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Colonists from Scotland: emigration to North America, 1707-1783
By Ian Charles Cargill Graham (1956) (pdf)


Preface

STUDENTS of immigration to the United States have long regretted the lack of a reliable survey of British settlement in North America, or, indeed, of the detailed studies upon which such a survey might be based. Interest in the social and economic history of British migration has usually been subordinated to genealogical considerations. The older accounts tend to be narrative and local in emphasis rather than interpretive and general.

This book attempts to give a wider perspective and to reach some general conclusions about a small part of that large field of study. At first I had hoped to look into the influence of Scottish thought upon pre-Revolutionary America. But I was soon forced to recognize that such a task would be severely inhibited by the absence of a systematic treatment of Scots settlement in the colonies. The problem of Scottish emigration and settlement was finally isolated and attacked for its own sake as a result of the helpful suggestions of Professor Richard Hofstadter.

Thanks are due to many for assistance in research and in the preparation of the manuscript. Professor Frederick C. Dietz of the University of Illinois enabled me to concentrate my whole attention upon the work by granting me the Kendric C. Babcock Fellowship in history for the session 1953-1954. I am grateful for guidance in research to Professor Raymond P. Stearns. I owe much to the thoughtful teaching and thorough methods of Professors Arthur E. Bestor and Richard N. Current.

I wish to express my thanks to the staffs of the following institutions: the University of Illinois Library, the National Archives, the New York Public Library, the Virginia State Library, the Library of William and Mary College, and the Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Finally, I must thank an old friend, Herbert Sterrett of the art department of the University of Illinois Press, for drawing the map that appears as the frontispiece of this book.

The manuscript has been read by Professor Stearns at various stages of its preparation and by the Committee on the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. These friendly critics have saved me from many pitfalls.

A work such as this, which touches on a wide variety of social and economic problems, is sure to contain statements that will be questioned. I hope that the discussion of these questions will prove sufficiently interesting to compensate in some measure for whatever errors remain.

Ian C. C. Graham New York City
January 16, 1956

You can read this book on the Internet Archive


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