Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
14 - Afterword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine
- 1 Introduction-Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600
- 2 ‘As Hewers of Wood, and Drawers of Water’: Scotland as an Emigrant Nation, c. 1600 to c. 1800
- 3 ‘You Have Only Seen the Fortunate Few and Draw Your Conclusion Accordingly’: Behavioural Economics and the Paradox of Scottish Emigration
- 4 Scottish Diasporas and Africa
- 5 ‘Have the Scotch no Claim upon the Cherokee?’ Scots, Indians and Scots Indians in the American South
- 6 Conflicts of Interest, Crises of Conscience: Scots and Aboriginal People in Eastern Australia, 1830s–1861
- 7 The Importance of Scottish Origins in the Nineteenth Century: James Taylor and Ceylon Tea
- 8 ‘Our Old World Diff'rences are Dead’: The Scottish Migrant Military Tradition in the British Dominions during the First World War
- 9 ‘Part of my Heritage’: Ladies’ Pipe Bands, Associational Culture and ‘Homeland’ Identities in the Scottish Diaspora
- 10 Understanding Scottishness among Sojourners, Settlers and Descendants in Hong Kong and New Zealand
- 11 Encountering an Imaginary Heritage: Roots Tourism and the Scottish Diaspora
- 12 Home is where the Heart is: Affinity Scots in the Scottish Diaspora
- 13 What Scottish Diaspora?
- 14 Afterword
- Index
Summary
GLOBAL MIGRATIONS LOOKS OUTWARDS from Scotland, searching across four centuries of endeavour. And over this horizon, as so many of the contributors attest, there is a uniting inspiration of the work and example of Tom Devine who has long reached beyond Scotland for wider perspectives. Scotland probably interacted with the outside world, near and far, more than most. It has been a global player for a quarter of a millennium and this basic fact has shaped its evolution and its destiny. But, as Devine himself stresses, most countries claim to punch above their weight, and assertions of historical ‘exceptionality’ and ‘ethnic conceit’ are less helpful than the systematic quest for underlying explanations of the current condition of the nation.
In 1966, the English historian Keith Thomas declared chillingly that his own profession, for all its traditional scholarly virtues, had explained remarkably little about the workings of human society. He urged a thoroughgoing infusion of the techniques and theories of ‘the social sciences’ into historical methods. The subsequent career of both history and the social sciences has been decidedly chequered, and not only in England. In Scotland the challenge was taken up mainly by economic historians and historical demographers; meanwhile historians of Scottish ethnicity and identity have taken over much of the running and there is some tension in the historiography, some of it displayed in these contributions – especially where the urge to measure is met with a counterbalancing emphasis on the incalculable claims of experience and emotion.
The very word ‘diaspora’ releases hares in all directions, not least on questions relating to the reciprocations of emigration in the form of remittances from abroad, returning migrants to the home country, by investment, trade and human reproduction and most of all in the flows of cultural values and the pervasive matter of ‘identity’. John MacKenzie stresses the multiplicity of diasporas in Africa and the rival definitions of ‘diaspora’. The re-assertion of Scots identity, especially among the distant peripheries of the Scottish world, has been a feature of recent decades and was probably influential in the nationalist case promoted in 2014–15. The vigour of modern Scottish historiography has, wittingly or not, fuelled the political debate and raised its temperature, and cast an influence over the 2014 Independence Referendum. It is noticeable that the most questioning voices in this volume come from an ‘Irishist’ and an Australian historian.
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- Information
- Global MigrationsThe Scottish Diaspora since 1600, pp. 272 - 280Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016