|
1 SCOTLAND AND IRELAND BEFORE 1798
Geography
The geographical closeness of the north of Ireland - the old province of Ulster - and the west of Scotland has encouraged travel across the narrow strait of water between them for a very long time, longer than written history. Land, politics, religion, military duties, trade and family were principal among the motivations that have encouraged the inhabitants on both sides to visit, invade, emigrate to, settle in, farm in, or flee to either shore. Where two or more of these motivations combined, the outcome could be, and has been, potent and, on occasion, catastrophic.
The Plantations
In recent history, the seventeenth century forced Plantation of Calvinist, Covenanting Scots among the Gaelic, Catholic Irish by the government of Great Britain and Ireland had serious and violent repercussions whose effects we are still experiencing four hundred years later. The contemporary and continuing, heated dispute about whether a northern Irish port should be referred to as 'Derry' or 'Londonderry' display battle lines between the two communities laid down at that time. Which choice a person makes, 'Derry' or 'Londonderry' indicates, to an apt listener, that person's affiliations not only in matters Irish but in religion, core values, and perception of the passage of history. The Wars of the 17th century in Great Britain, with their Jacobite and anti-Jacobite contenders, either linked or divided the people of Scotland and Ireland in an intricate web of hostility or friendship formed by their history, their language, their religious beliefs, their present politics and their future ambitions and ideals.
Dissenter Education
The Ulster Presbyterians in Ireland found themselves at odds not only with Roman Catholicism but also with the Established or Anglican Church. To the latter, they were dissenters in matters of doctrine as well as radical in politics. As a consequence, Ulster candidates wishing to study for the ministry, who could not take the oath required for entry to Irish Universities, usually set sail for Scotland, where the Established Church of Scotland was presbyterian, to seek a university education there. The University of Glasgow was the most favoured of the universities. Thus in the eighteenth century, many influential and educated Ulstermen recognised Scotland as their alma mater in education. Nor was the movement only one way: an Ulsterman, a native of County Down, called Francis Hutcheson became professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1729. Among his distinguished pupils was the Scots born economist Adam Smith. Thus it came about that serious, high-minded, contemporary academic debates and controversies were being held simultaneously on both sides of the Irish Sea. Ireland's academic link with Scotland and especially with the University of Glasgow continued to grow throughout the eighteenth century, producing a harvest of leaders in the 1798 Rebellion; leaders, for example, of the calibre of William Steel Dickson. Edinburgh University was pre-eminent in medical education. In the United Irishmen movement of the 1790s two of the most distinguished reformers, William Drennan and Thomas Addis Emmet, received their medical degree from Edinburgh.
Seasonal migration
There are many who think that Irish migration to Great Britain began with the Great Famine in the 1840s. In fact there was a very long tradition of the migration of seasonal workers to Scotland, especially to the south west of Scotland. The muscle and labour that the 19th century 'navvies' supplied to British industry, were complemented in the 18th century and earlier by that of agricultural workers who supplemented the available labour in Scots counties. Travel by water was often easier than travel by road in earlier centuries, so using Irish rather than Scots labour was a rational, economic move. Irish men supplemented their earnings from their own small cultivable areas with what they could earn in the harvests of other larger farmers. The actual numbers involved in this seasonal migration was related to the rise and fall of population in each country, and the level of wages that could be expected in such conditions. There were several sea crossings between Ireland and Scotland. One of the most important was that between Donaghadee and Portpatrick. Many an Irish worker travelled this route, sometimes with four hundred cattle for company.
New Opportunities
During the 1790s in Scotland, profound changes were taking place in Scottish industry. Steam power began to replace water power in cotton mills, and this encouraged a move to town sites, heralding a need for a workforce made up of all age groups and genders, any worker, in short, that could tolerate the new factory conditions. Irish immigrants, sailing to Scotland at this time in record numbers, seemed to be just such a group. They accepted working conditions that many native Scots considered to be beneath their dignity. The new cotton mills were constructed in and around Paisley and Glasgow, and consequently this was where the earliest concentrations of Irish communities were to be found.
2 Scotland and Ireland and the events of 1798
3 Scotland and Ireland after 1798
|