Books
Books can provide an expert, scholarly analysis and context to your research topic. They can also be mined for additional resources both secondary and primary. Be sure to dig into any notes, references, and bibliographies to find those leads to other works in the scholarly discourse.
A good starting point for finding relevant books is searching the Libraries' catalog, InfoKat Discovery.
Search by keywords, author(s), title, subject, and more!
If you are searching the Libraries' catalog using subject terms, try some of the following to get started. Either copy/paste them into the catalog search box or click on the links below.
- Scots -- Foreign countries -- History
- Scots -- Foreign countries -- Societies, etc
- Scots -- Foreign countries -- Ethnic identity
- Scotland -- Emigration and immigration -- History
- Scotland -- Emigration and immigration -- History -- 19th century
- Scotland -- Emigration and immigration -- History -- 20th century
Examples of country or continent-specific subject terms:
Below are some examples of books you can find in the UK Libraries' collection.
Global Migrations by
This book examines the impact since 1600 of out migration from Scotland on the homeland, the migrants, and the destinations in which they settled. It does so through a focus on the under-researched themes of slavery, cross-cultural encounters, economics, war, tourism, and the modern diaspora since 1945.
Call Number: Available online and in print (DA774.5 .G57 2016 | Young Library, 3rd Fl.)Publication Date: 2016
Lost in the Backwoods: Scots and the North American Wilderness by
How the American wilderness shaped Scottish experience, imagination and identity. How is the Scottish imagination shaped by its emigre experience with wilderness and the extreme? Drawing on journals, emigrant guides, memoirs, letters, poetry and fiction, this book examines patterns of survival, defeat, adaptation and response in North America's harshest landscapes. Most Scots who crossed the Atlantic in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encountered the practical, moral and cultural challenges of the wilderness, with its many tensions and contradictions. Jenni Calder explores the effect of these experiences on the Scots imagination. Associated with displacement and disappearance, the 'wilderness' was also a source of adventure and redemption, of exploitation and spiritual regeneration, of freedom and restriction. An arena of greed, cruelty and cannibalism, of courage, generosity and mutual understanding, it brought out the best and the worst of humanity. Did the Scots who emigrated exchange one extreme for another, or did they discover a new idea of identity, freedom and landscape?
Call Number: Available onlinePublication Date: 2013
The Scots in Australia, 1788-1938 by
Despite their significant presence, Scots have often been invisible in histories of Australian migration. This book illuminates the many experiences of the Scots in Australia, from the first colonists in the late-eighteenth century until the hopeful arrivals of the interwar years. It explores how and why they migrated to Australia, and their lives as convicts, colonists, farmers, families, workers, and weavers of culture and identity. It also investigatestheir encounters with the Australian continent, whether in its cities or on the land, and their relationship with its first peoples; and their connections to one another and with their own collective identities, looking at diversity and tension within the Scottish diaspora in Australia. It is also a book about the challenges of finding a place for oneself in a new land, and the difficulties of creating a sense of belonging in a settler colonial society. Dr Benjamin Wilkie is a Lecturer in Australian Studies and Early Career Development Fellow at Deakin University, Australia.
Call Number: Available onlinePublication Date: 2017
Clubbing Together: ethnicity, civility and formal sociability in the Scottish diaspora to 1930 by
Emigrants carried a rich array of associations with them to the new worlds in which they settled, often "clubbing together" along ethnic lines shortly after first foot fall. Yet while a crucial element of immigrant community life, one of the richest examples, that of Scottish migrants, hasreceived only patchy coverage. Moreover, no one has yet problematized Scottish associations, such as St Andrew's societies or Burns clubs, as a series of transnational connections that were deeply rooted in the civic life of their respective communities. This book provides the first global study tocapture the wider relevance of the Scots' associationalism, arguing that associations and formal sociability are a key to explaining how migrants negotiated their ethnicity in the diaspora and connected to social structures in diverse settlements.Moving beyond the traditional nineteenth-century settler dominions, the book offers a unique comparative focus, bringing together Scotland's near diaspora in England and Ireland with that in North America, Africa, and Australasia to assess the evolution of Scottish ethnic associations, as well astheir diverse roles as sites of memory and expressions of civility. The book reveals that the structures offered by Scottish associations engaged directly with the local, New World contexts, developing distinct characteristics that cannot be subsumed under one simplistic label - that of an overseas"national society". The book promotes understanding not only of Scottish ethnicity overseas, but also of how different types of ethnic associational activism made diaspora tangible.
Call Number: Available onlinePublication Date: 2015
Transatlantic Scots by
Examines the impact of the Scottish legacy on North American cultures and heritage During the past four decades, growing interest in North Americans' cultural and ancestral ties to Scotland has produced hundreds of new Scottish clan and heritage societies. Well over 300 Scottish Highland games and gatherings annually take place across the U.S. and Canada. Transatlantic Scots is a multidisciplinary collection that studies the regional organization and varied expressions of the Scottish Heritage movement in the Canadian Maritimes, the Great Lakes, New England, and the American South. From diverse perspectives, authorities in their fields consider the modeling of a Scottish identity that distances heritage celebrants from prevalent visions of whiteness. Considering both hyphenated Scots who celebrate centuries-old transmission of Scottish traditions and those for whom claiming or re-claiming a Scottish identity is recent and voluntary, this book also examines how diaspora themes and Highland imagery repeatedly surface in regional public celebrations and how traditions are continually reinvented through the accumulation of myths. The underlying theoretical message is that ethnicity and heritage survive because of the flexibility of history and tradition. This work is a lasting contribution to the study of ethnicity and identity, the renegotiation of history and cultural memory into heritage, and the public performance and creation of tradition.
Call Number: Available onlinePublication Date: 2005
Scottish Ethnicity and the Making of New Zealand Society, 1850-1930 by
The Scots accounted for around a quarter of all UK-born immigrants to New Zealand between 1861 and 1945, but have only been accorded scant attention in New Zealand histories, specialist immigration histories and Scottish Diaspora Studies. This is peculiar because the flow of Scots to New Zealand, although relatively unimportant to Scotland, constituted a sizable element to the country's much smaller population. Seen as adaptable, integrating relatively more quickly than other ethnic migrant groups in New Zealand, the Scots' presence was obscured by a fixation on the romanticised shortbread tin façade of Scottish identity overseas.Uncovering Scottish ethnicity from the verges of nostalgia, this study documents the notable imprint Scots left on New Zealand. It examines Scottish immigrant community life, culture and identity between 1850 and 1930.
Call Number: Available onlinePublication Date: 2011
