While the literature relating to Scottish contact with America has grown significantly in recent years, the influence of America on Scotland and its early modern history has been neglected in favour of a preoccupation with Scottish influence on the formation of North American national identities. Alexander Murdochs fascinating new study explores Scottish interactions with North America in a desire to open up fresh perspectives on the subject.
Scotland and America, c.1600c.1800:
surveys the key centuries of economic, migratory and cultural exchange, including Canada and the Caribbean
discusses Scottish participation in the Atlantic slave trade and the debate over its abolition
considers the Scottish experience of British unionism with respect to developing American traditions of unionism in the US and Canada .
Incorporating the latest research, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the dynamic relationship between Scotland and America during a key period in history.
Alexander Murdoch is Senior Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Edinburgh and was formerly Researcher for the Scottish Records Program of the North Carolina State Archives. His previous publications include British History, 16601832 (1998) and British Emigration, 16031914 (2004), both of which are also published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Scotland and America, c.1600c.1800
Alexander Murdoch
The University of Edinburgh
Alexander Murdoch 2010
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First published 2010
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Preface
This book has many different origins, but chiefly it grew out of my attendance as a postgraduate student at the Scotland, Europe and the American Revolution Scottish Universities American Bicentennial Conference at the University of Edinburgh in June 1976 and, secondly, my offering two decades later an honours course at the University of Edinburgh following my appointment as a Lecturer in Scottish History under the title Scotland and America. This in its initial incarnation focused on the eighteenth century, but I later expanded its remit to the extremely long eighteenth century of 16031917. I adopted the latter date at the suggestion of Professor Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones in acknowledgement of the USAs late entry into the First World War, with all that this subsequently entailed for the twentieth century. He would no doubt be gratified to read the analysis of Kathleen Burk in her book Old World, New World: The Story of Britain and America (2007) that there was no decided change in the relationship until 1917, and that the usual date of 1914, in the context of Anglo-American relations, is not a significant signpost (411). Although this book has been written in a belief that the relationship of Scotland to America was significantly different from that of Britain as a whole, there is no doubt that the First World War altered Scottish relations with America, and vice versa, in 1917 rather than 1914.
I am responsible for all the shortcomings of this addition to an extremely varied literature on the subject, but I have many acknowledgements to make in relation to anything positive a reader might take from what is offered here. I owe a great debt to Dr Robert J Cain as former Director of the Colonial Records of North Carolina project of the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, who employed me as the researcher for its Scottish Records Program (in the American spelling) from 1986 to 1990. I am also grateful to all my former colleagues in the American Studies programme at what was then Nene College and is now the University of Northampton from 1991 to 1995 for sharing their robust views on just how we would define that enterprise, and to the support I received from colleagues with whom I taught British and European History there. On taking up my appointment at Edinburgh it was my pleasure to join the committees that at that time existed at the university to promote American Studies and who had just introduced an undergraduate degree programme in the subject. Although that degree has now been withdrawn by the university, American Studies still flourishes at Edinburgh as part of the teaching of degrees in History and English Literature as well as through flourishing postgraduate programmes in American History, Canadian Studies and Transatlantic (literary) Studies.
Some of the students who took the Scotland and America course at Edinburgh have gone on to postgraduate study, including Sonia Baker, John Beech and Matthew Dziennik, who graduated with degrees in Scottish Historical Studies, Scottish Ethnology and Scottish Historical Studies, and History respectively. Other students I remember as making particularly constructive contributions to the course include Kirsteen Foster, Kevin ODonnell, Chris Peck and Chris Rae. Martin Casey distinguished himself by returning books when the next intake of the course needed them most! During the academic year 2001/2002 I was fortunate to be allowed to teach a more specialist version of part of the course under the title Scottish Settlement in the American South and gained much from the work of David Ellis, Caroline Parkes and Mark Mulhern, who explored the different perspectives they brought from American Studies and Scottish Historical Studies in a constructive manner that taught me much. Tom Devine, Professor of Scottish History, made a substantial contribution to the teaching of the course during the academic year 2006/2007, and I hope in the future that it will develop into more of a team-taught seminar drawing more widely on the expertise available at Edinburgh relevant to its subject.
