Tuesday, 29 April 2008
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Scots descendants trace their roots
Priscilla Jiao:
For a nation of five million people, it’s no secret that the Scots do seem to like to get around.
“There are about 40 million people worldwide who share a Scottish ancestry,” wrote Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland, for Global Friends of Scotland. He manages the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), a national online database of births, deaths and marriages where people can buy access to the records’ indexes and trace their roots through their website. “People have bought 277,000 accesses to the site over the last year.”
About 16 percent of their regular 120,000 users not surprisingly hail from the USA, 13 percent from Australia and New Zealand and 9 percent from Canada. These remain the top destinations for Scots emigrants.
Craig Cockburn, a blogger, wrote: “The Scots were looked down upon by the English, Dutch and Germans, who saw them as being less civilized, orderly and less interested in bettering themselves materially through hard work. However, the Scots immigrants quickly disproved the stereotypical views of the English and other colonists by becoming enormously successful in the New World.”
For those who like to travel or know their football, there's barely a corner of the globe that doesn't seem to contain some historic Caledonian connection. Now the long lost descendants of those bold travellers appear to be getting more and more curious about their ancestry. What emerges from their search for their roots is a complex picture with Scots acting as both imperialist oppressor and victim: from the merchant adventurers and British military colonisers to the forced depopulation of the Scottish Highlands throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries. It’s clear that the Scots emigrated across the world for a variety of complex reasons, not always of their own volition.
“Personally, I blame the weather,” said Andrew McEwen, whose great great grandfather joined up as an engineer for British army campaigns in Egypt. McEwen describes himself as British but has been investigating his roots on the site. He grew up in the naval port of Plymouth and now lives in Beijing, China.
The descendants of Scottish emigrants often seem to have got oddly homesick, naming their new homes after ancient Scottish places. And nowadays American couples enjoy donning a kilt at a popular Scottish-themed wedding. The tartan, the kilt and the bagpipes have come to symbolize Scottish culture at Celtic festivals celebrated across the world.
“I wonder what our ancestors would make of it all,” said McEwen.
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