Clubbing Together: Ethnicity, Civility and Formal Sociability in the Scottish Diaspora to 1930

Scottish emigrants carried a rich associational culture with them to the new worlds in which they settled, often ‘clubbing together’ along lines of ethnicity shortly after first foot fall. Yet while a crucial element of community life post-migration, no one has yet problematized Scottish associations, such as St Andrew’s societies or Burns clubs, as a series of transnational connections that were deeply rooted in the civic life of their respective communities. This book provides the first global study to capture the wider relevance of the Scots’ associational culture, arguing that associations and formal sociability are a key to explaining how migrants negotiated their ethnicity in the diaspora and connected to social structures in diverse settlements. Moving beyond the traditional nineteenth-century settler dominions, the book offers a unique comparative focus, bringing together the near Scottish diaspora in England and Ireland with that in North America, Africa, and Australasia to assess the evolution of Scottish ethnic associations, as well as their diverse roles as sites of memory and expressions of civility. The book promotes understanding not only of Scottish ethnicity overseas, but also of how different types of ethnic associational activism made diaspora tangible.