Scottish Americans

Lowland Scots

There were close ties between England and the Scottish Lowlands from the high middle ages onward, as evident in the Scots language, derived largely from Middle English. The adoption of Protestantism (1560), the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England (1603), and the Act of Union (1707) reinforced such connections. Scottish national institutions were based in the Lowlands and technically remained independent even after the Act of Union, but increasingly accommodated English norms. By the late 17th century, most Lowland parishes were equipped with public schools that provided universal access to education. A broad segment of Lowland society achieved high levels of literacy and education, training that qualified them well for prominent positions in the United Kingdom and lucrative opportunities in its expanding overseas empire.

Lowlanders established many early American institutions, from religion to education: a Scottish bishop conferred the apostolic succession on the Protestant Episcopal Church in America; many [Page 1894]churches, especially Presbyterian, were founded and served by Scottish ministers; many colleges, such as Princeton and the College of William and Mary, were founded or initially presided over by Lowland intellectuals; and so on. Despite being capable of establishing institutions, they generally did not secure cultural content within them but deferred to Anglocentric standards.

Highland Scots

Lowlanders typically perceived Highlanders as primitive and inferior to themselves. The government dismantled or provoked the decline of formal Gaelic institutions during the 17th century, and much of the rest were swept away after the defeat of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. The Gaelic world was now fully circumscribed by Anglocentric institutions that monopolized all means of social and economic advancement. Kinship networks and informal social practices remained, but they lacked elite leadership and were not sufficiently developed to withstand assimilationist policies.

Highland communities began to migrate in the 1730s, peaking at the onset of the American Revolution. After chieftains were replaced with, or simply turned into, landlords and military recruiters, estranged from and exploiting their erstwhile kinsmen, emigration was one of the only forms of protest available to Highland communities. Sporadic bursts of communal migration from Scotland continued into the 1840s, but after 1776, most migration was redirected to Canada and Australia. By the 1860s, immigrants from Gaelic-speaking communities in Canada began flowing into the booming cities of the north and west. The majority of Highland immigrants were monolingual Gaelic speakers into the 1880s; even into the mid-20th century, some immigrants spoke Gaelic far better than English.

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