1832. London: Edward Arnold, 1981.
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A classic survey, forming part of the New History of Scotland series, of the many ways Scotland changed between the 18th and 19th centuries, combining economics, politics, and society. Published in a new edition by Edinburgh Press, 2009, with extended treatments of certain topics, such as Scots and the America Revolution and the Scottish Enlightenment.
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Lynch, Michael. Scotland: A New History. London: Pimlico, 1999.
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A comprehensive narrative of the whole course of Scottish history and therefore well studied by students in Scottish history courses. Still a valuable reference work with much detail, with more attention to the period before union, the author’s specialization, than after.
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Mitchison, Rosalind. Lordship to Patronage: Scotland 1603–1745. London: Edward Arnold, 1983.
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Another noteworthy volume in the New History of Scotland series. Like most of the series it combines political events with social history and economic history and diplomatic matters. The long history of the creation of Anglo-Scottish union is an important subject of the volume.
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Smout, T. C. A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1969.
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An early effort at surveying the economic and social history of early modern Scotland before the necessary secondary works had been written. Smout undertook the task himself, and produced a valuable and still useful text full of information on economy and society.
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Reference Works

In addition to general surveys, Scottish history has benefited in recent years from the production of volumes intended to serve as companions to Scottish history, with compendia of long or short essays by leading historians on various topics in the Scottish past, of differing lengths. Three of those can be found in various series from Oxford University Press. Lynch 2001 is part of the Oxford Companion series, a dictionary-like compilation of a great many entries for handy reference. Devine and Wormald 2012, by contrast an Oxford handbook, contains much longer essays by noted scholars and gives considerable weight to Scots abroad and the Atlantic world. Wormald 2005 is part of the Oxford Illustrated History series suitable for an educated readership, readily displayed but of academic quality. Ewan, et al. 2006 compiles biographies of a great many Scottish women through history.

Devine, T. M., and Jenny Wormald, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Part of the Oxford Handbook series; contains chapter-length entries by noted scholars on a wide variety of topics across modern Scottish history. Notable for Atlantic connections are essays on the global diaspora, migrant destinations, the economy, and the Highland clearances.
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Ewan, Elizabeth, Sue Innes, Siân Reynolds, and Rose Pipes, eds. The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
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A dictionary-like work, as the title suggests, with brief entries on Scottish women through time. Relatively few had Atlantic involvements, but that is rather in the nature of the subject.
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Lynch, Michael, ed. The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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A dictionary-like compendium of brief and not-so-brief entries on a vast number of topics in Scottish history. Useful as a quick reference, for students and others, with entries by a wide range of Scottish historians, containing also a glossary and table of chronology.
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Wormald, Jenny, ed. Scotland: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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One of the Oxford series of illustrated histories, this lavishly illustrated volume surveys the course of Scottish history to the present, with additional chapters on literature and the Scottish diaspora, all written by leading experts in their fields, and meant to distinguish Scotland’s history from British in general.
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Primary Source Collections

There are only a few collections of primary sources covering Scotland and the Atlantic world, most of those pertaining principally to North America; one has to pick and choose to find useful materials. The most comprehensive volume is Macinnes, et al. 2002, which covers all of the Americas over an extended time period. For the early period, the collection attempts to counter the belief in modest Scottish involvement with the Atlantic before the union, and of poverty and compulsion thereafter. The other collections are somewhat narrower: Fry and Donovan 1995 also covers the Americas in general; the sources are described but not reprinted except for the numerous illustrations provided from the materials. DeWolfe 1997 reprints emigrant letters from North America from the 18th century, many from Scots; Cameron 1965 reprints emigration registers from the peak years of Scottish emigration, including answers to questions asked of the migrants. Witherspoon 1802 is the most extensive compilation of writings we have from a Scottish migrant, by the most influential Scottish-American minister and politician of the era. It includes works written in Scotland and in North America; much of volume four considers the relationship between Scotland and Scots and the American Revolution. Devine 1984 provides records and correspondence of one of Glasgow’s three principal tobacco firms. Legacies of British Slave-Ownership is a searchable database of slave owners, including Scots, in the Caribbean.

Cameron, Viola Root, comp. Emigrants from Scotland to America, 1774–1775. Copied from a Loose Bundle of Treasury Papers in the Public Record Office, London, England. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1965.
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A set of emigration registers compiled during the peak years of Scottish emigration, when officials began to fear excessive population of the Scottish Highlands, as well as a contribution to American strength during the Revolutionary crisis. Many were questioned about their motives, and the answers were often recorded. The registers were used extensively in Bailyn 1986, cited under North American Migration.
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Devine, T. M., ed. A Scottish Firm in Virginia 1767–1777: W. Cuninghame and Co. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1984.
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Correspondence of one of Glasgow’s leading tobacco firms during its heyday, including letters from the company’s principal factor in Virginia, James Robinson, both to the company’s storekeepers in the colony and to William Cuninghame in Glasgow. By far the most extensive correspondence of this sort.
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DeWolfe, Barbara, ed. Discoveries of America: Personal Accounts of British Emigrants to North America during the Revolutionary Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511629501Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of forty-four documents, principally emigrant letters and personal accounts pertaining to the large-scale migrations to North America, largely Scottish, that followed the end of the Seven Years’ War, from across the colonies. Many of the documents were used in Bailyn 1986, cited under North American Migration, and Bernard Bailyn supplied a foreword.
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Fry, Michael, and Robert Kent Donovan, comps. Scotland and the Americas 1600 to 1800. Providence, RI: John Carter Brown Library, 1995.
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Principally a collection of essays by scholars that accompanied the John Carter Brown’s exhibit on Scotland and the Americas in 1994, discussing topics from religion and education to migration and trade, well illustrated with samples from the library’s own collections on those subjects.
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Legacies of British Slave-Ownership.
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Online database from University College London can be searched for the names and positions of Scottish slave owners in the Caribbean. Shows their substantial participation in slave owning.
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Macinnes, Allan I., Marjory-Ann D. Harper, and Linda G. Fryer, eds. Scotland and the Americas, c. 1650–c. 1939. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 2002.
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A collection of original source materials pertaining to many aspects of Scots involvement with North America and the Caribbean, from its beginnings until the beginning of World War II. The emphasis is on sources not published elsewhere, designed to demonstrate a level of involvement more substantial than has often been appreciated, especially for the early period. Topics include settlement, trade, military engagement, persistence, and return migration.
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Witherspoon, John. Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon. 2d ed. 4 vols. Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802.
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A comprehensive collection of the writings of the eminent Scottish-American minister, educator, church leader, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, many published only posthumously. Includes works written and or published as a clergyman in Scotland and as head of the College of New Jersey. Much of Volume 4 is taken up with documents concerning Scotland and the American Revolutionary crisis.
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Bibliographies

Bibliographies of Scotland and the Atlantic world have more or less followed the predominant historiographical trends. The earliest were basic compilations relating to Scotland and North America such as Black 1916, a vast compendium of works pertaining to Scotland in the New York Public Library. It was not restricted to Atlantic topics, but the New York location meant that American interests loomed large. More directly on topic was the then–Scottish Record Office’s (now National Register of Archives’) List of American Documents (Scottish Record Office 1976), augmented later by hand-lists of additional materials in the archive. Brock and Brock 1982 contains extensive lists of both primary and secondary sources, while Fry and Donovan 1995 lists materials from the vast collections of the John Carter Brown Library, as well as many located elsewhere, along with their locations. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, are the online collections connected to the National Library of Scotland, including the general catalogue, “Scottish Bibliographies Online,” and the extensive databases of materials relating to North America and to emigrant lives.

Black, George F., comp. A List of Works Relating to Scotland. New York: New York Public Library, 1916.
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Black, a Scottish scholar, compiled this very extensive list from the holdings at the New York Public Library. Still useful as a listing of available sources, if now dated and without the benefits of Internet searching.
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Brock, William R., and C. Helen Brock. Scotus Americanus A Survey of the Sources for Links between Scotland and America in the Eighteenth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982.
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A discussion by William Brock of the history and a survey of the sources on topics ranging from the tobacco trade and Highland migration to Enlightenment and Revolution, with a chapter and appendices by C. Helen Brock on Scotland and American medicine. Contains extensive source lists of both primary documents and secondary materials.
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Fry, Michael, and Robert Kent Donovan, comps. Scotland and the Americas 1600 to 1800. Providence, RI: John Carter Brown Library, 1995.
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A collection of essays by noted scholars that accompanied the John Carter Brown’s exhibit on Scotland and the Americas in 1994, discussing topics from religion and education to migration and trade, with discussions of materials in the library’s own collections on those subjects. Also contains lengthy lists of resources in the Library and elsewhere.
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National Library of Scotland: Catalogues Overview.
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The catalogue of the largest library in Scotland and the principal repository of works on Scotland, now online. Relevant listings include: “Archives of Scotland Database;” “Scots Abroad Database. Emigration from Scotland, Emigrants’ Correspondence;” “Scots Abroad Database. Emigrants’ Guide to North America;” “Scots Abroad Database. Scots in North America.”
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Scottish Bibliographies Online.
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An online database of publications about Scotland, accessible through the website of the National Library of Scotland.
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Scottish Record Office. List of American Documents. Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1976.
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A comprehensive guide to American materials in the leading Scottish repository, now the National Archives of Scotland. Supplementary list can be found on-site.
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A Culture of Migration

When Gordon Donaldson proclaimed Scotland’s greatest export to have been men (in Donaldson 1966), he implicitly opened up a new set of questions about Scottish society and culture. While he was still thinking principally of the movement of migrants into the far reaches of the British empire in modern times, the question as to why Scots were so persistently mobile still needed addressing. The question was reiterated in Devine 1992, which asks why emigration from Scotland remained so high even after the economic take-off of the 18th century, a condition not usually found in societies with high levels of out-migration. The answers pointed backward in time. While the relatively modest scale of movement to the Americas before the 18th century had made pre-union Scotland seem a latecomer to emigration in general, that turned out not to have been the case. Empire was not the origin of emigration. Historians in fact were beginning to establish two sets of precedents for those movements. One was domestic migration; Houston 1985 and Whyte 1988 both point to the very high historical mobility of the Scottish population, possibly greater than in England and probably higher than in France, for example, which traditionally had longer leases and more secure forms of land tenure than did Scotland, and higher than other northern Europeans. Moreover, Smout, et al. 1994 shows that as far back as the late Middle Ages and through the 17th century, Scots traveled and migrated extensively to sites across Europe, including the Baltic, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries, as soldiers, students, merchants, peddlers, and religious refugees; see the sources cited in European Migration. Ireland would also be an increasingly important site; see also Ireland for Scottish movements to that land. Landsman 1999 and Devine 2003 (cited under General Overviews) both contend that the relatively late start of Scottish migration to the Americas was less the result of an unwillingness to move than of a greater interest in the already long-established migration routes to Europe. A very different illustration of the persistence of the culture of migration can be found in Rothschild 2011 (cited under Sojourning, Homecoming, and Diaspora), which traces the wanderings of one large and moderately prosperous Scottish family in the 18th century across the globe to North America, the Caribbean, and South Asia. See also the works cited under Beyond North America.

Devine, T. M., ed. Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar University of Strathclyde 1990–91. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1992.
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The collection begins with a problem-defining essay by Devine on “The Paradox of Scottish Emigration”; that theme is followed by other essays on the forces leading to migration and several on migration to Canada, as well as beyond.
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Donaldson, Gordon. The Scots Overseas. London: Robert Hale, 1966.
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An older but scholarly survey of the topic. Like most works of the period it focuses principally on modern migration movements within the British empire. Notable for its attention to common people and calling attention to the extensiveness of Scottish migration.
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Grosjean, Alexia, and Steve Murdoch, eds. Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period. Boston: Brill, 2005.
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A collection that surveys the multitude of places where Scots established communities, or sometimes less-than communities, from northern Europe to Ireland to North America. While only a few were Atlantic, the others formed important background to understanding why Scots did enter the Atlantic world, as well as the manner in which they did so.
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Houston, Rab. “Geographic Mobility in Scotland 1652–1811: The Evidence of Testimonials.” Journal of Historical Geography 11 (1985): 379–394.
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Uses testimonials to demonstrate that persons in the Scottish countryside were far from stationary but moved about regularly, usually over short distances. Finds a higher rate of movement than in France and Germany, but perhaps not as high as in the English countryside, although the data preclude definitive comparisons.
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Landsman, Ned C. “Nation, Migration, and the Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600–1800.” American Historical Review 103 (1999): 463–475.
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Looks at the overall pattern of Scottish migration, emphasizing Scotland’s place as a consistent net exporter of population, to Europe and then to the Americas, and the unusually large proportion of trained, educated, and well connected migrants.
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Smout, T. C., N. C. Landsman, and T. M. Devine. “Scottish Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500–1800. Edited by Nicholas Canny, 76–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
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Three historians look at the pattern of early modern Scottish emigration, emphasizing its size, especially from the Lowlands to Europe in the 17th century and before significant Atlantic involvement, and the subsequent shift to the Atlantic sphere and the increasing migration of Highlanders.
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Whyte, I. D. “Population Mobility in Early Modern Scotland.” In Scottish Society 1500–1800. Edited by R. A. Houston and I. D. Whyte, 37–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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A close look at internal migration within early modern Scotland, surveying a great variety of records, from parish registers and kirk sessions to marriage records to vagrancy. Sets it all within a European context, finding rates of mobility similar to the high rates found in some English communities and higher than those found in France and elsewhere.
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European Migration

Before their entry into the world of transatlantic colonization, Scots had a long experience of migration to the European continent. From at least the late Middle Ages they could be found in Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and the Baltic; to those Ireland would be added later. They went for trade, education, military service, and religious refuge. The earliest general discussion of that movement, with an attempt at numerical estimates, was Smout, et al. 1994, cited under A Culture of Migration, building especially on the essays in Smout 1986, a wide-ranging collection. The work was filled out from there in the essays in Simpson 1996 on the Low Countries; Riis 1998 on the apparently commonplace presence of Scots peddlers in Poland; and Murdoch 2006 on the whole range of northern European networks in which Scots were engaged, for religion, education, and trade. The increasing importance of the Netherlands for refuge and trade is highlighted in Catterall 2002, which looks at community life in the Dutch republic for Scots who remained on a fairly permanent basis, and Gardner 2004 which focuses specifically on the exile community in the Netherlands during the Restoration years. Esther’ essay in Macinnes and Williamson 2006, cited under General Overviews, and Catterall 2009, cited under Scotland and the Atlantic Economy also point to the Netherlands as a conduit for eventual Scottish involvement in the Atlantic. Murdoch and Mijers 2012 summarizes the literature and contends that the union caused only a modest break in earlier migration patterns for quite some time. The works on migration to Ireland are cited in Ireland.

