RECENT OVERARCHING STUDIES of the Anglophone world present migrants as an undifferentiated mass, so potentially marginalising their individual ethnicities, cultural influence of the homelands, and their varied engagement with the countries where they settled. In part this reflects many studies of the British Empire which continue to elide ethnic differences, despite John MacKenzie stating that the ‘ethnic mix from the United Kingdom … [is] the great hidden story of imperial rule’. Both MacKenzie and T. M. Devine have sought to rectify this in respect of the Scots. And, as Devine reinforces in a recent global overview of Scottish migration,

It is within this context that this chapter examines the life of James Taylor, ‘the Father of the Ceylon tea enterprise’ (Figure 7.1), to examine the importance – or not – of his Scottish background. Later in this book, for instance, David Fitzpatrick argues that ‘home skills were often unexportable’ and ‘background and origin are much less important … than differential opportunities in the host countries’. This chapter disputes that claim and shows the ways in which Taylor's origins were important in his achievements abroad. But why is Taylor a useful case study? First, despite acclaim in his adopted land, he never accumulated vast wealth or recognition in the land of his birth. As he put it in 1874, ‘Some how or other I was born apparently to do good for others without much benefitting myself.’ Taylor therefore enables us to consider the fate of a migrant who had minimal financial assets at the outset of his departure from Scotland at sixteen years of age. Second, a focus on Taylor is facilitated by the serendipitous survival of his correspondence spanning forty years, his published letters and his photograph albums.