From Alba to Aotearoa: Profiling New Zealand's Scots Migrants, 1840-1920

Abstract

While New Zealand has been described as more Scottish than any other country beyond Scotland, and Scots consistently made up nearly 20 per cent of the immigrant population of New Zealand to 1920, as a group New Zealand's Scots migrants have remained relatively blurred. The distinctive national backgrounds of New Zealand's British migrants have seldom been recognised in general histories or in specialist studies of migration to the country, migrants having tended to be categorised as 'British' and 'Non-British', leading to what Akenson aptly described as the 'lumping of all white settlers into a spurious unity.' This thesis, conceived as part of a larger research project investigating the experiences and contributions of Scots in New Zealand, seeks to establish key characteristics of the Scottish migrants arriving between 1840 and 1920. Five core questions are addressed: 'from where in Scotland did they come?', 'who came?', 'when?', 'in what numbers?', and 'where did they settle?'. While previous studies have suggested partial answers to some of these questions, the present research offers a more full and detailed profile of New Zealand's Scots migrants than has previously been available. Critically, it takes the earlier findings further. Though the investigation has been based primarily upon statistical analysis of a genealogically-sourced database of 6,612 migrants, quantitative analysis has been supplemented by qualitative case studies. Comparison with a second set of data derived from death certificates has enabled a testing of the validity of genealogical data as a source for migration studies. In addition to the five central questions around which the thesis is structured, the study also addresses issues of internal migration within Scotland, emigration to other destinations prior to arrival in New Zealand, individual and generational occupational mobility, chain and cluster migration among Shetland migrants, and return migration.