Catterall, Douglas. Community without Borders: Scots Migrants and the Changing Face of Power in the Dutch Republic, c. 1600–1700. Boston: Brill, 2002.
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A look at the very extensive migrant networks of Scots in Rotterdam in the Dutch republic who remained as a permanent community, the networks upon which they relied, and their ability to shape the contours of the larger community there. Useful not only for the historical materials but for the interdisciplinary perspectives provided as well.
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Gardner, Ginny. The Scottish Exile Community in the Netherlands, 1660–1690. Scottish Historical Review Monograph Series 13. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2004.
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Not precisely Atlantic history, but a significant study of the extent to which Scottish merchants and political exiles worked in Dutch society and shaped their subsequent activity in the Glorious Revolution in Scotland and beyond.
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Murdoch, Steve. Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe 1603–1746. Boston: Brill, 2006.
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A broad survey of the many kinds of networks Scots employed in moving to and/or working within the countries of northern Europe over a century and a half, providing excellent background for contextualizing their interactions in the larger world of the Atlantic.
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Murdoch, Steve, and Esther Mijers. “Migrant Destinations, 1500–1750.” In Oxford Handbook of Scottish History. Edited by T. M. Devine and Jenny Wormald, 320–337. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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A survey of what had become a very extensive literature, arguing that the union formed only a modest break in migrant destinations, which continued to be built on what had come earlier.
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Riis, Thomas, ed. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot: Scottish-Danish Relations c. 1450–1707. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1998.
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A collection of essays looking at the extensive relationships that emerged over a long period between Scotland and Denmark, and Scotland and Scandinavia generally.
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Simpson, Grant G., ed. Scotland and the Low Countries 1124–1994. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1996.
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Before Scots were involved in the Atlantic they could be found extensively in the Low Countries of Europe. The essays in this collection detail involvements as merchants, soldiers, students, and many other things, looking at the considerable Low Country influence on Scotland and the experiences and knowledge Scots gained abroad.
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Smout, T. C., ed. Scotland and Europe 1200–1850. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986.
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Papers delivered at the Scottish History Seminar at St. Andrews survey Scotland’s many links with Europe, most of it before the American colonization, with material on migrations especially to Poland and Scandinavia.
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Ireland

At its closest point, the distance between Scotland and Ulster in the north of Ireland is a mere twelve miles, and the histories of the migrations of those peoples into the Atlantic world have been strongly interwoven. In fact it was the presence of Ireland that first oriented Scots toward the Atlantic. Only recently has the pattern of movement between those places begun to be carefully charted. The most dramatic moment was the Ulster plantation of the first quarter of the 17th century, detailed in a comprehensive narrative in Perceval-Maxwell 1973. That place housed both English and Scottish plantations and has thus been considered the first truly British settlement project. The assumption has long been that that was the foundation of what became the Ulster Scots population that loomed large in 18th-century Atlantic migration. Cullen 1994 and Smout, et al. 1994 look more closely at the pattern of movement between Scotland and Ireland, which leads to a rather different conclusion: the plantation years produced only a relatively small settler population, and the movement of Scots and their descendants back and forth across the narrow straight continued with considerable frequency throughout the 17th century, aided by civil wars that left large numbers seeking refuge on one side or the other depending on the politics and the military situation, leading eventually to a larger and more stable Ulster population after 1688. Fitzgerald 2005 contends that that enhancement of the Ulster population then provided the basis for the much larger Ulster migration to North America in the early 18th century and, as Landsman 1999 suggests (cited under A Culture of Migration), the relatively small Atlantic migration from a relatively under-populated Scotland during those same years. Young 2004 looks at the movement of refugees across the Irish Sea in both directions during the 17th century but also finds the gradual evolution of an Ulster Scots community.

Cullen, L. M. “The Irish Diaspora of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500–1800. Edited by Nicholas Canny, 113–149. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204190.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A general discussion looking closely at migration from all parts of Ireland during the period as well as in-migration, especially of Scots into Ulster. Also considers the outflow of Scots from Ulster, and the subsequent Ulster migration to North America.
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Fitzgerald, Patrick. “Scottish Migration to Ireland in the Seventeenth Century.” In Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period. Edited by Alexia Grosjean and Steve Murdoch, 27–52. Boston: Brill, 2005.
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Looks at the 17th-century migration to Ireland during a time of civil wars and famine and explores some of the reasons for further migration of those of Scots descent from Ireland to North America in the following century.
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Perceval-Maxwell, M. The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
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A detailed account of what many have considered Scotland’s first Atlantic venture, the movement of Scots to the Ulster Plantations, during the first or plantation phase of that settlement in the first quarter of the 17th century.
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Smout, T. C., N. C. Landsman, and T. M. Devine. “Scottish Emigration in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500–1800. Edited by Nicholas Canny, 76–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198204190.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Three historians look at the pattern of early modern Scottish emigration, emphasizing its size before significant Atlantic involvement. One of the important destinations was Ireland in the 17th century, and the essay emphasizes not only the volume of the migration but its intermittent character, with much reverse migration during the troubles of the mid-17th century.
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Young, John R. “Scotland and Ulster in the Seventeenth Century: The Movement of Peoples over the North Channel.” In Ulster and Scotland, 1600–2000: History, Language, and Identity. Edited by William Kelly and John R. Young, 11–32. Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts, 2004.
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A look at movement back and forth between Scotland and Ulster across the Irish Sea in the 17th century, with a particular emphasis on refugees in the aftermath of the various political and military transformations of the period. Finds a gradual development of the notion of a distinct Scottish community in Ulster.
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Colonies

Before the Union of Parliaments opened what would become the British empire to Scottish trading, Scotland, like numerous other European powers, had undertaken a modest program of colonization on its own. Recent work has emphasized that those colonies, once thought to have been simple failures, had much in common with the efforts of other smaller powers, and some of their successes. The classic work on those colonies remains Insh 1922, a general survey. The starting point was the short-lived and often ignored Nova Scotia projects of the 1620s, which Griffiths and Reid 1992 shows to have been more substantial than was previously known. That they can be compared to the other marginal northeastern colonies in North America in Acadia and Maine is argued in Reid 1981, with the extensive efforts of Sir William Alexander, and their relation to larger Scottish imperial goals of the early 17th century. By far the most successful of the colonies was the Scots Quaker venture to East New Jersey described in Landsman 1985; it became the foundation of an extensive Scots presence in central New Jersey and the mid-Atlantic colonies. Fryer 1995 and Fryer 1998 present new documents about the East Jersey and Carolina colonies and the economic motivations behind both, while also emphasizing Jersey governor Robert Barclay’s desire for a nonsectarian colony. More general Scots ambitions in that region and elsewhere, their significance before the Anglo-Scottish union, and their under-appreciated importance for Scotland, are highlighted in Macinnes, et al. 2002.

Fryer, L. G. “Robert Barclay of Urie and East New Jersey.” Northern Scotland 15 (1995): 1–17.
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An account of the Quaker Robert Barclay’s involvement in the East New Jersey colonization, emphasizing both economic motives and Barclay’s desire to create a nonsectarian colony even more tolerant than Pennsylvania. Discovers some new documents about Barclay’s early life and his extensive work on behalf of the colony and about the participation of the family of the Campbells of Argyll.
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Fryer, L. G. “Documents Relating to the Formation of the Carolina Company in Scotland, 1682.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 99 (1998): 110–134.
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Based on a bundle of documents pertaining to the Scots colony in Carolina found in the Bute archives. While the colony has often been portrayed as a covenanter refuge, and its leaders had close covenanting connections, the materials presented here point more toward the economic motive of drawing Scotland into the Anglo-American world of colonization and trade.
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Griffiths, N. E. S., and John G. Reid. “New Evidence on New Scotland, 1629.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 49 (1992): 492–508.
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A discussion and printing of a document about the New Scotland settlement written by Richard Guthry in Fort Royal in 1629, offering information about the early settlers, including the presence of families and English separatists among them, making it much like other early northern European settlements, in the authors’ view.
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Insh, George Pratt. Scottish Colonial Schemes 1620–1686. Glasgow: Maclehose, Jackson, 1922.
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Still the standard account of Scottish colonization before the union, with chapters on Nova Scotia and accompanying schemes, East Jersey, Carolina, and various Caribbean activities. Includes a number of significant primary sources as well. Followed by a volume by the same author on The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies in 1932.
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Landsman, Ned C. Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683–1765. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
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A study of the first permanent Scots colony in the New World, in the East Jersey province controlled by Scottish proprietors, who created a Scottish-style society under the domination of large landowners that would persevere within the mid-Atlantic region for years to come.
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Macinnes, Allan I., Marjory-Ann D. Harper, and Linda G. Fryer, eds. Scotland and the Americas, c. 1650 - c. 1939: A Documentary Source Book. Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 2002.
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A source book on Scottish involvement with the Americas, a principal focus is on Scottish colonization before the union, for which it provides rarely seen sources.
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Reid, John G. Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
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Compares the short-lived Scottish colony in Nova Scotia with the French colony at Acadia—largely the same territory—and the New English colony in Maine. Emphasizes common goals of European colonizers, and the collapse of Nova Scotia to power politics. A particular focus also is on relations with Native Americans.
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The Company of Scotland

The Company of Scotland, brainchild of the Anglo-Scottish financial figure William Paterson, was a broad effort to bring Scotland into the modern world of economic development through colonial involvement, originally targeting both Scottish and English investors, especially those closed out of the English East India Company monopoly. But pressure from allies of the English Company led to opposition from the Crown and the withdrawal of that nation’s investors and turned it instead into a broad national and patriotic effort financed by a large swath of Scottish society. Insh 1932 is the classic narrative account, with Prebble 1969 a more popular work. That pressure led the company also to follow Paterson’s plan and concentrate on building a commercial entrepôt near the isthmus of Panama at Darien, which was to open up the trade of the world. Armitage 1995 situates the goals of the Darien venturers within the context of a developing Scottish imperial vision. The combination of English commercial hostility and King William’s reluctance to challenge Spain, then his ally in Continental wars, led the king to prohibit English colonists everywhere from offering any kind of support to the venturers. The combination of inadequate planning, disease, and Spanish attack led to the death of many, the loss of a huge sum of capital, and the abandonment of the enterprise. It led many Scots as well to question the viability of a union of crowns in which the monarch was clearly so much more concerned with the interests of his larger kingdom, resulting eventually in the union crisis and the negotiation of the Treaty of Union. Newer works Watt 2007, an economic analysis, and Macinnes 2007 (cited under Union and Empire) reconsider the economic aspects of the venture, with the latter portraying an effort with much more potential than Watt attributed to it, or than most traditional accounts allowed. McPhail 1994 and Gallup-Diaz 2005 both look beyond the world of the colonizers and attempt to integrate the concerns of the native inhabitants into the story of Darien. Horton 2009 adds more detail about the uncertainties of what actually happened from the archaeological evidence. McNeill 2010 emphasizes the role of tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever in undermining the settlement.

