Schottische Geschichte, Kapitel 18

In addition to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, countries referred to in Britain as "down under" profited enormously from the arrival of Scottish immigrants. Though a great deal of the influence their forbears had on the development of the country has been subsumed under the title British, in the 1990's, almost 14 percent of white Australians claim Scottish descent. For most of the 18th century, even after the Act of Union in 1707, so much of Scotland's national character, unique social structure (especially in the Highlands) and its economic regionalism survived intact.

By the time of the period of emigration, one hundred years later, there had been a great acceleration in Scotland's political, economic and social assimilation into that of Britain as a whole. Scottish attitudes towards the colonies, trade and emigration still differed remarkably from the English. The Scots highly deserve their place of honor in the roll of those who did so much to develop Australia and New Zealand into prosperous, modern states whose sobering influence has added so much to the world in general. As they did in Canada, the Scots had an enormous influence upon the lands they settled "down under". They filled positions of authority in just about every enterprise they put their minds to.

Scotland's loss was the colonies' gain. Their energy, imagination and sheer know-how guided them well in their new homes overseas. Following the peace of 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was a great increase in the population of the British Isles, so much, so that a feeling of alarm spread through government ranks. A growing population, which had before been regarded as one of the nation's strengths now found itself, looked on as something of a curse. There were simply too many people to feed (and control). Increasing pauperism and distress, along with monstrously bad harvests, massive unemployment and public debt severely strained the limited resources available. Therefore, the folks at Westminster sought drastic remedies. Perhaps the easiest remedy was emigration. In 1822 James Mills' article on "Colonization" in the "Encyclopedia Britannica" offered emigration as a solution for over-population.

It was eagerly read and avidly discussed by M.P.'s such as Robert Horton, who spent quite a few years of his life in the House of Commons trying to convince his colleagues of the merits of his emigration schemes. In the years 1823-25, attempts were made to put his plans into practice, especially because the Government wished to settle British people in new lands that could be contested by other nationalities. Though most of the emigrants chosen for government-assisted passages in these early years were Irish (one way to get rid of those troublesome Catholics) many Scots were attracted by the offers of free land overseas. Despite its reputation as a penal colony, in the very early years of the 19th century, Australia had begun to appear more and more as a practical proposition for settlement (only three percent of the deported convicts had been Scottish).

After the United States had won its independence, Australia slowly began to offer an alternative to the vast wildernesses of loyalist Canada. Attitudes in Parliament began to shift with the publication of Captain Alexander McConochie's recommendation that Britain should look to the Pacific Ocean to expand its commerce. He particularly advocated a settlement of New South Wales that would open up new markets as well as absorb what he termed Scotland's "superabundant population." McConochie's "A Summary View" of 1818 gave the people of power in Scotland, especially those with commercial interests, an awareness of the potential awaiting them in Australia. Although Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land) was the main destination of the first Scottish emigrants, many also went to New South Wales.

The populations of both colonies rose by one third during the 1820's. The advantages of both countries had been published in 1822 in the first book produced in Scotland to deal specifically with Australia, Captain James Dixon's "Narrative," an account of his voyages on the "Skeleton". "If a man must emigrate," he wrote, "Australia is the best quarter he can choose." Of more influence however, was the 1827 publication of Scotsman Peter Cunningham's "Two Years in New South Wales." He painted a picture that was irresistible to many - a free land with available unpaid convict labor, where a staple export, merino wool, was already developing rapidly. A wave of emigration from Scotland then began. Who could not have been enticed by reports in the "Edinburgh Courant" of a land with "the climate of Italy, the mountain scenery of Wales and the fertility of England"?

Later editions reporting "distress, moral misery and vice" were conveniently ignored. There were too many opportunities available in Van Dieman's Land. Notable early arrivals were the Imlay Brothers from Aberdeenshire who soon owned large properties and businesses. In 1839, Melbourne was described as a "Scotch Settlement." Pockets of Scotch communities were formed throughout the mainland. Among the first to settle in Queensland was a Scots family, the Archers. As Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, held a high reputation for its educational institutions, many of which specialized in medicine, it is no wonder that among the surgeon-superintendents of the early convict ships, Scots figured prominently. Many of these doctors applied for land grants and continued their professions as civilians.

