Emigration in Scotland

Push and pull factors?

1. Opportunities = PULL

• Through emigration a landless peasant in Scotland became an independent settler.
• With the union of 1707, Scottish people had access to the British colonies and often with promises of land they were involved in schemes in the tobacco or plantaton industry.
• Usaully they payed for their travel, but there were also incentives and schemes to assist travel - with the transport revolution, while travel did not become cheaper, it certainly became quicker - in 1850 it took 6 weeks to sail to the Americas, by 1914 it took one week - more appealing.
• The lures of gold and jobs in industries in Australia and New Zealand particalrly was very attractive.
• However, there is a picture usually painted of people escaping poverty and unemployment in the search of opportunity - not neccessarily true - one contemporary observer commented that those sailing from the north of scotland were not the ones least able to susbsist themselves - this is true as many doctors, mercahnts and wealthy farmers also left in search of opportunities abroad.

2. Clearance/conditions = PUSH

• Existing historiography paints a picutre of people escaping unemployment, pressures on land and bleak, grim conditions int he…