Armitage, David. “The Scottish Vision of Empire: Intellectual Origins of the Darien Venture.” In A Union for Empire: Political Thoughts and the British Union of 1707. Edited by John Robertson, 97–118. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Considers the intellectual debate surrounding the Company’s venture, as an attempt to solve the problems of the union of crowns and of a Europe of competitive trading empires, discussing as well how the failure led instead to discussions of union.
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Gallup-Diaz, Ignacio J. The Door of the Seas and Key to the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darién, 1640–1750. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
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First published as an e-book in 2001 by Gutenberg-e. Inserts the story of the Company of Scotland’s colony at Darien into a longer history of the region and its Tule Indian inhabitants, who for more than a century had to survive among a changing configuration of European imperial colonizers. Treats the Darien episode as a story of Scots, English, Spanish, and Indian interactions.
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Horton, Mark. “‘To Transmit to Posterity the Virtue, Lustre and Glory of their Ancestors’: Scottish Pioneers in Darien, Panama.” In Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World: People, Products, and Practices on the Move. Edited by Caroline A. Williams, 131–150. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.
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An ecological and archaeological treatment adds to the story material about the locations actually examined and settled and the bearing that had on what followed.
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Insh, George Pratt. The Company of Scotland Trading to Scotland and the Indies. London: Scribners, 1932.
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Successor to the author’s Scottish Colonial Schemes (1922) and the classic narrative account of the company over all, including the failed settlement at Darien. A balanced account sticking close to the documents while not reluctant to criticize partisan failings.
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McNeill, J. R. Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511811623Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Rather than emphasizing the effects of poor planning and English and Spanish hostility in the Company of Scotland’s failure at Darien, McNeill points to the disease environment and the susceptibility of the new settlers to the combination of malaria and yellow fever, leaving them severely weakened before they were attacked.
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McPhail, Bridget. “Through a Glass Darkly: Scots and Indians Converge at Darien.” Eighteenth-Century Life 18 (1994): 129–147.
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Complicates the story of Darien by setting the Scots’ venture within the context of their interactions with English, Spanish, and Darien Indians. Also considers the role of imperial rivalries in examining the way that Scots configured their portrayals of their Indian neighbors.
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Prebble, John. The Darien Disaster: A Scots Colony in the New World, 1698–1700. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
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A popular account by a popular historian providing a dramatic narrative of the “noble undertaking,” its enemies, and the tragic result.
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Watt, Douglas. The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations. Edinburgh: Luath, 2007.
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A new look at the Company by an economic historian, relying especially on the Company’s financial records, to discuss the advent of new financial mechanisms in the Scottish trading world. Watt emphasizes the financial consequences of the Company’s failure in bringing about the union. His description of the union as a “bonanza” contrasts with Macinnes 2007, which portrays it as a bad financial deal for Scotland.
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North American Migration

Over the years, much more attention has been paid to Scottish migration to North America than anywhere else, and, despite the increased interest in other areas, that is still the case. As far back as the 19th century proud Americans of Scottish heritage celebrated the manifold contributions of Scots to American society. In the middle of the 20th century such an approach was superseded by more scholarly works, which have looked beyond the famous names to the ordinary people who made up the bulk of the movements. The first scholarly survey was Graham 1956, which establishes that, whatever their contributions, the overall volume of migration from Scotland to North America in the 18th century was never great; Graham counted fewer than 25,000 Scottish migrants to mainland North America during the decade after the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which was far and away the peak of migration. That count was challenged by Bailyn 1986, which updates the material on migration after 1763, using emigration registers and ship data to substantially increase the estimates to as much as 40,000. Some of the primary materials for that period are published in Adams and Somerville 1993; see also the sources cited under Primary Source Collections and the discussions cited in Highland Migration. McDonald and McDonald 1980 adds further to the impetus toward higher migration estimates. Applying a controversial method of surname analysis, the authors revise estimates of the Scottish-descended population of early American dramatically. The McDonalds have had their critics, and Purvis 1984 further revises their methods and comes up with substantially lower numbers. Landsman 1999 (cited under A Culture of Migration) attempts to explain the discrepancy between a relatively low total number of migrants and their high visibility by placing the movement within the long history of Scottish migration and the unusual number of prominent and educated Scots who traditionally traveled or migrated abroad. Much of the migration after 1783 went to the northern provinces that would become Canada. Bumsted 2001 emphasizes the diversity of those migrants, while Vance 2012 examines an under-studied group for that period who were Lowland migrants into Canada’s Upper Valley, their role in connecting the region to Scottish traditions, and their unwitting role in dispossessing Native Americans. For the others, see the works discussed in Highland Migration, but see also the works cited in A Culture of Migration, which suggest that the enthusiasm for emigration of those years may not have been as new as its publicists suggested.

Adams, Ian, and Meredyth Somerville. Cargoes of Despair and Hope: Scottish Emigration to North America, 1603–1803. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1993.
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Two geographers take on the subject of emigration, focusing on North America and on the period after 1763. Somewhat superseded by Bailyn 1986 on that subject, but includes abundant primary materials.
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Bailyn, Bernard. Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.
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Working from the extensive emigration records kept during the last years before the American Revolution, during a surge in migration from Britain’s peripheries, Bailyn provides a vivid and extended account of those migrations, including sharply focused individual stories but also a larger statistical framework for evaluating the larger patterns and the motives of the migrants.
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Bumsted, J. M. “The Scottish Diaspora: Emigration to British North America, 1763–1815.” In Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600–1800. Edited by Ned C. Landsman, 127–150. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001.
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A survey of the extensive Scottish migration to the northern provinces in the half century after 1763, emphasizing the diversity of settlers and their varied motives and activities in place of the myth of a predominantly Highland migration driven by the clearances.
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Dobson, David. Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607–1785. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
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The work of a genealogist trained also as an historian. Dobson, whose main works are compiled emigrant lists, provides a detailed prose account of Scots emigration to British America, with extensive data on individuals and places and an emphasis on the volume and import of Scottish migrants.
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Graham, Ian Charles Cargill. Colonists from Scotland: Emigration to North America, 1707–1783. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956.
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Still the most comprehensive single narrative account of the subject, although most of its parts have been supplemented or superseded by more recent work. Includes discussions of migration, politics, Highland migration, and Scotophobia.
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McDonald, Forrest, and Ellen Shapiro McDonald. “The Ethnic Origins of the American People, 1790.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 37 (1980): 179–199.
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A controversial article using and expanding a technique of surname analysis used previously to try to calculate the national origins of early Americans, the McDonalds revise dramatically upward the portion of the population considered to have been “Celtic” in origin, especially for the southern colonies, which they view as having housed imported Celtic cultures.
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Purvis, Thomas L. “The European Ancestry of the United States Population, 1790.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 41 (1984): 85–101.
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Following the McDonalds’ effort to recalculate the national origins of the early American population, without their interest in proving a thesis of “Celtic” origins, Purvis revises their calculations of Celtic peoples downward, and where the McDonalds aggregate them, Purvis calculates and separates the different nationalities.
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Vance, Michael E. Imperial Immigrants: Scottish Settlers in the Upper Ottawa Valley, 1815–1840. Toronto: Dundurn, 2012.
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Examines the settlement of Scottish Lowlanders in the Upper Ottawa Valley, their often unintended role in the dispossession of the First Nations, and the reformist impulses they brought with them.
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Highland Migration

Unlike Lowland migration across the Atlantic in the 18th century, which built upon a long and voluminous history of migration abroad, movement abroad from the Highlands had a more limited history. The upsurge that began in that century was dramatic, especially in the years after the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, and thus called out for explanation, which was often supplied by reference to Highland support for the losing side in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, the confiscations and the harsh policies that followed, and the eventual clearances of the land for sheep. That was the dramatic movement witnessed by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell in their famous 1773 journey to the western isles (Johnson and Boswell 1984). Meyer 1961, looking at Highland settlement in North Carolina, questions the exile theory and portrays those settlers instead as seekers of opportunity. Still more questions about motivation were raised by Bumsted 1982, which views those migrants not as forced out by the clearances, but as choosing to migrate rather than stay, giving them the best opportunity to retain their traditional way of life in the face of social change. Indeed, many left over the opposition of landowners who sought to retain them. Such a view of migration was shared in part by Richards 2000 which also portrays the long time frame of the clearances and their complex relationship to social change at particular times. Mackillop 2000 also emphasizes the complexity of motives, and disputes the longstanding assumption that Highlanders, who were often recruited as a fighting force in the British army, chose to enlist from a natural propensity for soldiering in the Highland social system, arguing again that military service, like migration, was a rational response to social change. Nonetheless, authorities did seem to believe in Highland military prowess, and Parker 1997 does note the considerable efforts to recruit Highlanders for military purposes in the Georgia colony. Several more recent works have reasserted a role for the clearances. McLean 1991 challenges Bumsted’s denial of a relationship between emigration and the clearances, contending that, while landowners did not forcibly clear the lands of all tenants, the economic innovations they introduced had the eventual result of persuading the inhabitants, who tried to make the best of the new ways, that they would do better in the new economic environment of British North America. Devine 2003 (cited under General Overviews) includes a nuanced analytical chapter of a society balanced between desperation and aspiration. Finally, Murdoch 1998 describes three distinct periods of Highland migration, with their different places of settlement and varying motives.

Bumsted, J. M. The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770–1815. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982.
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Makes the argument that the early Highland clearances of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were not enacted by aggressive landlords but by common Highlanders, who, facing increasingly an increasingly oppressive environment, banded together to leave the Highlands for North America, first to the lower thirteen colonies and later, after independence, to what would become Canada.
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Johnson, Samuel, and James Boswell. The Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Edited by Peter Levi. London: Penguin Classics, 1984.
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The travel journals kept by Johnson and Boswell on their tour of the Hebrides in 1773, during a period of intensive migration from the Highlands to North America. The travelers observed many signs of that on their journey.
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Mackillop, Andrew. “More Fruitful than the Soil”: Army, Empire, and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2000.
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One avenue of migration for Highlanders was through the British army. Taking on the subject of Highland recruitment, Andrew Mackillop contests the notion that it was the product of traditional clan loyalties to feudal superiors acting as recruiters, or of a particularly warlike nature of Highland peoples. The author argues that it was more the result of a changing Highland society, leading both to emigration and to military service, with financial incentives as well.
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McLean, Marianne. The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991.
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A study of the migration of Highlanders to Glengarry in Upper Canada seeks to complicate the idea that emigration was simply a choice made by Highlanders unrelated to the economic transformation of the clearances.
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Meyer, Duane Gilbert. The Highland Scots of North Carolina, 1732–1776. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.
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A narrative account of the Highland presence in colonial North Carolina, disputing the notion that the settlers were exiles from the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Asks how it was that Highlanders who so strongly supported rebellion in 1745 became strong supporters of the Crown three decades later as Loyalists at the time of the American Revolution.
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Murdoch, Alexander. “Emigration from the Scottish Highlands to America in the Eighteenth Century.” British Journal for American Studies 21 (1998): 161–174.
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Traces the migration of Scots Highlanders to North America in three periods: before the Seven Years’ War, from 1735 to 1754; between that war and the American Revolution (1763–1776); and after American independence (1783–1803), noting the different regions to which emigrants moved in different periods.
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Parker, Anthony W. Scottish Highlanders in Colonial Georgia: The Recruitment, Emigration, and Settlement at Darien, 1735–1748. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
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A small book about a single settlement over a short period of time. Highlanders were recruited largely to defend the new border colony, and military efforts were an important part of the plan. Places the colony within the context of social change in the Highlands but also of continuing loyalties to chieftains and clans.
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Richards, Eric. The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000.
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An extended survey by the author of an earlier two-volume survey, focusing principally on the later 19th-century clearances and the resulting movement of Highlanders across the globe.
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Beyond North America

Scottish migration within the Atlantic world rarely extended past the British possessions in North America and the Caribbean, with some continuing migration to the United States after 1776. On the other side of the Atlantic Scots participated actively in the African slave trade, but European mortality in Africa prohibited extensive settlement there. The fate of the short-lived Scottish Guinea Company is discussed in Law 1997, while one of the principal sites of Scottish slave trading is described in Hancock 2001. See also the sources cited under Slavery and the Slave Trade. Scots traded in Latin America also but made only a few efforts to settle there. Stewart 2000 provides narratives of two early migrants to Argentina. Rheinheimer 1988 describes an actual colony of Scots, among others, near Caracas, albeit a short-lived one. Fernandez 1985 surveys the Scots who found their way to that part of the world and what they did there, but it remains a modest story. More impressive has been Scottish expansion beyond the Atlantic in the modern period, both within and outside of the British empire. Cage 1985 presents a collection of essays that extends its coverage beyond the empire to other places to which Scots traveled, such as Japan. More recent work has tried to combine all of those movements, even where the main focus remains migration within the empire. Fry 2001 puts those migrations into a positive light, examining the long history of endeavors abroad and emphasizing the commercial and participatory aspects of Scottish empire over territorial rule, while the essays in McCarthy 2006 look more closely at the patterns of Scottish involvement in the many places overseas, and the manner in which their global networks developed. See also the works cited under Sojourning, Homecoming, and Diaspora.

