To the Ends of the Earth by T.M. Devine

When Scotland’s rugby team landed in Invercargill for the World Cup, they were greeted by a piper in full Highland fig and a cheering crowd of more than 500 New Zealanders, bedecked in tartan and waving St Andrew flags. The significance of both welcome and dress went beyond sport or nationality. Two important currents of modern life were at work, the ancient ability of the British empire to create societies in its own image, and the new power of the heritage industry to invent the past. Together they have made it necessary to update the old formula, ‘history is written by the winners,’ with the qualification, ‘but heritage is created by the losers’.

As Professor Devine demonstrates in his sharply written history of the overseas migration of the Scots, the unmistakable winners were the Presbyterians, who as slavers, financiers, shippers and industrialists surfed the imperialist wave further and more profitably than any other cultural group in the United Kingdom.