From Scotland to the world

The writings of leading Scottish historian Tom Devine are both eminent and popular. Shane Gilchrist discusses mass migration and myths with a scholar who, for a time, outsold Harry Potter.

Like so many before him, Tom Devine has left Scotland.

However, the historian's visit to New Zealand is just that; a sojourn for academic and, importantly, wider interest, during which he'll discuss various aspects of his nation's past before he returns to his place of birth.

Starting today in Dunedin with a public address titled "The Death and Reinvention of Scotland", Prof Devine will next week range over other topics, including the Lowland Clearances, the Scottish exodus to New Zealand and Scottish sectarianism (details at far right).

And when Prof Devine speaks, it's worth listening. In 2001 the Queen presented him with the Royal Gold Medal, Scotland's supreme academic accolade, he was given an OBE in 2005 for services to Scottish history, and he is regularly called upon to provide political and social commentary in the press and Scottish Parliament.

More recently, Prof Devine has been filling newspaper columns in his homeland because of the release of his latest book, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, which explores why so many Scots have gone abroad, sometimes driven by crisis, and sometimes from a desire to exploit opportunities.

Published in August (it was only released here last month), To the Ends of the Earth completes a trilogy that began with 1999 publication The Scottish Nation 1700-2000.

That examination of Scotland's domestic history became an international bestseller and was followed in 2003 by Scotland's Empire 1600-1815, a study of the nation's role in the development of the British Empire.

Speaking via telephone from Edinburgh last week, a few days before he packed his bags for New Zealand, Prof Devine said he was looking forward to visiting Dunedin and seeing the progress of the University of Otago's Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies.

Prof Devine established the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, (inaugurated by Scottish President Mary McAleese in 1999), a visit to which sparked former University of Otago vice-chancellor Prof Sir David Skegg's decision to establish the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies in Dunedin in 2009.

"There is a pretty close and intimate relationship between the centres. That's an obvious reason for visiting but I'm also interested in speaking to the general public. I find speaking to a lay, intelligent and aware audience more stimulating than an academic audience."

According to 2006 census figures, nearly 30,000 New Zealand residents were born in Scotland, with another 15,000 identifying themselves as Scottish. However, those numbers barely hint at the wider Scottish lineage, which is estimated to be about 50% of the population.

That cultural seepage, combined with an attempt to portray the interaction between Scottish migrants' new host countries and their homeland, is at the heart of To the Ends of the Earth.

"When I started on this venture in the late 1990s, it seemed ludicrous that the history of this country could be confined to what went on in the territory of Scotia," explains Prof Devine, who describes the study of Scotland's diaspora as still being in a stage of "intellectual infancy".

"That's not to say people haven't been writing about Scottish history; the question is whether they've been writing in a way that is statistically correct.

"Fundamentally, the main reason for writing the book is that I've become very aware of how small nations' history can become parochial so I've increasingly tended to indulge in what is called comparative history, to see what is distinctive - or not - about the Scottish experience.

"From the 13th and 14th centuries, Scotland has been exporting people and having relationships overseas on a huge scale. It literally has been global.

"I no longer think you can write the internal history of Scotland without taking into account what I call Greater Scotland: it ranges from Europe in the Medieval period, to Ulster, the Atlantic societies (Caribbean, Canada and then the United States), Australia and New Zealand, South Africa ... "

Prof Devine documents the "great migration" of 1825-1938, during which more than 2.3 million people left Scotland (not including another 600,000 who headed to England between 1841-1911). In light of Scotland's 1901 census, which put the country's population at 4.47 million, the figures are "staggering", he says.

"That particular period is stunning in two senses - the sheer scale of the migration, but also the unprecedented and difficult to explain fact that this was happening in the second-richest nation on the planet in the 19th century.

Scotland had migration levels the same as some of the poorest societies in Europe.

"That paradox of Scottish migration is something I thought would test the historian's skill to the limit."

Prof Devine estimates a third of those leaving Scotland between 1750 and 1850 came from the Highlands. That trend peaked in the late 1840s and early 1850s, driven in part by the potato blight that arrived in the Highlands in the autumn of 1846 as well as land clearance, peasant disappropriation and what some term "compulsory emigration" (some farming families were offered a bleak choice between outright eviction or paid passage across the Atlantic).

However, from the late 1850s to 1939, the ratio of Lowland to Highland migrants was 17 to one in favour of lowland migration.

"That is also represented in the New Zealand story," Prof Devine says.

"If you look at the heyday of Scottish to New Zealand migration, which is from the 1860s to World War 1, overwhelmingly Scottish migrants came from the Lowlands and rural areas.

"Let's not forget the vast majority of Scotland's population lived in the Lowlands, near the borders, and their story has been left out of history.

"By the 1850s, Scotland was the most industrialised nation on the planet, but the problem was there were big social inequalities. There were big constraints on social mobility.