Cage, R. A., ed. The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750–1914. London: Croom Helm, 1985.
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This collection of essays portrays the very aggressive entrepreneurial activities of Scots involved across the globe, from Scotland, England, the United States, Canada, and Latin America to India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
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Fernandez, Manuel A. “The Scots in Latin America: A Survey.” In The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750–1914. Edited by R. A. Cage, 220–250. London: Croom Helm, 1985.
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As the title suggests, a survey of those Scots who found their way to Latin America, never a great number. Notes individual merchants and others who arrived before independence, along with the greater but still modest presence thereafter.
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Fry, Michael. The Scottish Empire. Edinburgh: Tuckwell and Birlin, 2001.
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An extended treatment of Scots abroad, primarily within the British empire, from their earliest history to the end of empire, Fry emphasizes the development of Scotland’s imperial experience and the ways it differed from that of their English imperial partners. Posits a particular style of empire among Scottish participants emphasizing commerce over conquest.
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Hancock, David. “Scots in the Slave Trade.” In Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas 1600–1800. Edited by Ned C. Landsman, 60–93. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001.
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Tells the story of Scottish involvement in slave trading and its integration with other aspects of Atlantic trading. Focuses in particular on one large, largely Scottish consortium of Scottish merchants and their trading castle on Bance Island in the Sierra Leone River, inhabited by a mixed group of Europeans and Africans.
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Law, Robin. “The First Scottish Guinea Company, 1634–9.” Scottish Historical Review 76 (1997): 185–202.
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A Scottish chartered trading company to Africa in the 1630s and a competitor for the English Guinea Company. Despite the Scottish initiatives it turned out to be London-based. Traded goods with Africa, not slaves, until its second voyage was captured by Portuguese and the crew massacred.
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McCarthy, Angela, ed. The Global Clan: Scottish Migration Networks and Identities since the Eighteenth Century. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.
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A collection of essays, many based on letters and personal testimonies, examining the creation and function of Scottish networks in places Scottish settled from the Atlantic to the Far East and adding to the complexity of portrayals of Scots as inherently clannish along national lines. Revised edition 2012.
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Rheinheimer, Hans P. Topo: the Story of a Scottish Colony near Caracas 1825–1827. Translated by Jim Daniel. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988.
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An English translation of a German work that was subsequently translated into Spanish as well. A short history of a short-lived colony near Caracas during the early years of Latin American independence, published as a coffee-table book; well illustrated, including a set of fourteen watercolors by the Dutch-born artist Meinhard Retemeyer.
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Stewart, Iain A. D., ed. From Caledonia to the Pampas: Two Accounts by Early Scottish Emigrants to the Argentine. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2000.
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The vast majority of Scots who traversed the Atlantic went to North America or the Caribbean, but in the early 19th century some began to turn up in Latin America as well. This book provides the welcome addition of two firsthand narratives of Scots who traveled to Argentina. They are principally concerned with day-to-day matters. One is a shipboard narrative of the voyage there, the other an account of a lifetime within the community.
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Sojourning, Homecoming, and Diaspora

Discussions of the American colonization almost always start with the assumption that migration was a one-way street: Europeans moved to North America to settle and stay and never looked back. Students of population movements elsewhere know better and are more attuned to the possibility of temporary movement and of return migration home. Scots migrating to Europe had already demonstrated a propensity to rely upon local networks of Scots where they landed and, frequently, to return home. (See the sources under European Migration.) Migration to North America was not so different. Karras 1992 was among the first to make that argument, applying it to those who traveled to the plantation colonies in the Caribbean and the Chesapeake. For many of those, the goal was to accumulate enough money to return home as landed gentlemen, although they did not always succeed in doing so. Hamilton 2012 finds similar goals among Scots in the West Indian trade, as does Rothschild 2011 for the far-flung members of the Johnstone family. Harper 2005 points to the larger numbers of those who did manage to return home, whether part of their original intention or not, although the largest number of those came from beyond the Atlantic. The goal of integrating Scottish migration to the Atlantic world into the larger subject of migration history has led some to employ the term diaspora, a usage that remains controversial, in part because of its frequent associations with the ideas of forced migration, which, for the most part, did not apply. A work that did use it is Devine 2011, which emphasizes the longevity and global scale of Scottish migration and travel abroad as well as the history of continuing connections with the homeland. Another is Bueltmann, et al. 2013, which takes more of an analytical and sociological approach to those movements as well as themes such as return migration.

Bueltmann, Tanja, Andrew Hinson, and Graeme Morton. The Scottish Diaspora. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
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Looks at Scottish emigration and Scottish communities across the globe, mostly since the 18th century, applying concepts and themes such as diaspora, return migration, associational, cultural, and emigrant experience to its many manifestations.
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Devine, T. M. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora 1750–2010. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2011.
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The author of Scotland’s Empire extends his work by looking at the prolific and diverse, as well as highly influential, activities of Scots outside as well as inside of the empire over a long period all across the globe. Emphasizes connections between global involvement and domestic development, as well as other aspects of imperial experience.
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Hamilton, Douglas. “Transatlantic Ties: Scottish Migration Networks in the Caribbean, 1750–1800.” In A Global Clan: Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities since the Eighteenth-Century. Edited by Angela McCarthy, 48–66. London: I. B. Tauris, 2006.
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Looking analytically at Scottish involvement in the British West Indies, emphasizes both the use of distinct migration networks and the difference between networks based on connection and advantage, and national connections based on identity. Scots relied on the former much more than the latter, in this author’s view. Revised edition 2012.
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Harper, Marjory, ed. Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600–2000. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005.
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A collection of essays on the under-studied topic of return migration to Scotland from all over the world over a long period. One essay concerns Ireland and a few are about returning to Britain in general; the rest are about Scotland. Return migrants from the Americas play only a small part in the volume; most useful for Atlantic historians is Harper’s introductory overview of the problem.
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Karras, Alan L. Sojourners in the Sun: Scottish Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740–1800. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
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Considers Scots migrants to the plantation colonies not as settlers but sojourners, migrants who traveled abroad with the hope of making fortunes and returning home. A useful counterweight to the assumption that all who traversed the Atlantic did so with the goal of making new homes and new lives, with important information on merchants, planters, and physicians, although it may overstate the distinction between intentional migrants and sojourners.
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Rothschild, Emma. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth Century History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
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A detailed look at the Johnstone family, a family of lesser gentry from the Scottish borders consisting of seven brothers and four sisters, who involved themselves extensively with the affairs of empire from North America and the Caribbean to South Asia, and home again. Looks at their careers, their finances, their ideas, their families, and their inner lives, as well as the continuing relationship between empire abroad and lives at home.
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Union and Empire

A major turning point in Scottish involvement in the Atlantic world was the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, when by Act and Treaty of Union the English and Scottish parliaments joined together in a new British parliament, creating a United Kingdom of Great Britain. Among other things, the union legitimized Scottish access to what had been England’s Atlantic empire, as well as enhancing Scottish connections to those colonies. Why Scotland made that choice has always been a hotly debated topic; see the discussion in Anglo-Scottish Union. Its effects on empire have been apparent since the 18th century, as Scots became, in important respects, the face of British empire. Devine 2003 (cited under General Overviews) discusses the extensiveness of that involvement, which the author sees as responsible both directly and indirectly for much of the advancement of Scotland that occurred at home. So prominent did Scots become in so many places that Fry 2001 (cited under Beyond North America) has referred, provocatively, to the “Scottish empire,” one that Fry sees as motivated more by commercial connection than by territorial ambition. Colley 1992 views access to empire and its profits that resulted from union as one of the major factors in the creation of a united British identity. Macinnes 2007 challenges the view that the imperial trading privileges Scotland gained under the union necessarily worked in their favor, pointing to their successful engagement in Atlantic trading prior to the union and the possibility that England wanted union in part to blunt those challenges. Devine 2008, a collection of essays, asks why over time union faced as little overt resistance in Scotland as it did. In recent years questions about union and empire have revised the way historians have written about Britain. Pocock launched a “plea” (Pocock 1975) for a new subject called British history, by which he meant moving beyond the separate histories of England Scotland, Ireland, and Wales and looking at their continuous interactions. Numerous historians have tried to fill in the substance of Pocock’s idea, with mixed success. A landmark in that project is Colley 1992, which sets out to trace the creation of a British people at home and overseas. Armitage 2000 is a long history of how the empire, even more than Britain itself, came to be seen as British. Mackenzie and Devine 2013, a supplement to the five-volume Oxford History of the British Empire, marks the recognition that Scotland’s expansive role in empire required more attention than the general volumes could provide.

Armitage, David. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511755965Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A detailed look at the intellectual construction of the British empire, which Armitage locates in a two-century process culminating in the early 18th century, fusing together the emerging concepts of Britain, uniting England and Scotland in the interests of Protestantism and power, and of empire. The final result was an image of that empire as distinctly Protestant and decidedly commercial, maritime, and free.
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Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
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Describes the creation of the British people out of the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland once joined together under union. Critical elements were warfare, a shared Protestantism, and the abundant opportunities empire offered to Scots.
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Devine, T. M., ed. Scotland and the Union 1707–2007. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
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A collection of essays by leading Scottish historians on the union experience from the 18th century to the present. Devine, in four essays he wrote himself, asks why unionism faced as little resistance as it did, and looks as well at Scotland, and the benefits of and engagement with, empire. Others look at the making of the treaty, resistance to it, English influences, and acquiescence.
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Macinnes, Allan I. Union and Empire: The Making of the United Kingdom in 1707. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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A major revisionary work viewing commercial considerations in England at the time of the treaty as having been as important as those in Scotland, and seeing the English desire to limit burgeoning Scottish commercial competition, originally in the Americas and increasingly in Asia, as a primary purpose of union.
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Mackenzie, John, and T. M. Devine, eds. Scotland and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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A companion volume to the Oxford History of the British Empire, the essays in this volume by specialists treat a variety of subjects pertaining to the place of Scots broadly in the empire, from the economy to the military to churchmen to intellectuals and administrators, as well as nationality and representations in literature.
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Pocock, J. G. A. “British History: A Plea for a New Subject.” Journal of Modern History 47 (1975): 601–628.
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Pocock’s original and hugely influential call for the new subject of British history as something more than just the separate histories of the four nations of what are sometimes called the “British Isles,” with the English story predominant. The new British history would be a history of their continuing interactions.
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Anglo-Scottish Union

The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, in which Scotland gave up its parliament and its autonomy to accept a place as junior partner in the newly united Great Britain, was, from the moment it happened, controversial. So why did the Scottish parliament agree? To many contemporaries, the answer was bribery, the monetary aid paid to Scotland ostensibly as compensation for abandoning the Company of Scotland and joining a nation with a considerable public debt, causing Robert Burns famously to dub the negotiators a “parcel of rogues.” That idea still influenced Riley 1978, which adapts Sir Lewis Namier’s view of political history in general as dominated by influence and corruption more often than policy. The principal alternative understanding was that the union was a product of desperation on the part of Scotland owing to economic weakness and the failure of the Company of Scotland, and that trade with England and its Atlantic empire was one remedy. That view of the causes of union is largely supported by Smout 1963, which, however, points to considerable strength in the Scottish economy before the twin disasters of famine and the collapse of the colonial company in the 1690s. Recent works have taken a more nuanced view and have attended to the arguments that pro-union Scots actually made. Robertson 1995 maps the intellectual arguments for and against union, showing that the question by 1707 was less whether or not to join in union but what kind of union it should be, and what would be its ramifications for empire. Kidd 2008 follows that by illustrating the great variety of unionist positions that have existed in Scotland over the generations into the age of empire. That is only one of a number of new assessments brought about by the Union tercentenary of 2007. Whatley and Patrick 2006, by an author who previously sided with the cynics, now argues that Scotland approved the Treaty because at bottom, most thought it was in their interests to do so. Bowie 2007 finds an active popular discussion involving both supporters and popular opponents of union—the latter especially among the Presbyterians, but Stephen 2007 shows that significant concessions to that Church largely mollified much of its membership, some of whom now thought it would be safer within the union than outside. And where works such as Colley 1992 (cited under Union and Empire) view much of the appeal of union as the opportunity for Scots to benefit from empire, Macinnes 2007 (cited under Union and Empire) turns the tables to view union as a product of English efforts to hold back the inroads made by Scottish traders, especially in the Atlantic.