Other groups to become prominent, in addition to retired army officers, small merchants and farmers, were surveyors and engineers, landowners, distillers of brewers (these were Scots, after all), shipbuilders and manufacturers. In the first half of the 19th century, the Scottish enterprises in Australia were not only promoted and financed in Scotland, but also were operated from Scottish headquarters (unlike the mining, pastoral and investment companies of the latter half of the century that were quartered in London). They were essentially Scottish companies energized and stimulated by emigration from Scotland. A rise of a new commercial class in the cities of Edinburgh, Leith and Aberdeen were anxious to develop strong trading links with the new colonies.

From them, a specifically Scottish contribution to colonial development came into being - the Joint Stock Investment Company. More than one historian has pointed out the "high quality" of the early Scots settlers. Their participation in Australian development coincided with the most vital stage in Scotland's own commercial and industrial growth in which the nation was emerging from an almost purely agricultural economy to one that was largely mercantile and industrial.

A large influx of poorer classes of Scottish settlers did not arrive until the bounty schemes at the end of the 1830's. Those who came earlier were much more suited to undergo risks, utilize resources and aspire to commercial enterprise on a large scale. In protest to the monopoly of three existent chartered banks in Scotland, a group of merchants and manufacturers got together in 1810 to found the Commercial Bank of Scotland. The country already had a reputation as one of Europe's leading banking centers.

The new bank marked the rise of the new business class of Edinburgh. They were the same group that formed the Australian Company of Edinburgh in 1822 to explore trading possibilities with Australia. The Company was forced to disband in the 1830's because Canada and Nova Scotia were attracting most of the Scottish settlers. There was a considerable lack of homeward cargoes from the still-undeveloped wheat and wool industries of Australia.

In the later 1830's, with bounty emigrants aplenty to fill the ships, and available cargoes of wool to be brought back, the company might have survived. It was simply a few years ahead of its time. Yet early on, the company's successful activities and strong links with Australia served to encourage many Scots to emigrate to that country to take a more active part in trading with their fellows back home. Perhaps the Australian Company of Edinburgh's most lasting achievement is summed up by Henry Widowson, a contemporary critic who saw the greatest benefit to the Colony as the encouragement of emigration of industrious artisans and their families from Scotland as settlers.

In addition, the publicity, which it provided for Australia, especially in southeast Scotland, coupled with the shipping facilities, it provided, helped to swell the flow of middle-class emigrants with useful skills and business experience in the 1820's. Many of those who undertook the long sea journey were from a middle-class or gentry background, traveling with their retainers. They played a significant part in the commercial enterprise of the country. In addition, and this point is often overlooked, Scottish interest in Australia was responsible for several important contributions including: the first regular shipping service between Britain and the colony; the first influx of settlers well-suited to meet the problems of the new environment, and the providing of the necessary loan funds to make pastoral development possible on a large scale.

The joint-stock companies of Aberdeen were to set the pattern, not only in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but also in London. A large-scale movement of emigration from Scotland began after 1832 just as the country had entered the most important phase of its industrial revolution. Neilson's revolutionary hot-blast techniques helped transform the Scottish iron industry, which took advantage of the ready supplies of fuel. There were extensive foreign markets available for cheap Scottish iron (priced about ten shillings a ton below its nearest rivals for about 40 years).

In the 1840's, nine-tenths of British iron exports were from Scotland. At home, cheap iron made rapid industrialization possible. A network of railroads began to link the mines, iron-works and factories to the ports. To the existing cotton and linen mills were added the newer industries of ship-building and boiler-making-all propelling Scotland along in a surge of commercial and industrial activity that split asunder the country's still largely agricultural society.

