Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  Closer to home, Kevin Halliwell of the National Library of Scotland and Jane Brown of the National Archives of Scotland drew my attention to previously unused material, while George Dalgleish and David Forsyth of the Museum of Scotland International alerted me to relevant illustrations. It was a pleasure to revisit Quarrier’s Village, where I was made so welcome by Bill and Helen Dunbar, and I have benefited from the advice and expertise of archivists at Stirling Council Archives and Shetland Archives, from where Angus John-stone kindly sent me a large file of material relating to emigration from the Northern Isles. I am grateful to Mrs F. E. Young of Tomintoul for allowing me to use the correspondence of the Galbraiths of Tauranga, as well as to Len Gray of Auckland and the Sangster family for copies of the diaries of Mrs D. Bon-throw and George Sangster respectively.

  Colleagues in my own institution and in other universities have given invaluable advice and support. Eric Richards of Flinders University, South Australia, has cheerfully and fully responded to my many requests for obscure references to Scots in Australia, and Susie Zada, President of the Bellarine Historical Society, provided invaluable information on Anne Drysdale. I am indebted to Lucille Campey for material on Highland emigration agents, while Philip Goldring and Judith Hudson Beattie supplied much of the evidence about Scots in the Hudson’s Bay Company. Conversations and correspondence with Marilyn Barber, Bruce Elliott, Charlotte Erickson, Philip Girard, Dougie Hamilton, Sheila Kidd, Donald Meek, Katie Pickles, Ferenc Szasz, Margaret Connell Szasz and many others, have given me fresh insights and an awareness of the bigger picture in migration studies.

  The greatest debts have been incurred closest to home. As always, the staff of Aberdeen University Library have offered unfailing support. Myrtle Anderson-Smith, Iain Beavan, Michele Gale and Jane Pirie in the Department of Special Libraries and Archives, along with Noreen Wilson and her colleagues at Inter-Library Loans and the Faculty Librarian, Gilian Dawson, have been particularly helpful. Donald Meek, formerly of Aberdeen University, now of the University of Edinburgh, kindly supplied me with a copy of J. Mackintosh’s letter to his Mormon nephew. Colleagues in the School of History and History of Art have been steadily supportive: David Ditchburn and Andrew Mackillop in particular supplied me with very helpful references to European and Indian material respectively. I am immensely grateful to Tom Devine, Director of the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, for encouraging me to undertake the project, reading the first draft of the manuscript and spearheading an exciting and multi-faceted pro-gramme of diaspora studies through the Institute and the Arts and Humanities Research Board Research Centre in Irish and Scottish Studies. Stimulating seminars and conferences organized by the Institute constantly expand my horizons and fire my enthusiasm, and I have much appreciated the advice and support of those connected with RIISS, including John MacKenzie, Angela McCarthy, Enda Delaney, Steve Murdoch, Alexia Grosjean and Andrew Walls.

  Special thanks go to my husband, Andrew Shere, not only for his constant support but also for sacrificing four days from a Cape Town summer to labouring in the archives on my behalf.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  In the first half of the twentieth century the standard general work on British emigration was W. A. Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles, with Special Reference to the Development of the Overseas Dominions (London, 1929). Modern quantitative evaluations include Dudley Baines, Migration in a Mature Economy: Emigration and Internal Migration in England and Wales, 1861—1900 (Cambridge, 1985) and Emigration from Europe, 1815—1930 (Basingstoke, 1991). Charlotte Erickson’s many pioneering studies of British emigration include Leaving England: Essays on British Emigration in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, 1994). The most recent short overviews are by James Horn, ‘British Diaspora: Emigration from Britain, 1680—1815’ in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. II, the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), pp. 28—52 and Marjory Harper, ‘British Migration and the Peopling of the Empire’ in Andrew Porter (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. III, the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999), pp. 75—87. The British perspective is addressed in Eric Richards, Britannia’s Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (London, 2004).

  Gordon Donaldson, The Scots Overseas (London, 1966) provided the first basic overview of Scottish emigration. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the emphasis was on the Highland exodus, explored in Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances, 2 vols (London, 1982 and 1985), recently republished in a single volume, The Highland Clearances: People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil (Edinburgh, 2000). Emigration was also a major theme in T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1988) and Clanship to Crofters’ War: the Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester, 1994). The focus of Scottish studies was extended beyond the Highlands in Malcolm Gray, Scots on the Move: Scots Migrants 1750—1914 (Edinburgh, 1991), T. M. Devine (ed.), Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society (Edinburgh, 1992) and Jeanette Brock, The Mobile Scot: A Study of Emigration and Migration 1861—1911 (Edinburgh, 1999). The most recent contribution to the study of the Scots overseas is T. M. Devine, Scotland’s Empire (London, 2003).