Bowie, Karin. Scottish Public Opinion and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1699–1707. London: Royal Historical Society, 2007.
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Examines public debate over the union not simply as the reflection of public opinion but as something created by active participation in an expanding public sphere. In the end the most successful in the union debate were probably moderate court writers who defended union on pragmatic grounds as the best of the available alternatives.
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Kidd, Colin. Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500–2000. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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Rejecting the common equation of unionism in Scotland with subservience to English dominance, the author argues that unionism has long been the predominant political ideology in Scotland, and that it by no means was restricted to domination.
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Riley, P. W. The Union of England and Scotland: A Study in Anglo-Scottish Politics of the Eighteenth Century. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1978.
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Long the standard account of the union, looking closely at the role of influence and party politics in the making. To Riley these were men of short-term motivations and little vision, motivated chiefly by patronage and self interest.
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Robertson, John, ed. A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the Union of 1707. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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The product of one in a series of May–June 1991 Folger seminars at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington on three British unions and the seminal work on the union debate as it emerged in Scotland before 1707. Formulated especially by Robertson, the discussion focuses on issues of monarchy, empire, and sovereignty, with essays by others extending the discussion to other figures across Britain, Ireland, and the Americas.
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Smout, T. C. Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union 1660–1707. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1963.
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A close analysis of the workings of the Scottish economy in the 17th century, contending that all was not moribund, and looking at traditional practices and innovations toward a new economy.
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Stephen, Jeffrey. Scottish Presbyterians and the Act of Union 1707. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
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Through a close examination of the attitudes and actions of the Church of Scotland at both the national and local levels, Stephen contends that the Church was not so uniformly hostile to union once the Act of Security of the Church was passed either in the General Assembly or even locally, with many in the Church believing it would be safer within the union than outside.
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Whatley, Christopher A., with Derek J. Patrick. The Scots and the Union. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
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A thorough account of Scotland’s move toward union, and an acknowledged change of mind for a senior historian who had previously endorsed the view of union as a political job but is now persuaded that Scots leaders supported union as the best of the available options.
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Military and Administrative Networks

While the total number of Scots migrants in the Atlantic world never rivaled those of groups such as the Irish, a distinctive feature of migration from Scotland was the number of prominent and educated persons involved, dating back to the days of migration to the European Continent. Scots would be famous for filling a variety of military and administrative offices within the British empire. Their prominence within the military was legendary; their presence as soldiers of British empire is noted in Devine 2013, although that work, like Mackillop 2000, questions the assumption that Highlanders were simply natural soldiers and looks instead at the origins of the myth. Mackillop 2000 explains Highland soldiering within the context of the changes in Highland society over the course of the 18th century and sees it as a practical and viable alternative strategy to emigration, which Highlanders also employed. Lavery 2007 extends the subject to look at the many prominent Scots in the British navy. Mackillop and Murdoch 2003 looks at the many Scots who served globally as imperial governors with military experience and considers the creation of Scottish patronage networks and the significance of the Scottish experience for their imperial roles. Landsman 1995 and Hamilton 2012 attend to the great variety of administrative and other roles Scots played in empire, although Snapp 2001 disagrees with Landsman’s picture of Scots imperial administrators as imperial without necessarily being metropolitan in their leanings.

Devine, T. M. “Soldiers of Empire, 1750–1914.” In Scotland and the British Empire. Edited by John M. Mackenzie and T. M. Devine, 176–195. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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Surveys the prominent but paradoxical rise of Highland regiments in the British army in the years after the Jacobite defeat, and the development of the mythology of the Highlander as natural soldier, lasting into the 20th century.
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Hamilton, Douglas. “Scotland and the Eighteenth-Century Empire.” In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Edited by T. M. Devine and Jenny Wormald, 423–438. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199563692.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A summary of Scottish activities in various spheres of empire, from the military to the popular and political to the commercial, and arguing for the application in at least some places of a Scottish style of trading and a distinctive Scottish imperial vision.
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Landsman, Ned C. “The Legacy of British Union for the North American Colonies: Provincial Elites and the Problem of Imperial Union.” In A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the Union of 1707. Edited by John Robertson, 297–317. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Considers the many Scots who worked as imperial officials in the 18th century, whether assigned there as governors and revenue officers or migrants who settled and took on various offices. Finds a common thread among them, despite their differences, of a generally commercial view of empire that was imperial but not metropolitan.
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Lavery, Brian. Shield of Empire: The Royal Navy and Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2007.
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A compendium of information on Scots participation in their own navy before 1707 and the British navy thereafter, with emphasis on the prominent roles Scots often played and the influence of the sea on Scottish society.
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Mackillop, Andrew. “More Fruitful than the Soil”: Army, Empire, and the Scottish Highlands, 1715–1815. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2000.
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Taking on the subject of Highland recruitment into the British army, Andrew Mackillop contests the notion that it was the product of traditional clan loyalties to feudal superiors or of a particularly warlike nature of Highland peoples. It was, he maintains, the result of a changing Highland society, leading both to emigration and to military service, leading to extensive Highland contacts beyond the realm.
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Mackillop, Andrew, and Steve Murdoch, eds. Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c. 1600–1800: A Study in Scotland and Empires. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
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A collection of portrayals of Scots who worked as imperial governors, some in 17th-century Europe, the remainder in the 18th-century empire, several in North America, and one in the Caribbean. Addresses frontier issues, native relations, and the use of Scottish patronage networks.
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Snapp, J. Russell. “An Enlightened Empire: Scottish and Irish Imperial Reformers in the Age of the American Revolution.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 33 (2001): 388–403.
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Emphasizes the proliferation of colonial administrators of Scots or Irish origin and their propensity to advocate the interests of empire over local concerns.
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Indigenous Peoples

As Scots proliferated among the administrators of empire, they became more and more involved in diplomacy with native peoples. Some have thought that Scots may have had an advantage in such affairs, deriving from the experience of Lowland Scots in working with Highlanders, at a time when Enlightenment ideas about the progress of civilizations suggested similarities between the indigenous population of the Highlands and the Americas. Thus Murdoch 2003 attributes much of the success of James Glen of South Carolina in forging alliances with native peoples to his Scottish background and the Lowland experience of creating alliances with Highland groups. There were other reasons as well; Snapp 1996 suggests that much of what worked in John Stuart’s role as superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Colonies was the imperial vision of Scots administrators, which often protected native peoples against settler encroachment. The connections involved more than diplomacy. Szasz 2007 looks at the work of the Society in Scotland for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) to minister both to Indians and to Highlanders and even borrows from 18th-century queries about similarities between those peoples. Cashin 1992 looks at Lachlan McGillivray, a Highland native and prominent Indian trader who married into a Creek family and whose son became an important chieftain. Calloway 2008 considers Highlanders both as subjects of imperial expansion and its purveyors, and also considers their frequent interactions, without insisting on excessive similarities between them. Finally, Williamson 1757 is the story of a young man from Scotland, told by himself, who was kidnapped and sold as an indentured servant in Pennsylvania and later, after becoming a planter himself, captured again, this time by Native Americans.

Calloway, Colin G. White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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An extended exploration comparing the experiences of Scots Highlanders and Native Americans as subjects of the British imperial state. Looks at both peoples separately and comparatively, as well as the frequent relations between them in North America, when Highlanders became both participants in imperial expansion as well as its subjects, and the contacts and interbreeding between them and native inhabitants.
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Cashin, Edward J. Lachlan McGillivray, Indian Trader: The Shaping of the Southern Colonial Frontier. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1992.
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A biography of the Scottish-born Indian trader Lachlan McGillivray, from a Jacobite refugee family who took up trading in the American southeast and eventually married into a Creek family. Tells the story of his rise in status and simultaneous movement toward his Scottish kin, becoming a Loyalist and returning to Scotland. His son Alexander would remain in the United States as a prominent chieftain.
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Murdoch, Alex. “James Glen and the Indians.” In Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c. 1600–1800: A Study in Scotland and Empires. Edited by A. Mackillop and Steve Murdoch, 141–160. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003.
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The efforts of Governor James Glen of South Carolina, a Lowland Scot, to build alliances with the native peoples of the southeast compared to the work of building alliances among Highland peoples by Lowland Scots on behalf of the British government.
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Snapp, J. Russell. John Stuart and the Struggle for Empire on the Southern Frontier. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996.
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A study of the life of John Stuart, Inverness native who went on to be superintendent for Indian Affairs for the Southern Colonies. Like many Scots, including his allies in the southern colonies, took a strongly imperial perspective and developed strong relations with native groups and an adversarial relationship with Creole settlers, who saw him inhibiting their ambitions.
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Szasz, Margaret. Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.
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A look at the Society in Scotland for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) and its efforts to spread Reformed Christianity among Scots Highlanders and Native Americans, with some effort to compare the societies and find similarities among the two groups.
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Williamson, Peter. French and Indian Cruelty; Exemplified in the Life and Various Vicissitudes of Fortune, of Peter Williamson, a Disbanded Soldier. York, UK: N. Nickson, 1757.
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The first edition, with many thereafter, of the life story of a young man from Aberdeen stolen away and sold as a servant in Pennsylvania. Later became a planter and a captive of native peoples.
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Jacobite Wars

The Revolution of 1688, in which William and Mary replaced James VII and II on the Scottish and English thrones, plunged Scotland, now firmly aligned with the Netherlands against an imperial France, into a long period of European warfare. Yet James, who had resided in Scotland during England’s “Exclusion crisis” a decade before, retained a substantial following north of the border. Called Jacobites after Jacobus, the Latin name for James, they participated in three major rebellions (1689, 1715, and 1745) and numerous less-famous plots. The best narrative of those wars remains Lenman 1980. Pittock 2009, a revised edition, contends that Jacobitism has been wrongly understood as principally a phenomenon of a backwards Highland society, portraying it instead as a broader movement with Lowland support and goals that extended beyond those of clan society. Jacobitism never became much of an Atlantic phenomenon beyond Ireland, other than prompting considerable migration. There were some Jacobites in North America in the early years, and others were sent as prisoners in 1715, as discussed in Sankey 2005, but few by the time of the 1745 rebellion. Meyer 1961 (cited under Highland Migration) noted also that the destruction following the Jacobite defeat in that last movement was one of the factors in Highland emigration to North Carolina thereafter; the most famous example was Flora McDonald, who had helped Charles escape from Scotland after the 1745 rebellion. Paradoxically, as Meyer 1961 explains, most of the formerly rebellious Highland migrants apparently became loyalists in 1776, including McDonald, although a few became noted patriots. More important than an actual Jacobite presence in North America, according to Plank 2006, was the way the Jacobite defeat in 1745 influenced the victors, helping shape imperial policies developed by the circle surrounding the celebrated Duke of Cumberland, the hero of the government success in the 1745 rebellion. Their emphasis on militarism and strict enforcement of imperial order helped set the stage for later dissatisfaction in North America. Macinnes and Hamilton 2014 looks broadly at the subject, extending its gaze to Jacobites abroad and their connection to foreign concerns and imperial aspiration, to North America and elsewhere.

Lenman, Bruce. The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746. London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
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Still the definitive narrative of the succession of Jacobite rebellions in Britain, with good summations of political, military, and diplomatic aspects.
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Macinnes, Allan I., and Douglas J. Hamilton, eds. Jacobitism, Enlightenment and Empire, 1680–1820. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014.
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An essay collection that extends the understanding of Jacobitism from its dynastic concerns to broader involvements with empire, trade, culture, and enlightenment. The essays include discussions of Jacobite experiences abroad, colonial ventures, the international involvements of Jacobite clergy, and Jacobite patriotism in the age of Enlightenment.
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Pittock, Murray. The Myth of the Jacobite Clans: The Jacobite Army in 1745. 2d ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
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A revised and extended edition of a 1997 work. Contends that Jacobitism in the 1745 rebellion was no mere Highland phenomenon but was an impressively large national movement with supporters throughout Scotland. Its mission included the popular one of dissolving the Anglo-Scottish union.
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Plank, Geoffrey. Rebellion and Savagery: The Jacobite Rising of 1745 and the British Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
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Examines the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and its effects on British empire. Following his victory in the battle of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland and his circle attained considerable influence in imperial affairs. They promoted strongly militaristic and centralizing imperial policies that caused considerable dissonance in the North American colonies.
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Sankey, Margaret. Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
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Looks at the British government’s complex strategy in the aftermath of the 1715 rebellion, including a mix of executions, voluntary exile, and transportation to and servitude in North America.
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Scotland and the Atlantic Economy

One area in which Scots participated actively was the Atlantic economy, at least from the early 18th century onward. The timing has led to two key questions in the literature. The first concerns its connection to the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, and the legal access union provided to what had previously been England’s North America empire. The second involves the relationship of both of those things to the dramatic economic take-off the Scottish economy experienced in the second half of the 18th century, turning it from what had seemed a moribund economy into one of the most rapidly growing industrial economies in Europe. That is the principal question posed in the comparative studies of the Scottish and Irish economies in Cullen and Smout 1978. Whatley 2000 does a good job of explaining what is now probably a general consensus: that the union, which some Scots approached with hopes for benefit, did little to improve the economy in the short term, but after mid-century Atlantic trading played a significant role in economic growth. Certain aspects of the American trade have been especially noted, such as the tobacco trade, which supported the rise of Glasgow (Price 1954) and led to the development of leading “tobacco lords” who rose within Glasgow society and also helped further growth (Devine 1975), which was then invested in developing additional trades such as sugar (Hamilton 2005). That was possible in part because, as Hancock 1995 and Hamilton 2005 discuss, Scottish merchants worked through an intensive system of networking that extended Scottish trade across the Atlantic and the globe. Macmillan 1972 describes the aggressive efforts of Scottish merchant networks to capture the western trade in Canada. None of that would have been possible if Scots had not developed their commercial skills earlier in the northern European trade, and, as Esther Mijers’s chapter in Macinnes and Williamson 2006 (cited under General Overviews) and Catterall 2009 illuminate, their first steps in Atlantic trading were facilitated by their intensive commercial involvement with that preeminent commercial power, the Dutch. Macinnes and Williamson 2006 also provides a variety of studies demonstrating that 17th-century Scotland not only was less backward economically than some have thought, but that it functioned well as part of a European system in which it played very different roles from those of its English neighbors.