The leading iron works expanded their business into Australia; exports of Scottish iron and manufactured goods were matched by imports from the rapidly growing Australian woolen mills. Increased mutual trade, the rapid expansion of capital in the hands of Scottish investors and the population movement in Scotland had their inevitable effects upon emigration. The huge increase of population that accompanied industrial progress meant that no part of Scotland was now unaffected by the rush to emigrate. Social upheaval probably had as much to do with it as the availability of free or assisted passages to Australia after 1832. Economic setbacks in the late 1830's and early 1840's also contributed to the outward flow of emigrant ships from Scottish ports. A new class of emigrants streamed into the Colony, this time drawn from the near-destitute working class, aided by the Government's bounty system.

In 1831, Lord Gooderich initiated the system for assisted female emigration to New South Wales. This was expanded in 1835 when an additional scheme encouraged the emigration of skilled agricultural workers in addition to unmarried women and mechanics. In 1837, the number of Scots leaving for Australia began to match those leaving for North America. Many of those who left were Highlanders, encouraged through the direction of John Dunmore Lang, first Presbyterian minister in Sydney, New South Wales. His visit to Britain in 1836-7 encouraged the London deputation of the Highland relief committees to accelerate their activities. His important "Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales" was published in 1834, followed by the equally influential "Transportation and Colonization" three years later.

Another important Australian in the scheme was James Macarthur, who commended the Scots "religious disposition, good sense and orderly habits". In contrast to the Irish laborers, he claimed, the Scots Highlanders would be more likely to "furnish the description of families most urgently required in New South Wales." An August 1838 letter sent from a Scottish settler in Van Dieman's shows only too well the reasons that poor Highland families, already dispossessed in the mad rush to enclose lands to benefit their lairds, were taking their meager transportable belongings and head for the nearest port of embarkation:

"However his love of country, the man who prefers
a dear farm and a life of unrequited toil amid the bleak
cold mountains of Caledonia to the certain and almost
immediate prospects which this country holds out to him,
cannot be under the guidance of reason."

Such letters accomplished their mission. They were assisted by two books that were most complimentary of the conditions existing for settlers: Thomas Walker's "A Month in the Bush of Australia" and John Matheson's "Counsel for Emigrants", both widely distributed by their Edinburgh publishers. In March 1837, the good ship John Barry sailed from Dundee with a full complement of emigrants, mainly poor Highlanders, under the government-organized bounty system. It was followed by many more during the next few years. In June 1840, the Perfect sailed for Port Phillip.

Aboard was the Highland chief Macdonald of Glengarry, his family and entourage "the most wealthy emigrants we should suppose that ever left the Clyde" along with his cattle and herdsmen. Three months later, the John Cooper left for New South Wales with almost one hundred of "the most wealthy and respectable description, taking out an immense capital in money, besides livestock of valuable kinds." The economic crisis of 1841-2 ended the government bounty system. As Irish emigration was almost two-thirds of the total from the British Isles during the period in question, the importance of the Scottish contribution to so many areas of Australian life becomes even more marked. One outstanding example out of so many, is that of Sir James McCulloch, who left Scotland in 1853 to open a branch office in Melbourne for his mercantile firm and who became minister of trade and customs and treasurer in 1859 progressing to prime minister of Victoria in 1863. Other Scots became equally successful in New Zealand; Britain's other colony "down under".

It was another area chosen to alleviate Scotland's growing population in the early 19th century. In fact, if we discount the native Maori peoples, the most striking difference between the population of the British Isles and New Zealand is the great over-representation of Scots in the latter. In the mid-19th century, Scots made up a quarter of New Zealand's population. The Scots have been described as being to New Zealand what the Irish were to Australia. One historian has seen them as "the chief lieutenants of settlement" in these beautiful Pacific islands.

Though we have mentioned the huge number of Irish who emigrated to Australia (they will be discussed in later chapters of "The Celtic World"), it was New Zealand that drew the majority of Scots. In peak years, more than one third of all Scots emigrants went to New Zealand. At first, they clustered in Otago and its offshoot, Sutherland, in the South Island. Both places were half-Scottish in 1871. In conclusion, we can proudly boast that, in proportion to its population, financial strength and available resources, the contribution of the Scots to the commercial development of Australia and New Zealand was far greater than that of any other people of the British Isles.

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