Scots by Association: Scottish Diasporic Identities and Ethnic Associationism in the Nineteenth-Early Twentieth Centuries and the Present Day

In 1997 Scotland embarked on a process of devolution after almost three hundred years of full political incorporation within the British state. This dramatic development has stimulated a major reappraisal within Scotland of its identity as a nation, in the course of which its immense global, self-designating diaspora has emerged as a defining element. The roots of this widespread Scottish diasporic consciousness lie chiefly in the era of British colonial expansion, during which nearly two million Scots relocated to the outposts (and former outposts) of the Empire. Notwithstanding the largely self-determined nature of this prolonged emigrant wave, those caught up in it demonstrated a palpable desire to retain their homeland identities. One especially compelling manifestation of this impulse were those ethnic associations which proliferated in the wake of that process, collectively and consciously embodying the ethnic self-perceptions and outlooks of those expatriate Scots, and ultimately their descendants, who participated in them. In order for modern-day Scotland to fully understand and accommodate this persisting diasporic impulse, it is necessary to revisit its colonial beginnings, and those ethnic associations through which its proponents most lucidly articulated it. Through the window provided by these historically under-acknowledged associations, this thesis presents a multifaceted investigation into the origins, evolution and ongoing ramifications of Scottish diasporic consciousness. Firstly, these bodies readily facilitate an overdue comparative analysis of Scottish ethnic identities as they manifested in different settings, timeframes and circumstances, an exercise which reveals, above all, the diversity inherent in their expression within the broader colonial context, as localised factors helped shape and influence them. An examination of the global connections which developed between these associations around the turn of the twentieth century, meanwhile, illuminates a key phase in the transition of their disparate ethnic articulations into a tangible, integrated diasporic form which, critically, the homeland community came to both recognise and emulate. Finally, through a survey of some of those still-enduring colonial-era associations’ current members, these bodies emerge as largely complicit in perpetuating what the homeland community more commonly perceives, today, as outmoded, romanticised notions of Scotland within the diaspora. However, the provenance of such outlooks can be traced, faithfully unchanged, back to these associations’ colonial foundations, where they originated as responses to the act of colonial migration in the wake of which they were conceived. Viewed in this light, these prevailing notions of the homeland are open to fresh interpretation as authentically diasporic, rather than anomalously Scottish, and therefore legitimate in their own right. While only ever directly representing a minority of the overseas Scottish-Scottish descendant community, the ubiquity, consistency and endurance of these associations in their capacity as deliberate vehicles for the expression of ethnic identities, enables a nuanced and in-depth picture of Scottish diasporic consciousness to emerge. As a rejuvenated Scotland works towards a self-vision which acknowledges and incorporates its long history of out-migration, a study of ethnic associationism offers a timely insight into the nature and evolution of the vast, complex, self-identifying diaspora to which that emergent transnational identity is intrinsically bound