Catterall, Douglas. “Interlopers in an Intercultural Zone? Early Scots Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1630–1660.” In Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World: People, Products, and Practices on the Move. Edited by Caroline A. Williams, 75–96. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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Examines the many 17th-century Scots who entered the Atlantic world not from Scotland but Rotterdam, which had a large community of Scots in that century. Their engagements with the New World were thus not characteristically Scottish but rather products of their Dutch surroundings, from which they went not only to Dutch colonies but, along with other Dutch traders, to other Atlantic ports and colonies, including Atlantic Virginia.
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Cullen, L. M., and T. C. Smout, eds. Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History 1600–1900: Papers from a Seminar held in Dublin in September 1976. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1978.
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The first in a trio of books of essays compiled from a series of seminars held in Dublin in September 1976 comparing Scottish and Irish economic and social development. The overriding question was why the previously more backwards Scottish economy experienced a take-off during the 18th century unmatched across the Irish Sea. Subsequent volumes with different editors appeared in 1983 and 1988 from the same publisher.
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Devine, T. M. The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and Their Trading Activities c. 1740–1790. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1975.
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A pioneering study of Glasgow’s tobacco merchants, building on Jacob Price’s earlier article, closely examines the mercantile firms in the trade, their role in Glasgow society, and the economic consequences of the profits they made for the development of Glasgow.
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Hamilton, Douglas J. Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World, 1750–1820. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005.
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A study of the extensive involvement of Scots in the British West Indies, looking especially at economic life and the creation of Scottish trading networks.
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Hancock, David. Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Although the subtitle refers to London merchants, the group on whom Hancock focuses was dominated by Scots, men from outside of the metropolis, who developed commercial networks that rivaled in practice and surpassed in scope the activities of traditional metropolitan merchants. With a more cosmopolitan outlook than that of long-time Londoners, they did much to extend British trade networks throughout the Atlantic and beyond.
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Macmillan, David S. “The ‘New Men’ in Action: Scottish Mercantile and Shipping Operations in the North American Colonies, 1760–1825.” In Canadian Business History: Selected Studies 1497–1971. Edited by David S. Macmillan, 44–103. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1972.
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An extended look at Scottish merchants in the Canadian provinces in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, with a multitude of stories about their effective networking and aggressiveness.
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Price, Jacob. “The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 11 (1954): 179–199.
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Part of a path-breaking issue of William and Mary Quarterly devoted to Scotland and America, Price describes the dramatic participation of Glasgow merchants, relying on their advantageous location and distinctive business practices, in the tobacco trade from the Chesapeake. The rise of the tobacco trade led to the growth of Glasgow as well.
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Whatley, Christopher A. Scottish Society 1707–1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards Industrialisation. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.
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A general survey of the transformation of the Scottish economy and society. Views access to the English trading world not only as a significant motive for union but also as an important, if belated, cause of economic growth after the middle of the 18th century.
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Slavery and the Slave Trade

The profits of Atlantic trading came largely from commerce with America’s plantation colonies in the southern mainland and the West Indies, as Price 1954, Devine 1975, and Hamilton 2005 describe; see the sources cited under Scotland and the Atlantic Economy. That these colonies depended on slave labor has not always been clearly recognized; the two have sometimes been addressed as separate realms. Thus Rice 1981 looks at Scottish abolitionism within the context of Scotland’s principal intellectual traditions, including Enlightenment and evangelical reform. Only recently have works, such as Hancock 2000 and Devine 2011, addressed more directly the often under-studied participation of Scots merchants in the slave trade, or the general contributions of slavery and the plantation colonies to Scotland’s overall economic development. Hancock closely examines one merchant investment in a major slave trading port on the African coast. Devine 2011 explores the general influence of slavery in the rise of the Scottish economy, while Mullen 2013 takes a closer and more detailed look at that question from the records of one merchant house. Other recent works have probed more closely at the particulars. Cairns 2012 and Cairns 2013 look at the Scottish legal tradition, and consider the problems in Scottish law resulting from the lack of a slave code in Scottish law, as well as the poorly understood relationships between Scots law and imperial law on the one hand, and English law in the wake of the 1772 Somerset case largely freeing slaves in England, on the other. Whyte 2006 looks at many factors, including religious ones, that motivated Scots to adopt antislavery positions. Rothschild 2011 probably gives the broadest view of Scotland’s complex relationship to slavery. It explores Scottish slaveholding from the perspective of the empire-traveling Johnstone family, whose various members at one time or another owned slaves and defended the institution, opposed it, and were involved in legal cases surrounding the sentencing of a non-white servant for sale into slavery and another, Knight v. Wedderburn in 1778, that effectively ended slaveholding in Scotland. Finally Hamilton, in Macinnes and Hamilton 2014 (cited under Jacobite Wars) looks at Scotland’s under-studied anti-abolition movement.

Cairns, John W. “After Somerset: The Scottish Experience.” Journal of Legal History 33 (2012): 291–312.
DOI: 10.1080/01440365.2012.730248Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A look at the effects of the Somerset case on slavery in Scotland. From the popular belief that Somerset had outlawed slavery in England came the belief that slaves in Scotland would be freed if they reached England.
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Cairns, John W. “Slavery without a Code Noir: Scotland 1700–78.” In Lawyers, the Law and History: Irish Legal History Society Discourses and Other Papers, 2005–2011. Edited by Felix M. Larkin and N. M. Dawson, 148–178. Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts, 2013.
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Notes the absence of a legal code for slavery in 18th-century Scotland and the difficulties that caused. The remedy was to forge a system extended from colonial legal practice.
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Devine, T. M. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora 1750–2010. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2011
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See especially chapter 2, “Did Slavery Help to Make Scotland Great?” Contends that the specifics of Scotland’s economic take-off in the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century provide grounds for viewing the slave trade and especially the slave economies of the Americas as important factors in Scotland’s rise.
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Hancock, David. “Scots in the Slave Trade.” In Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas 1600–1800. Edited by Ned C. Landsman, 60–93. Cranbury, NJ: Bucknell University Press, 2000.
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Looks at the abundant participation of Scots merchants in the Atlantic slave trade, and in particular their organizational role, using the same kind of residential factor system in Africa as they used in the tobacco trade and elsewhere, as well as the integration of slave trading with other branches of commerce.
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Mullen, Stephen. “A Glasgow–West India Merchant House and the Imperial Dividend, 1779–1867.” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 33 (2013): 196–233.
DOI: 10.3366/jshs.2013.0077Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Another take on the question of the role of empire, and especially the slave-based plantation economy, on Scottish growth and industrialization. Examining the records of the merchant house of James and Archibald Smith trading to Grenada and Jamaica, concludes that plantation capital was funneled into the Scottish economy at important junctures to spur industrial development.
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Rice, C. Duncan. The Scots Abolitionists 1833–1861. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
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Looks at the antislavery movement in Scotland and places it within the context of the Scottish background—the Enlightenment, evangelical reform, and Scotland’s provincial status under the union—and considers the extent to which support for abolition intersected with other goals.
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Rothschild, Emma. The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
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A study of the large Johnstone family in the 18th century and their experiences of empire in the East and the West. Pays considerable attention to two cases concerning slavery in which the family was involved: that of the slave Bel or Belinda, charged with infanticide and sent to Jamaica, and that of Joseph Knight, whose lawsuit in Knight v. Wedderburn (1778) effectively ended slavery in Scotland.
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Whyte, Iain. Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756–1838. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624324.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of Scotland’s role in abolition by a former university chaplain looks at commerce, evangelicalism, and moral philosophy, tracing the contributions of each to the development of antislavery positions in the north of Britain.
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The Scottish Enlightenment

What is called the Scottish Enlightenment refers to a period of the 18th century—and by some definitions considerably longer—in which the Scottish literati attained fame for their seemingly extraordinary contributions to philosophy and related subjects across the Atlantic and Western worlds, through the efforts of such celebrated figures as David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, and James Watt. Ever since that century, the principal interpretive questions have been about the nature and extent of the particular contributions of Scots to Western culture, as well as how it was that so small a nation played so large a role in the Enlightenment. The answers have been quite varied. To Bryson 1945, the critical aspect is the theory of man and society; the four-stages theory of civilization promoted by Enlightenment thinkers in Scotland was the foundation of the modern social sciences. A more controversial view is found in Trevor-Roper 1967, which derides the notion of a widespread Enlightenment within Scottish society and instead focuses on a handful of truly original thinkers led by David Hume and Adam Smith, whom Trevor-Roper portrays as markedly distinct from the more common writers who worked within what he depicts as a generally backwards society. By contrast, most historians since then have worked instead to broaden the scope of those included among the Enlightened. Phillipson 1974, one of a series of essays by that author, looks for the social origins of the movement in the situation of post-union Scotland, which, in voluntarily surrendering its autonomy, had set off an inquiry into the foundation of virtue and morals outside of the realm of politics and government. Hont and Ignatieff 1983 examines the development of Scottish political economy within the moral philosophy tradition, up to and including the work of Adam Smith, and its relationship to the situation of Scotland as a poorer nation engaging with a wealthier and more powerful neighbor. Sher 1985 shifts the focus beyond Enlightenment ideas to the culture in which they developed, especially the support for the Enlightenment provided by the Moderate clergy of Edinburgh, prominent both in church and university. Sher 2006 (cited under Scottish-Atlantic Enlightenments) adds the work of printers, publishers, and booksellers to those who created the context for the Enlightenment. Towsey 2010 extends that further to look not only at how books were produced but how they were consumed by readers. Emerson 2013 looks beyond the literati to the leading Scottish politician, the Third Duke of Argyll, and emphasizes the role of patronage in fostering Enlightenment. Broadie 2003, a collection of essays in the Cambridge Companion series, tries to incorporate the best work from multiple viewpoints.

Broadie, Alexander, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521802733Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Part of the Cambridge Companion series, edited by a senior philosopher of the Enlightenment. The essays give a balanced approach to the origins and central themes of the Scottish Enlightenment.
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Bryson, Gladys. Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945.
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The classic study of the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, reprinted in 1968. Focuses on social inquiry, which comes across plainly as the roots of the modern social sciences.
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Emerson, Roger L. An Enlightened Duke:The Life of Archibald Campbell (1682–1761), Earl of Ilay, 3rd Duke of Argyll. Kilkerran, UK: Humming Earth, 2013.
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The career of a prominent Scottish politician and leading patron of the Scottish Enlightenment, promoting the interests of science and learning as a dominant influence in political and cultural circles.
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Hont, Istvan, and Michael Ignatieff, eds. Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511625077Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A high-profile collection of essays on Adam Smith and Scottish political economy, considering Smith against the background of both the civic tradition as well as that of natural jurisprudence, and thus considers the relationship to Scottish moral philosophy as well.
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Phillipson, Nicholas. “Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century Province: The Case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment.” In The University and Society. Vol. 2. Edited by Lawrence Stone, 407–448. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.
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One in a series of interesting though controversial essays in which the author roots the Scottish Enlightenment in the conditions of post-union Scotland after the surrender of sovereignty and ties it to the civic humanist tradition.
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Sher, Richard B. Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
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A sweeping interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, focused on five ministers of the Moderate Party of the Church of Scotland led by William Robertson, who collectively were not the leading luminaries of the Enlightenment, but all of whom were contributors, and whose active promotion of Enlightenment within the Church and the university helped the Enlightenment proceed. Also has the most comprehensive extant bibliography of the Scottish Enlightenment, now in need of updating.
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Towsey, Mark R. M. Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–1820. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004184329.i-364Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A study of reading in the Scottish Enlightenment with two main purposes, both suggested by the title. The first is to assess how far the Scottish Enlightenment penetrated beyond the urban centers of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen to Scotland’s many smaller “provincial” towns. The second is to gauge how books of the Scottish Enlightenment were read and assimilated by readers. Both are answered convincingly through close reading of texts and a wide variety of supplemental sources.
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Trevor-Roper, H. “The Scottish Enlightenment.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 68 (1967): 1635–1658.
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A controversial reading of the Scottish Enlightenment that was generally not popular in Scotland, confining the Enlightenment to a very small group of intellectual leaders while dismissing the work of the rest, set against a portrayal of a general backwardness to Scotland’s innate culture.
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Scottish-Atlantic Enlightenments

The topic of an Atlantic Enlightenment, or even an American Enlightenment, is relatively new to the historical literature. Enlightenment was a European concept and, most have assumed, a European phenomenon as well, with at best a modest influence around or across the Atlantic—the sole exception being possible Enlightenment origins of the political philosophy of the American Revolution. That perception began to change with May 1976, one of the first full-length works to consider America and Enlightenment together. Even that was called the Enlightenment in America rather than the American Enlightenment, the assumption still being that Enlightenment was conceived by Europeans and merely borrowed abroad. May did notice that the American Enlightenment owed a large debt to the Scottish Enlightenment, emphasizing the balance and order of a “Moderate Enlightenment” and maintaining the compatibility of science and progress. In May’s wake much work that attended to the American Enlightenment emphasized a pervasive Scottish influence, especially in the areas of political theory (Howe 1982) and moral philosophy. Why Americans were so attracted to that philosophy drew diverse explanations. Many of them—too many perhaps—have revolved in large part around the figure of one man: John Witherspoon, the Presbyterian minister from Paisley who became College of New Jersey president, who was influential both in religion and in Enlightenment. For more on Witherspoon, see the discussion under Religion and Education. Still, the relationship between Enlightenment and religious orthodoxy, which were long considered virtual opposites, has continued to attract attention. Fiering 1981 offers a powerful argument for the orthodox Protestant roots of the new moral philosophy. Reid-Maroney 2001 (cited under Science and Medicine) emphasizes the fusion among the medical practitioners of the Philadelphia Enlightenment, one of the most skeptical aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the most evangelical religious sentiments. Manning 2002 finds a shared dichotomy within Scottish and American literary traditions between union and fragmentation, deriving from shared aspects of their religious backgrounds as well as the experience of political and cultural union with England. Recent authors have tried to trace the actual presence of Scottish Enlightenment influences around the Atlantic. Emerson 2001 shows just how extensively the Scottish literati were concerned with things American in the 18th century. Spencer 2005 looks for evidence of Hume’s presence in American citations and book lists and finds a great deal, extending even to his supposedly Tory histories. Sher 2006 looks at the publication, re-printing, and selling of works of the Scottish Enlightenment throughout the British Atlantic. Finally, Manning and Cogliano 2008 looks more broadly at an Atlantic Enlightenment, one inhabited not only by philosophers and educators but also by a larger array of persons engaged in intellectual exchange.

