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T. M. DevineTo The Ends Of The EarthT. M. DevineTo The Ends Of The EarthScotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010HARD COVER
UPC: 9781588343178Release Date: 10/25/2011
The Scots are one of the world's greatest nations of emigrants. For centuries, untold numbers of men, women, and children have sought their fortunes in every conceivable walk of life and in every imaginable climate. All over the British Empire, the United States, and elsewhere, the Scottish contribution to the development of the modern world has been a formidable one, from finance to industry, philosophy to politics.
To the Ends of the Earth puts this extraordinary epic center stage, taking many famous stories--from the Highland Clearances and emigration to the Scottish Enlightenment and empire--and removing layers of myth and sentiment to reveal the no-less-startling truth. Whether in the creation of great cities or prairie farms, the Scottish element always left a distinctive trace, and Devine pays particular attention to the exceptional Scottish role as traders, missionaries, and soldiers. This major new book is also a study of the impact of the global world on Scotland itself and the degree to which the Scottish economy was for many years an imperial economy, with intimate, important links through shipping, engineering, jute, and banking to the most remote of settlements. Filled with fascinating stories and an acute awareness of the poverty and social inequality that provoked so much emigration, To the Ends of the Earth will make its readers think about the world in a quite different way. Praise for T. M. Devine's The Scottish Nation, 1700-2007: Two years ago more than 47,000 people from all over the world journeyed to Scotland to celebrate their Caledonian lineage in an event called the “Homecoming”. Many of them had only recently discovered an interest in their origins and some, it seems safe to say, held peculiar ideas about where their forebears had come from and what impelled them to leave. Many people of Scottish descent, especially in America, assume that their ancestors hailed from the Highlands; that having been dispossessed of their land, they were forcibly driven into exile; and that after the Jacobites’ defeat at the battle of Culloden in 1746, if not before, these brave, egalitarian and freedom-loving people were victims of the oppressive English. The truth is more complicated than that, as T.M. Devine, a professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, is at pains to show. The Scots have been emigrants and adventurers since at least the 13th century. At first most went to northern Europe as mercenary soldiers or traders, setting up commercial networks from Rotterdam to Königsberg and penetrating far into Poland. Later they settled in large numbers in Ulster. By the beginning of the 18th century life expectancy was rising among landed Scots but second and third sons had little hope of becoming farmers. For many of these, the Act of Union with England in 1707 came as a blessing. It opened to Scottish merchants the protected markets of the English colonies and provided countless jobs for soldiers, contractors and bureaucrats in an expanding empire. For Presbyterians, the union also had the political advantage of providing a defence against the possibility of an unwelcome Catholic Stuart restoration. Scots, already well established in the Caribbean, were soon all over British North America and, through the East India Company, much of Asia. Scots were prominent in trading firms like Jardine Matheson and the North West Company; in 1799, 78% of the overseas employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose domain encompassed more than 10% of the Earth’s land surface, came from the islands of Orkney alone. Scottish emigrants flourished not only throughout the empire but also in England, other parts of Europe, and even South America and Japan. Many of those who stayed at home also prospered. By the 1770s Glasgow had secured most of the British tobacco trade. It later became a centre for sugar, engineering and shipbuilding. All over the country fortunes were being made in textiles or related products. In Dundee the product was ju
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