Scotland and the British Empire

Book excerpt: The extraordinary influence of Scots in the British Empire has long been recognized. As administrators, settlers, temporary residents, professionals, plantation owners, and as military personnel, they were strikingly prominent in North America, the Caribbean, Australasia, South Africa, India, and colonies in South-East Asia and Africa. Throughout these regions they brought to bear distinctive Scottish experience as well as particular educational, economic, cultural, and religious influences. Moreover, the relationship between Scots and the British Empire had a profound effect upon many aspects of Scottish society. This volume of essays, written by notable scholars in the field, examines the key roles of Scots in central aspects of the Atlantic and imperial economies from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, in East India Company rule in India, migration and the preservation of ethnic identities, the environment, the army, missionary and other religious activities, the dispersal of intellectual endeavours, and in the production of a distinctive literature rooted in colonial experience. Making use of recent, innovative research, the chapters demonstrate that an understanding of the profoundly interactive relationship between Scotland and the British Empire is vital both for the understanding of the histories of that country and of many territories of the British Empire. All scholars and general readers interested in the dispersal of intellectual ideas, key professions, Protestantism, environmental practices, and colonial literature, as well as more traditional approaches to politics, economics, and military recruitment, will find it an essential addition to the historical literature.