Emerson, Roger L. “The Scottish Literati and America, 1680–1800.” In Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas. Edited by Ned C. Landsman, 183–220. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2001.
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Surveys the very extensive interest of the Scots literati in things American, from the late 17th century onward in great detail. If one wants to know which prominent Scots had American interests, and in what, this will tell you. The accumulation of information on their activities adds up to a very persuasive portrait.
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Fiering, Norman. Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
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A look at the teaching of moral philosophy at Harvard that extends beyond its chronological scope to explore the relationship between Scottish moral philosophy and the Protestant moral philosophies that preceded it.
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Howe, Daniel Walker. “European Sources of Political Ideas in Jeffersonian America.” Reviews in American History 10 (1982): 629–664.
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Traces the source of early American political ideas to European traditions, most of them Scottish.
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Manning, Susan. Fragments of Union: Making Connections in Scottish and American Writing. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
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A literary scholar finds commonalities in Scottish and American writing of the 18th and 19th centuries around themes of union and fragmentation, deriving from the Scottish experience of incorporating union and the Enlightenment inquiry into the narration of the self.
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Manning, Susan, and Francis D. Cogliano, eds. The Atlantic Enlightenment. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008.
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Transatlantic studies of the Enlightenment, relating it to the still-developing contours of the field of Atlantic history. Covers figures from the prominent Scots philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith to the writers of novels and the men at sea, or at least how they appeared to others. Its geography is principally north Atlantic, especially Scotland and its connections.
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May, Henry. The Enlightenment in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
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Views the Enlightenment as a European product adopted in America, possessing distinct stages. The first, the “Moderate Enlightenment,” emphasized balance and order and drew on the influences of moral sense writers such as Francis Hutcheson and the compatibility of reason, aesthetics, and ethics. The final section covers what May calls the “Didactic Enlightenment,” drawing upon Common Sense philosophy to disavow skepticism and promote the pursuit of virtue.
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Sher, Richard B. The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors & Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland & America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
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A comprehensive look at the publishing history of the Scottish Enlightenment, considering printers, publishers, merchants, and booksellers as active forces in the creation of the Scottish Enlightenment. Looks also at the extension of that publishing and retailing history to Ireland and to North America, including through the participation of Scottish merchants, publishers, and booksellers who relocated across the Atlantic.
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Spencer, Mark G. David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005.
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A close examination of the evidence for Hume’s influence in early America, relying on book lists, citations, and other clear evidence of Hume’s presence, used to contest the frequent assumption that the presumed Tory Hume had little influence in North America. Extensive appendixes of listings of Hume in bookseller catalogs and subscriptions to the first American edition of Hume’s History.
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Religion and Education

In numerous ways, Scottish religion played a disproportionate role in North America. Presbyterianism, a dissenting communion in England, became the established Church of Scotland after the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, providing allies and institutional support for Presbyterians in America. Moreover, the Congregationalists of New England had much in common with Presbyterians, and built transatlantic communications networks with them exceeding those of any other groups (O’Brien 1986). They shared an emphasis on evangelical religion during the religious revivals of the mid-18th century, which owed a considerable debt to popular Scottish communion traditions, as Schmidt 1989 demonstrates. Moreover, the general willingness of educated Scots to migrate abroad drew a disproportionate number of Scottish ministers to North America, not only from the Church of Scotland but also Scottish Episcopalians, whose church had been disestablished by the Revolution of 1688. McLachlan 1995 shows that the latter group formed the largest group of educated Scottish migrants. Even Scottish Quakers sent a number of highly influential figures to North America through their early sponsorship of the New Jersey colony (see the sources cited under Colonies). Scottish ministers also played outsized roles in American colleges and intellectual life, especially in bringing Enlightenment learning to American institutions, as Sloan 1971 first noted. In fact, one of the principal controversies in the literature concerns not whether or not Scottish ideas were important, but rather which ideas were most prominently adopted. Most scholars have emphasized Scottish traditions in moral philosophy, brought over by all of the educators but especially the Scottish emigrant and College of New Jersey president John Witherspoon (Howe in Manning and Cogliano 2008, cited under Scottish-Atlantic Enlightenments). To Noll 1985, the fusion of Enlightenment philosophy with religion marked a radical break with Calvinist orthodoxy that compromised Protestant doctrine long after, although Landsman (in Sher and Smitten 1990, cited under General Overviews) questions the extent to which Witherspoon deviated from the general parameters of the religious positions of Scottish orthodoxy when he came to America. Mailer 2010 (cited under Scotland and the American Revolution) rejects outright the notion that Witherspoon had converted to a secular moral philosophy, insisting instead on his continued association with Scotland’s evangelical and covenanting traditions. Reid-Maroney 2001 is an insightful look at the way practitioners at Philadelphia’s medical college managed to fuse the most skeptical principles of the Scottish Enlightenment with an orthodox sense of piety and mystery. Yeager 2011 is a more recent effort to discuss the fusion of Enlightenment with evangelicalism, this time through the figure of the Edinburgh minister John Erskine, who supplied Americans and American colleges with a vast number of religious books.

McLachlan, James. “Education.” In Scotland and the Americas 1600 to 1800. Compiled by Michael Fry and Robert Kent Donovan, 65–76. Providence: John Carter Brown Library, 1995.
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Focusing on New England and the Chesapeake, McLachlan looks at the unusual number of educated Scots who migrated to North America, especially among Scots Episcopalians displaced by the Revolution settlement of 1689.
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Noll, Mark. “The Irony of the Enlightenment for Presbyterians in the Early Republic.” Journal of the Early Republic 5 (Summer 1985): 149–175.
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Looks at the career of John Witherspoon, the Scottish pastor who in 1768 traveled to North America to take on the presidency of the College of New Jersey. There, Noll argues, he compromised religious orthodoxy with the moral teachings of the Enlightenment, causing a split in the orthodox community and modifying the purity of evangelical piety.
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O’Brien, Susan. “A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735–1755.” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 811–832.
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Looks at the transatlantic correspondence networks created by ministers in England, Scotland, and New England during the evangelical revivals beginning in the 1730s and the publications that came out of them, turning evangelicalism into an interconnected international event.
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Reid-Maroney, Nina. Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740–1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001.
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A look at the intersection of science and religion in the Philadelphia Enlightenment, addressing in particular the relationship between the philosophical skepticism of Enlightenment science and a religious orthodoxy sharing a principle of doubt.
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Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
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Looks for the origins of early American revivalist religion and finds it in the communion seasons that characterized religion in early modern Scotland and among the Presbyterians of northern Ireland. Rather than seeing revivals as exceptional events, Schmidt locates them in the regular rhythms of community life.
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Sloan, Douglas. The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal. New York: Teacher’s College, 1971.
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A pioneering look at the influence of Scots and the Scottish Enlightenment on American education, containing discussions of the academy tradition, Scots educators such as John Witherspoon and William Smith, and other leading figures influenced by them. Notable also for extending its notion of Enlightenment influences to include a wide range of religious traditions.
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Yeager, Jonathan M. Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199772551.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The life of a leading Scottish Presbyterian preacher who had close ties to the American religious community. Emphasizes his synthesis of enlightenment and evangelicalism, his American correspondence, and his preeminent role in supplying religious publications to an American audience.
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Science and Medicine

Not long ago most treatments of the Scottish Enlightenment tended to focus on Scottish contributions to the field of moral philosophy; both the moral sense philosophy of Francis Hutcheson and the later common sense varieties associated with the Aberdeen Enlightenment were closely examined in their Scottish presentations and in their North American manifestations (see the sources cited under The Scottish Enlightenment.) As Withers and Wood 2002 amply demonstrates, the scientific disciplines, broadly defined, also played a crucial role in the Scottish Enlightenment, as Wood’s mentor Roger Emerson has long argued (see the essays in Emerson 2009). No longer do scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment confine their attention to the realm of moral philosophy. Rather, these scholars have argued that earlier views of the Scottish Enlightenment exaggerate the extent to which Scots were influenced by English rather than Continental traditions, by the importance of moral philosophy over scientific pursuits, and by the goal of civic virtue deriving from Scotland’s surrender of political autonomy, in the Anglo-Scottish union. Those newer concerns would prove especially important beyond the Scottish borders. For Enlightened Scots, the larger Atlantic world provided ample opportunities to examine and learn about nature—and to profit from that knowledge. Especially important were the medical men, whose presence was detailed in Brock 1982. Scots had long ventured abroad to study medicine, and with the establishment of the medical faculty at Edinburgh University in 1726 that became even more common. To train so many physicians in a world-class facility meant that many who received their degrees in Edinburgh would have to practice abroad, and Scottish doctors flocked to the military for employment, to trading vessels, and to the Americas. Rosner 1991 discusses their medical training, while Emerson 2009 investigates both their training and their employment, including in the Atlantic world. Brunton 1990 compares medical training at Edinburgh with that at its offshoot in the new medical college in Philadelphia. Reid-Maroney 2001 looks at the ability of the Philadelphia physicians to fuse their Edinburgh scientific training with strong religious impulses. On the role of Scottish doctors in the plantation colonies, see the relevant chapter in Hamilton 2005, cited under Scotland and the Atlantic Economy.

Brock, C. Helen. “Scotland and American Medicine.” In Scotus Americanus: A Survey of the Sources for Links between Scotland and America in the Eighteenth Century. Edited by William R. Brock and C. Helen Brock, 114–126. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982.
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A look at Scottish doctors who went to North America, with numbers and patterns of migration, as well as an appendix of names and places.
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Brunton, Deborah C. “The Transfer of Medical Education: Teaching at the Edinburgh and Philadelphia Medical Schools.” In Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment. Edited by Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten, 242–258. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.
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Considering the well-known connection between the Edinburgh and Philadelphia medical schools, Brunton considers why that was so, explaining it largely in terms of comparable provinciality as well as the general enlightening an Edinburgh education provided, until they began to diverge at the end of the period.
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Emerson, Roger L. “Numbering the Medics.” In Essays on David Hume, Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment. Edited by Roger L. Emerson, 163–224. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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An close and extended look at Scottish medical men in the 18th century, most of them Scottish trained, including how many there were, where they were trained, where they found employment, and how many found careers abroad in the Atlantic world.
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Reid-Maroney, Nina. Philadelphia’s Enlightenment, 1740–1800: Kingdom of Christ, Empire of Reason. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001.
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Science and religion in the Philadelphia Enlightenment, especially among the physicians, some of whom were intensely religious, and who combined the philosophical skepticism of Scottish Enlightenment science with religious orthodoxy on the basis of a principle of doubt in the capabilities of human knowledge. A complex portrait of the diverse religious sources of Enlightenment medicine.
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Rosner, Lisa. Medical Education in the Age of Improvement: Edinburgh Students and Apprentices, 1760–1826. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991.
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A look at those who studied medicine at Edinburgh, what their lives and educations were like. More concerned with experience than with developing grand theories.
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Withers, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 2002.
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A collection that seeks to redress the balance of Enlightenment studies in Scotland, away from moral philosophy and toward the sciences, broadly defined. Combines local studies and examinations of individuals with a broader look at sciences such as geology, instrument-making, and Newtonian mathematics. The topics in general are ones that had broadly Atlantic implications, including one about medical literature in the international book trade.
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Women and Gender at Home and Abroad

Women’s history has never played an especially prominent role in Scottish history at home or abroad, outside of the considerable space occupied by such romantic heroines as Mary Queen of Scots and Flora McDonald. Among the reasons has been the prominence of masculine occupations of war and overseas commerce among those for which Scots were best known. Late in the last century the history of women in Scotland itself began to receive greater attention from female scholars such as Rosalind Marshall, Rosalind Mitchison, and Leah Leneman, as in Mitchison and Leneman 2000, although the work rarely extends to the Atlantic world. Ewan and Meikle 1999 is a collection of topical chapters on the various aspects of Scottish women’s experience, including some attention to overseas connections with Europe, although with less on the transatlantic. Recent work has extended the subject in several new directions, commensurate with the general broadening of the use of the gender concept in historical studies. Catterall 2002 (cited under European Migration) attends to the roles women played in creating and maintaining the networks through which Scots were able to function in the city of Rotterdam and the larger world of the Dutch Atlantic. Other scholars have examined what the culture of the Scottish Enlightenment meant for an understanding of women’s social roles. Zagarri 1992 locates the origins of the America idea of “republican motherhood”—the role of women in raising children suited to the demands of republican society—in the four-stages theory of civilization and the role of women in refining manners and societal progress. O’Brien 2009 views that same conjectural history as essential to the notion that the place of women in society was historically derived. Towsey 2012 investigates the actual access women had to such works in the 18th century, through private and subscription libraries. Still another strategy has been to look at gender through an examination of masculinities and sensibilities. Carr 2008 finds two contrasting versions of masculinity emerging in 18th-century Scotland, both relevant to overseas expansion: one derived from Enlightenment ideas of refinement and manners, the other from the martial valor of the Highland soldier. Finally, Andrews 2013 explores the writings of two female Scottish travelers to the West Indies and their attempts to navigate between the benefits they experienced from access to Scottish commercial networks and their feelings about the violence wreaked upon the bodies of African slaves. In a summary essay, Barclay, et al. 2013 notes the increased attention to the role of women in empire both at home and abroad for the later period, but not so much for the 17th- and 18th-century Atlantic phase.

