Tom Devine: The exile files

AFEW years ago, a survey was carried out of fourth-year pupils in Scottish schools and their knowledge (or lack of it) of the national history. Perhaps not surprisingly, the results were disappointing with many answers which reflected ignorance, incomprehension and false belief in equal measure. When, for instance, the question was posed "Why did so many Scots emigrate overseas in past centuries?", the overwhelming majority responded: "Because of the Highland Clearances." In this respect, however, the pupils were probably repeating a myth to which a large number of their fellow Scots would subscribe.

The wholesale evictions of communities in the Western Highlands and Islands is, of course, one of the great tragedies of the Scottish past. Also, there can be little doubt that many who experienced or feared loss of land did make their way overseas, though clearance was only one factor in a complex process of movement which included other powerful forces in Gaeldom such as famine, intolerable and increasing population pressures, the collapse of employment opportunities and the transformation of ancient social structures and relationships. More to the point, however, the Clearances are a relatively small part of the epic story of the worldwide emigrations of the Scottish people.The great removals in the Highlands started in the 1760s, intensified in the early 19th century and reached a terrible climax during the potato famines between 1846 and 1855. After that date, though individual evictions continued, mass clearance became a thing of the past. Essentially, therefore, the period of the Highland Clearances was the century between the 1760s and the 1850s. Yet Scottish emigration to Europe, England and Ulster had been going on for over five centuries before that, and went on for another 150 years from the 1850s to the US, Australasia, South Africa and many other parts of the world.

The immensely popular books of "victim history" by the Canadian writer John Prebble in the 1960s and 1970s, on such themes as Culloden and the Clearances, have helped to forge the myth of Scottish emigration as a Highland experience, a diaspora of the clans. It remains a belief shared by many Scots and overwhelmingly so by the Scottish diaspora in North America today, who base their "history" of the nation on Prebble and similar authors and remain quite unaware (and even indifferent to) the huge advances in the transformed understanding of Scotland's complex past made in our universities over the past few decades.

In fact, over the last 150 years and more the emigrations have come mainly from Lowland Scotland. Even in the later 19th century no more than one emigrant in every ten was from north of the Highland line. They were mainly skilled and semi-skilled workers from the cities and farm servants and labourers from the rural counties. Overwhelmingly, they moved because they sought better opportunities for themselves and their families. Theirs was not a migration of despair or of forced exile. This mindset explains the remarkable success of many Scottish emigrants in the New World. They were mainly literate, often possessed the skills which were in greatest demand in the young nations overseas and had gained their early work experience in what was before 1914 one of the most advanced capitalist societies on earth.

Next weekend the Year of Homecoming celebrations will reach a climax in Edinburgh with The Gathering and the Scottish Diaspora Forum, which is to be held in the Scottish Parliament. Quite rightly, the government wishes to make a more enduring connection with the nation's global diaspora in future as a legacy to this year, as the Irish have done so successfully and to mutual benefit. But if this is to occur, and I earnestly hope it will, the new bonds have to be forged on both sides by mutual comprehension based on an educated and realistic historical understanding rather than discredited mythology and romantic fantasy.

The Scots migrants generally made a deep mark on the development of their adopted homelands. This in itself is not surprising; while some emigrants were destitute Highlanders, redundant handloom weavers, convicts exiled to Australia and orphan children under assisted passage, many others came with considerable advantages which allowed them to exploit the opportunities of the New World and influence its development out of all proportion to their numbers.

Of course, it would be nonsense to assume that all succeeded. Some at least of the many thousands who returned home across the Atlantic in the later 19th and early 20th centuries must be regarded as failures, though by no means all, or even the majority, necessarily were. Studies of Scots in 19th-century urban Ontario also reveal evidence of downward social mobility.

But inevitably it is only the successful who are remembered. Even when all the qualifications have been made, the record of the emigrant Scots in the making of North America, South Africa and Australasia is a formidable one.

They had several advantages which gave them an edge over other ethnic groups. The overwhelming majority were Protestant and Lowland Scots, with English as their native tongue. They therefore avoided the religious discrimination that was visited upon the Catholic Irish, while maintaining a clear linguistic advantage over Germans, Scandinavians, French, Italians and others.

They also came from one of the world's most advanced economies. Scottish agriculture had a global reputation for excellence and efficiency, while the nation had a leading position in areas as diverse as banking, insurance, engineering, applied science, shipbuilding, coal mining and iron and steel manufacture. The Scots who emigrated had experience of working within this system of advanced capitalism and had acquired a range of skills that few other emigrants from Europe could match. Between 1815 and 1914, as many as half of the Scotsmen who moved to the US were skilled or semi-skilled. Also in the early 1920s, 55 per cent of adult men leaving Scotland had skilled trades, while in the two years before the First World War over one-fifth could be described as belonging to the group "commerce, finance, insurance, professional and students".

It was not simply the tradesmen of the big cities and the renowned industries of Scotland who were at an advantage. The tenant farmers, ploughmen and shepherds who had been reared on the disciplined toil and progressive techniques of improved agriculture were equally at a premium in societies that had land and raw materials in abundance but which suffered from a profound shortage of skilled labour. In a sense, it was a form of technology transfer from a sophisticated economic system to one that was more primitive and less developed. An added bonus was the Scot often arrived with some capital. Unlike the Irish Catholic emigration to the Americas, the Scottish diaspora was not mainly the flight of the poor. The famous traditions of Scottish elementary and higher education were also relevant to success. In the later 18th century almost all the colonial medical profession in North America were Scots or Scots-trained.

Even Scottish convicts sentenced to transportation to Australia had higher levels of literacy than their English or Irish counterparts.

Countless numbers of unknown Scots helped to transform North America – the generations of Scots sheep farmers who left their mark on the thinly populated states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming; the bankers, merchants and small storekeepers of Scottish origin who were found in large numbers across the expanding frontier; the warehousemen who had learnt the drapery trade in Edinburgh and Glasgow and became pioneers of the department store business in American cities. It was a similar story in the Antipodes.

But it was not always a pretty story. Scots pioneers in the Australian state of Victoria were often land-grabbers and squatters who were notorious for their ruthlessness, and they, like the English, Welsh and Irish, played a full part in the harsh treatment of the Aboriginal peoples.

It was ironic that some of those most notoriously involved were Gaels who themselves had suffered clearance and destitution in the old country.

Professor Tom Devine is director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He will be making the keynote speech at the Scottish Diaspora Forum on 25 July at the Scottish Parliament. A limited number of free tickets are available for Scotland on Sunday readers on a first-come, first-served basis. E-mail your request to: [email protected]