  An overview of British settlement in Australia in the mid-nineteenth century is given inRobinF. Haines, Emigration and the LabouringPoor:Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831—60 (Basingstoke, 1997). Our understanding of Scots in Australia has been advanced by Malcolm D. Prentis, The Scots in Aus-tralia: A Study of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, 1788—1900 (Sydney and London, 1983) and Eric Richards, Alexia Howe, Ian Donnachie and Adrian Graves, That Land of Exiles: Scots in Australia (Edinburgh, 1988). Their role in both Australia and New Zealand has been explored by Jim Hewit-son, Far Off In Sunlit Places: Stories of the Scots in Australia and New Zealand (Edinburgh, 1998) and their influence in New Zealand specifically by T. Brooking and J. Coleman (eds), The Heather and the Fern: Scottish Migration and New Zealand Settlement (Dunedin, 2003).

  Emigration to North America in the colonial period is examined in Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West: Emigration from Britain to America on the Eve of the Revolution (London, 1987). The Scottish experience in the American colonies is singled out in David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America 1607—1785 (Athens, Ga, 1994) and Anthony W. Parker, Scottish Highlanders in Colonial Georgia: The Recruitment, Emigration and Settlement at Darien, 1735—1748 (Athens, Ga, 1997). Aspects of British settlement in the United States are analysed in Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-century America (London, 1972) and William E. Van Vugt, Britain to America: Mid Nineteenth-century Immigrants to the United States ((Urbana, Il, 1999) while the role of Scots in the USA is the subject of Jim Hewitson, Tam Blake & Co. The Story of the Scots in America (Edinburgh, 1993) and Ferenc M. Szasz, Scots in the North American West 1790—1917 (Norman, Ok., 2000). Scots in South America have received little attention, with the exception of Greta Mackenzie, Why Patagonia? (Stornoway, 1996) and Iain A. D. Stewart (ed.), From Caledonia to the Pampas. Two Accounts by Early Scottish Emigrants to the Argentine (Phantassie, East Linton, 2000). Scottish experiences in the Caribbean have been evaluated by Alan Karras, Sojourners in the Sun. Scottish Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 1740—1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1992) and their role throughout the American continent in L. G. Fryer, M. D. Harper and A. I. Macinnes (eds), Scotland and the Americas 1650—1930: A Documentary Source Book (Edinburgh, 2003).

  Among many writings on the Scots in Canada are J. M. Bumsted, The People’s Clearance. Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770—1815 (Edinburgh, 1982), Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry:Highlanders in Transition, 1745—1820 (Montreal, 1991) and Marjory Harper and Michael E. Vance (eds), Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotia, c. 1700—1990 (Halifax, NS and Edinburgh, 1999). Perception
s of Scottish identity in Canadian literature can be found in the novels of a number of writers, including, most recently, Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief (London, 2001).

  Child migration policies have been subject to frequent scrutiny in recent years. The Scottish perspective is examined in Anna Magnusson, The Village (Quarrier’s, 1984) and Lynn Abrams, The Orphan Country. Children of Scotland’s Broken Homes from 1845 to the Present Day (Edinburgh, 1998) and the Canadian experience in Joy Parr, Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869—1924 (London and Montreal, 1980). Female emigration has been analysed in a number of studies, though not from a specifically Scottish perspective, the most recent publication being Jan Gothard, Blue China. Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (Melbourne, 2001). The issue is also addressed in Marilyn Barber, Immigrant Domestic Servants in Canada (Ottawa, 1991) and Cecillie Swaisland, Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land. The Emigration of Single Women to Southern Africa, 1820—1939 (Oxford, 1993).

  Transatlantic and Antiopdean passages are examined in Terry Coleman, Passage to America. A History of Emigrants from Great Britain and Ireland to America in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 1972) and Helen Woolcock, Rights of Passage. Emigration to Australia in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1986), while passengers’ diaries are discussed in Andrew Hassam, Sailing to Australia. Shipboard Diaries by Nineteenth-century British Emigrants (Manchester, 1994).