Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora: Leaving the Cold Country

TY - BOOK

T1 - Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora

T2 - Leaving the Cold Country

AU - Morton, Graeme

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Graeme Morton.

PY - 2020/10/29

Y1 - 2020/10/29

N2 - Why did large numbers of Scots leave a temperate climate to live permanently in parts of the world where greater temperature extreme was the norm? The long nineteenth century was a period consistently cooler than now, and Scotland remains the coldest of the British nations. Nineteenth-century meteorologists turned to environmental determinism to explain the persistence of agricultural shortage and to identify the atmospheric conditions that exacerbated the incidence of death and disease in the towns. In these cases, the logic of emigration and the benefits of an alternative climate were compelling. Emigration agents portrayed their favoured climate in order to pull migrants in their direction. The climate reasons, pressures and incentives that resulted in the movement of people have been neither straightforward nor uniform. There are known structural features that contextualize the migration experience, chief among them being economic and demographic factors. By building on the work of historical climatologists, and the availability of long-run climate data, for the first time the emigration history of Scotland is examined through the lens of the nation’s climate. In significant per capita numbers, the Scots left the cold country behind; yet the ‘homeland’ remained an unbreakable connection for the diaspora.

AB - Why did large numbers of Scots leave a temperate climate to live permanently in parts of the world where greater temperature extreme was the norm? The long nineteenth century was a period consistently cooler than now, and Scotland remains the coldest of the British nations. Nineteenth-century meteorologists turned to environmental determinism to explain the persistence of agricultural shortage and to identify the atmospheric conditions that exacerbated the incidence of death and disease in the towns. In these cases, the logic of emigration and the benefits of an alternative climate were compelling. Emigration agents portrayed their favoured climate in order to pull migrants in their direction. The climate reasons, pressures and incentives that resulted in the movement of people have been neither straightforward nor uniform. There are known structural features that contextualize the migration experience, chief among them being economic and demographic factors. By building on the work of historical climatologists, and the availability of long-run climate data, for the first time the emigration history of Scotland is examined through the lens of the nation’s climate. In significant per capita numbers, the Scots left the cold country behind; yet the ‘homeland’ remained an unbreakable connection for the diaspora.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85091546538

U2 - 10.4324/9780429329500

DO - 10.4324/9780429329500

M3 - Book

AN - SCOPUS:85091546538

SN - 9780367350642

T3 - Routledge Studies in Modern British History

BT - Weather, Migration and the Scottish Diaspora

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -