WHAT a strange article you published on Monday from Donald Macinnes (Why aren’t emigrant Scots like the Irish or Chinese?). Mr Macinnes seems to be puzzled as to why the Scottish diaspora do not live in ghettoes or ethnically defined neighbourhoods and why, for example, there is a Chinatown in San Francisco but not a Scots Town. We are unclear about Mr Macinnes’s background in relation to the diaspora, but he clearly has a poor understanding of it.

Many ethnic or national minorities, such as Italians, Chinese or African-Americans, have often been forced to live in particular neighbourhoods because of racial discrimination and their resultant inability to live in other parts of cities. In America, the Irish suffered similar discrimination, because of their poverty and their Roman Catholic religion. Living in certain neighbourhoods was therefore a defence mechanism, so families could be close to each other, close to sources of community support and to places of worship.

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The Scots never suffered such discrimination. They were white, Protestant (mainly), spoke English and were usually well-educated, a result of the Scottish education system. It was therefore relatively easy for them to integrate into wider society in places like America and Canada and they often were highly successful. Many names are familiar to us – Andrew Carnegie (steel), David Dunbar Buick (cars), Allan Pinkerton (detective agency), Lord Strathcona (railroads), and John Muir (national parks). As a result, the US historian Charlotte Erickson was able to describe the Scots (and English) as “invisible immigrants”.

Of course, the Scots have their St Andrew Societies and Highland Games, but these are simply leisure activities reflecting the diaspora’s sense of their national identity. It is disappointing that Mr Macinnes is so dismissive of them. In our many years of work with the Scottish diaspora, we have found the diaspora to be forward-looking and highly knowledgeable about 21st-century Scotland, thanks in part to the internet and the relative cheapness of transatlantic flights, which encourages thousands to revisit the homeland every year. Networks like GlobalScot are important in assisting investment in the Scottish economy back home.

In April, the Scottish Government launched its Scottish Connections Framework, partly based on our own research, which aims to strengthen the links between the diaspora and the Scottish homeland. The misconceptions in Mr Macinnes’s article illustrate why the framework is so important and necessary.

Professor Murray Leith and Dr Duncan Sim
School of Education and Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland

READING the article by Donald MacInnes on the Scottish diaspora brought to mind a discussion I had with an elderly Canadian gentleman as I guided him through Burns Cottage some 10 years ago. He informed me that he was writing a thesis and the question to be answered was why in major cities around the world we find Chinese quarters, Indian quarters, French quarters etc but never Scottish quarters. His take was that historically the Scots were so well educated that they didn’t have to huddle together like sheep, they could make it on their own!

Hugh C Farrell
via email

TWO items in Monday’s National caught my attention. First, David Weinczok gives us the anecdote about the Papal delegate in Liddesdale asking “Are there no Christians here?”

Many years ago I came across the story of an English traveller caught out by night, coming to Lockerbie and finding every house locked and dark, calling out: “Is there no good Christian will give me shelter for the night?”, whereupon a woman stuck her head out of a window and replied “Na, we’re a’ Johnsons here.” The point of the story is less to do with the strength of family allegiance (although that might be involved) and more that a few miles away in Cumbria, Christian is a common enough family name. For example, Fletcher Christian of the Bounty mutiny.

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The other piece was Donald MacInnes’s “Why aren’t emigrant Scots like the Irish or Chinese?” From what I understand, Scots abroad had a knack of fitting in with the indigenous inhabitants. The Hudson’s Bay Company, for example, used Highlanders to trade with Native American communities, for their ability to develop good relations with the “natives” whom the British Empire authorities tended to regard with condescension if not outright contempt. But the pattern goes right back into the Middle Ages when Scots traders negotiated concessions in centres around northern Europe, in what’s now Germany and Poland for example, by getting on good terms with the local authorities.

I once saw it suggested that while Scots took advantage after the Union of trading opportunities around the British Empire, they had never needed to conquer or control territories to develop foreign trade – they had done that for centuries by mutual agreement. This may suggest one reason why Scots abroad are more likely to “fit in” where they have settled, rather than cling to their own communities abroad.

Robert Moffat
Penicuik