William Van Vugt follows up his successful study of British immigration into mid-nineteenth-century America (Britain to America, University of Illinois Press, 1999) with a more narrowly focussed investigation, albeit over an extended period. British Buckeyes charts the contribution made by British immigrants to Ohio's development from its pioneer origins in the mid-eighteenth century to its emergence as a mature society at the beginning of the twentieth. Van Vugt remains an unashamed anglophile; we are, he notes, a “fascinating people” (ix). The narrative thus becomes as much celebration as explanation. From the earliest settlement the British were the dominant presence in Ohio, the state's history largely inseparable from that of the thousands of English, Welsh and Scots migrants lured to the American Mid-west by the abundance of land. Although Ohio's experience is similar to that of its neighbours, Van Vugt teases out enough distinctive aspects to make the exercise worthwhile. In particular, his admirable use of local histories reveals the “huge representation” (50) among Ohio's immigrants from Britain's high-wage industrial counties, including Staffordshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Durham and Nottinghamshire, as well as London. Ohio was also unusual on account of the numbers of Welsh migrants it attracted. Whereas the majority of English incomers dispersed easily into the host society whose language and culture they shared and had done so much to mould, the Welsh inclined to separatism, “their intense religiosity” (78) causing them to assimilate more slowly than their English and Scots counterparts. Welsh immigration into Ohio was “highly place-specific” (81) in terms of both origin and destination. In the second half of the study Van Vugt describes the individual contributions made by the British to the fields of agriculture, crafts and industry, religion and reform and, finally, the professions, arts and civil service. The British brought energy and ambition but also skill and experience which produced outstanding results when applied to Ohio's abundant natural resources. The British “transfer of technology and technique” (143) was conspicuously displayed in, for example, the East Liverpool pottery industry and in coal mining. Overall, Van Vugt's story is one of rapid and successful assimilation and influence; only occasionally does his commemorative tone falter as when he notes that the reason British immigrants were quickly appointed as mine bosses “was because they were experienced at wringing more work out of miners at less cost” (147).