A Global Force: War, Identities and Scotland's Diaspora

About the Book

This volume emerged from an international research colloquium jointly organised by National Museums Scotland and the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, University of Edinburgh, funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Historians and museum curators from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were invited to join with their Scottish counterparts to consider the functioning, and the meaning, of 'military Scottishness' in different Commonwealth countries and in Britain from the late Victorian period to the present day, with a particular focus on the impact of the First World War. Another key objective was to throw light on the 'hidden' culture of social networking which potentially operated behind local regiments and military units amongst Scotland's global diaspora.
This edited collection provides a comparative overview of the nineteenth century emergence of military Scottishness and explores how the construction and performance of Scottish military identity has evolved in different Commonwealth countries over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, it looks at the ways in which Scottish volunteer regiments in Commonwealth countries variously sought to draw upon, align themselves with or, at certain key moments, redefine the assertions of martial identity which Highland regiments represented.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgements; Foreword,Thomas M Devine; Introduction: A Global Force: War, Identities and Scotland’s Diaspora, David Forsyth and Wendy Ugolini; Part 1; 1. Military Scotland in the age of proto-globalisation, c.1690 to c.1815, Andrew Mackillop; 2. Forging Nationhood: Scottish imperial identity and the construction of nationhood in the Dominions, 1880-1914, Edward Spiers; 3. The Scottish Soldier and Scotland 1914-1918, Hew Strachan; Part 2; 4. Performing Scottishness in England: forming and dressing the London Scottish Volunteer Rifles; Stuart Allan; 5. Canada, Military Scottishness, and the First World War, Jeff Noakes; 6. “A military fervour akin to religious fanaticism”: Scottish military identity in the Australian Imperial Force, Craig Tibbitts; 7. South Africa and Scotland in the First World War, Jonathan Hyslop; 8. Ngāti Tūmatauenga and the Kilties: New Zealand’s ethnic military Traditions, Seán Brosnahan; 9. Scottish Ethnic Associationalism, Military Identity and Diaspora Connections in the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries, Tanja Bueltmann; Notes on Contributors, Notes on Contributors.

About the Author :
David Forsyth is a Principal Curator in the Scottish History and Archaeology Department, at National Museums Scotland. Along with Wendy Ugolini he has acted as Principal Investigator on the Royal Society of Edinburgh/Scottish Government Research Workshop of which this jointly-edited volume is the final output. In 2014 he co-curated the exhibition Common Cause: Commonwealth Scots and the Great War at the National Museum of Scotland, also co-authoring the book of the same name. Wendy Ugolini is a lecturer in British History at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in the role of war in identity formation and has published on ethnicities in Second World War Britain and diasporic military Scottishness. Her current research focuses on expressions of Welshness in England during the two world wars. She has been awarded the Ratcliff Prize (2009) and the RHS Gladstone History Book Prize (2012). She is the author of Experiencing War as the 'enemy other': Italian Scottish Experience in World War II in the Cultural History of Modern War series ( 2011).