Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785

Book excerpt: This study presents all known information about the Scottish emigrants who helped settle the vast British colonial expanse that once reached from Newfoundland down the eastern seaboard to the West Indies. Ranging in his coverage from the founding of the Jamestown Colony through the first years of American independence, David Dobson substantiates the omnipresence of Scots throughout the region and rescues from obscurity their accomplishments in virtually all trades and professions. The book is arranged by geographic location within a chronology that frames the major periods of Scottish emigration, which were, by definition, periods of great sociopolitical change in Britain: the half-century before Restoration, Restoration to Union, Union to the Peace of Paris, and the Peace of Paris to the Treaty of Paris. Dobson's narrative not only incorporates a great deal of demographic and biographical information, but also uses anecdotes that typify the Scottish emigrant experience. As he considers the motivations of the emigrants, their settlement patterns, and their contributions to colonial life, Dobson addresses an abundance of related topics, from the Scottish influence on such schools as Princeton and the College of William and Mary to the complicated loyalties of the Scottish factions in the American Revolution. Of the estimated 150,000 Scots who emigrated to America before 1785, says Dobson, a fair number came involuntarily or reluctantly. As defeated insurrectionists they were forced into indentured servitude; as convicted criminals they were banished to labor on Caribbean sugar and cotton plantations; as mercenaries or conscripts they came to fight the Mohawks and the French, and later the rebellious subjects of George III. As Presbyterians and Quakers many others came in search of tolerance. Enterprising Scots who had long been victims of English trade restrictions also felt the lure of the colonies. Turning away from the nearby commercial and cultural havens they had established in Poland, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, Scottish manufacturers and crafts persons poured across the Atlantic. Lowland Scots, Dobson shows, were predominant until the 1730s, tending to cluster in seaport communities and the West Indies. The clannish Highlanders who followed came at first to escape English animosity but were later driven to emigrate by poor harvests and harsh winters. They trekked to the southern frontiers of Georgia and the Carolinas, the rugged interior of New York, and the farthest Canadian outposts of the Hudson Bay Company. The contributions of these people, in fields from education and politics to religion and medicine, were greatly out of proportion to their numbers. David Dobson's book, based almost entirely on primary research in archives and libraries in Scotland, England, Canada, and the United States, will gain Scottish emigrants the recognition they deserve.