Andrews, Corey E. “Scarred, Suffering Bodies: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Women Travellers on Slavery, Sentiment and Sensibility.” In Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Intimate, Intellectual and Public Lives. Edited by Katie Barclay and Deborah Simonton, 171–189. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013.
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Looks at the West Indian travel narratives of two 18th-century Scottish women, Janet Schaw and Maria Riddell, and the problems their involvement in extensive Scottish commercial and planter networks made for both of them in attempting to come to terms with the horrors of the violence slavery imposed upon slaves’ bodies.
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Barclay, Katie, Tanya Cheadle, and Eleanor Gordon. “The State of Scottish History: Gender.” Scottish Historical Review 92 (2013): 83–107.
DOI: 10.3366/shr.2013.0169Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looks at the study of gender in Scottish history, both the places where it has made inroads and those that are still lacking. The history of empire remains among the latter categories, at least for the early Atlantic period.
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Carr, Rosalind. “The Gentleman and the Soldier: Patriotic Masculinities in Eighteenth-Century Scotland.” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 28 (2008): 102–121.
DOI: 10.3366/E1748538X0800023XSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses two emerging masculinities in 18th-century Scotland. One was the refined gentleman of the urban elites, whose sensibility was often praised by writers of the Scottish Enlightenment. The other was represented by the martial valor of the Highland Scottish soldier—not the common soldier, who was little praised, but the elite Highlander devoted to patriotism and military service.
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Ewan, Elizabeth L., and Maureen M. Meikle, eds. Women in Scotland c. 1100–1750. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1999.
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A pioneering work with chapters on a wide variety of women’s topics in Scotland. There is little on the Atlantic world, but there is material on Scots women abroad in Europe.
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Mitchison, Rosalind, and Leah Leneman. Girls in Trouble: Sexuality and Social Control in Rural Scotland 1660–1780. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000.
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One of a series of studies by the authors of women and sexuality in early modern Scotland, using parish records and other data to establish patterns of social history but also to explore other facets of women’s experience and social control.
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O’Brien, Karen. Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511576317Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Chapter 2, “From Savage to Scotswoman,” examines the writings of the leading philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment on the status of women in society. Using the analytical tools of conjectural history, Enlightenment philosophers depicted the place of women in society as historically derived rather than natural, thus providing a framework that would allow for social progress and improvement.
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Towsey, Mark. “Women’s Reading.” In The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland. Vol. 2, Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800. Edited by Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall, 438–446. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
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As part of the author’s larger project of determining who read what in the Scottish Enlightenment and how the works were received, this chapter looks at the records of private, circulating, and charitable libraries to determine what access women had to what kinds of books of all kinds in the age of the Enlightenment.
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Zagarri, Rosemarie. “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother.” American Quarterly 44 (1992): 192–215.
DOI: 10.2307/2713040Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Looks at the doctrine of “republican motherhood” as formulated by early American writers and finds its origins in the Scottish Enlightenment and the four-stages theory of civilization, which posited a key role for women in the polishing of manners and the advance of civilizations. That provided an important basis for the emphasis on female education as a key to raising and socializing republican citizens.
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Scotland and the American Revolution

The role of Scots in the American Revolution has always been something of a puzzle. Indeed, Meyer 1961 (cited under Highland Migration) begins with the seeming paradox that Highland Scots, so many of whom joined in rebellion against the British Crown in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, so strongly supported, and fought for, that same Crown against the Americans three decades later. And Graham 1956 agrees that American hostility toward Scots, and their generally clannish nature, placed Scots in North America firmly on the loyalist side. Yet there were questions about Scottish loyalties as well. Fagerstrom 1954 produces considerable evidence of sympathies on the part of Scots in Scotland for American positions, although Swinfen in Edwards and Shepperson 1976 establishes that Scottish opinion could be found on all sides of the question, and that the most significant conclusion one could draw was that Scots everywhere were well informed about the issues and keenly interested in the result. Sher 1985 (cited under The Scottish Enlightenment) establishes that many leading Scottish intellectuals at home were social conservatives and similarly unfavorable toward the Revolution, although as Fagerstrom notes the two most celebrated—David Hume and Adam Smith—were exceptions to that trend. Sher does note that most Presbyterians associated with the orthodox or “Popular” party in the Church tended to be supporters of American positions, none more than Scots émigré, Presbyterian minister, and College of New Jersey president John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. Mailer 2010 in fact locates Witherspoon’s support for the Revolution firmly within Scottish Presbyterian traditions, while Clark 1994 contends that American Revolutionary ideology owed a considerable debt to the most radical of Presbyterian traditions. Still, other paradoxes have emerged. Donovan 1990 shows clearly that those orthodox Presbyterians most devoted to the cause of American liberties were also passionate proponents of maintaining the penal laws against Catholics. Landsman, in Sher and Smitten 1990 (cited under General Overviews) asks how Witherspoon, who was so firmly rooted in traditions of Scotland’s national covenants, could transfer his allegiance from Scotland to North America. And despite Scottish skepticism about the Revolution, Wills 1978 traces much of Revolutionary ideology to the Scottish Enlightenment and particularly Scottish moral philosophy, which he shows underlay much of the rhetoric of Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, although his evidence and interpretation remain subject to debate. Finally there is the matter of Scottish loyalists, who historians since Graham 1956 have recognized as a disproportionate number among loyalists in North America.

Clark, J. C. D. The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832: Political Discourse and Social Dynamics in the Anglo-American World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
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Examines the roots of American Revolutionary ideology in the differing political and ecclesiastical traditions that separated Britain from its North American colonies, including, importantly, religious dissent among not only New Englanders but radical Scottish Presbyterian covenanters.
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Donovan, Robert Kent. “The Popular Party of the Church of Scotland and the American Revolution.” In Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment. Edited by Richard B. Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten, 81–99. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990.
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Examines support for the American Revolution from the orthodox or “Popular” Party in the Church, whose apparent liberalism was belied by their virulent opposition to Roman Catholic relief and was instead a product of their rigid Protestant orthodoxy.
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Edwards, Owen Dudley, and George Shepperson, eds. Scotland, Europe, and the American Revolution: Papers Presented at the Scottish Universities’ American Bicentennial Conference, Edinburgh University, 25–28 June 1976. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Student Publications, 1976.
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Derived from the Scottish Universities’ Bicentennial Conference on the American Revolution, this volume of short essays originally appeared in the New Edinburgh Review that same year. The papers cover a wide variety of topics; D. B. Swinfen’s is the one most concerned with Scottish attitudes on independence.
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Fagerstrom, Dalphy I. “Scottish Opinion and the American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser 11 (1954): 252–275.
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Excerpted from a doctoral dissertation on the subject, surveys the attitudes of Scots politicians, philosophers, merchants, and ministers of the Church to the American crisis and finds them far more variable than was previously known.
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Graham, Ian Charles Cargill. Colonists from Scotland: Emigration to North America, 1707–1783. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1956.
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Includes a chapter on Scotophobia in North America leading up to the Revolution, and another on the clannishness of Scots settlers and Scottish loyalism during the movement itself.
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Mailer, Gideon. “Anglo-Scottish Union and John Witherspoon’s American Revolution.” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 57 (2010): 709–746.
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Views the Revolutionary activities of the Scottish immigrant and Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey, as rooted in orthodox Calvinist traditions rather than the Enlightened moderate philosophy that is often assumed, and in visions of Anglo-Scottish union intent on keeping rather than neglecting Scotland’s covenants.
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Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978.
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Analyzes Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence, as opposed to the final version issued by the Continental Congress, and finds its language to be thoroughly rooted in Scottish moral sense philosophy, and not, as previous scholars had argued, in the political philosophy of John Locke. A very effective reading at least in places; not all critics have been convinced.
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Legacies

How important was Scotland to the culture and development of the 19th-century United States and Canada? There are a number of ways to measure that. One is migration and population. Harper 2003 examines the great Scottish migrations of the 19th century, building upon earlier patterns, sending migrants in search of opportunity to North America and the Caribbean as well as across the globe. Another is the intellectual heritage, of a reforming Protestantism, often in Presbyterian form, and of the Enlightenment. May 1976 (cited under Scottish-Atlantic Enlightenments) traces the roots of America’s longstanding civic culture. Craig 2011 contends that the most important factor in the dissemination of the Scottish Enlightenment was the dissemination of Scots across the Atlantic and across the globe. Atlantic literary traditions were also prominently influenced by Scotland, and especially by the example of Walter Scott. Manning 1990 looks at the distinctive qualities that Scottish and American literatures shared, deriving both from their similar Calvinist heritage and from the outsider provincial stance that Scots writers pioneered. Hook 1999 explores the effect of Scottish literature on American literary studies. Aspinwall 1984 argues that Scotland served as a model for American civic culture and especially American cities. For those, the industrial and modernized city of Glasgow stood as the prime example, with a distinctly culture that was adaptable to new places. There have been as well some large and controversial claims for Scottish influence, including the thesis that American Southerners possess a distinctly Scottish and Celtic heritage—whose relationship to masculinity and whiteness, among other things, is addressed in Ray 2005—and that Scots of the Enlightenment created the intellectual framework of the modern world (Herman 2001). Another place the Scottish heritage thrived was Nova Scotia, whose name and relationship in historical memory to the first, long-abandoned Scottish colony helped make it a suitable site for continuing Scottish identification into the modern era, all described in Harper and Vance 1999.

Aspinwall, Bernard. Portable Utopia: Glasgow and the United States 1820–1920. Aberdeen, UK: Aberdeen University Press, 1984.
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A look at the close ties maintained between the industrial city of Glasgow and the United States, and at the extent to which Glasgow with its portable culture served as a model for new American cities. Contains an extensive biographical appendix of individuals involved in that connection.
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Craig, Cairns. “Empire of Intellect: The Scottish Enlightenment and Scotland’s Intellectual Migration.” In Scotland and the British Empire. Edited by John M. Mackenzie and T. M. Devine, 84–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199573240.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Suggests that the Scottish Enlightenment didn’t travel abroad so much as Scottish men of intellect took their ideas out into the empire, where they were formulated into the idea of a Scottish Enlightenment.
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Harper, Marjory. Adventurers & Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus. London: Profile Books, 2003.
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An account of the real take-off in Scottish emigration in the 19th century, to Canada and the Caribbean in the Atlantic world, as well as across the globe. Scotland became possibly the leading provider of migrants among European nations, who went for opportunity as well as in response to difficulties at home.
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Harper, Marjory, and Michael E. Vance, eds. Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotia c. 1700–1990. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood, 1999.
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A collection of essays that investigate the assumed relationship between Scotland and Nova Scotia despite inconsistent historical links. Covers everything from myth-making to military links to late-19th- and 20th-century migration, as well as Edward Cowan’s critique of what hagiographers have created as “The Myth of Scotch Canada.”
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Herman, Arthur. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It. New York: Crown, 2001.
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Published in London under the more modest title, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots Invention of the Modern World. Offers an aggressive argument for the importance of Scots theorists in creating a mentality of modernity during the age of the Enlightenment.
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Hook, Andrew. From Goosecreek To Gandercleugh: Studies in Scottish-American Literary and Cultural History. East Linton, UK: Tuckwell, 1999.
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A compilation of essays from a long-time literary scholar of English, Scottish, and American literatures concerned especially with the relationship between Scottish and American literary cultures and the influence of Scottish literary studies, especially on subsequent American literature.
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Manning, Susan. The Puritan-Provincial Vision: Scottish and American Literature in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511570483Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Starting with the assumption that Scottish and American literatures of the 19th century both differed from the predominant forms of English literature, and in similar ways, the book traces that to an inheritance represented by Calvinist theology and an outsider or provincial stance, which shaped Scottish and American literary traditions.
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Ray, Celeste, ed. Transatlantic Scots. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005.
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A scholarly collection of essays looks at claims of Scottish identity in the aftermath of global migration and at their modern resurgence. Ascribes a considerable variety of influences to those claims, including but not limited to their compatibility with images of gender and race.
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