The contribution Tom Devine has made to the study of Scottish history is unequaled. He has published on a wide range of topics during his long career, but it is perhaps for his bestselling trilogy, Scotland's Empire (2003), The Scottish Nation (2006), and To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora (2011) that he is best known. He has made a particular focus of the Scottish diaspora, establishing the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh, so it is no surprise that Global Migrations: The Scottish Diaspora since 1600, edited by Angela McCarthy and John M. MacKenzie—a tribute to his work—should have a diaspora focus.

Interest in the diaspora is growing, not least at the Scottish governmental level; consequently, research on aspects of the diaspora has engaged academics in history, geography, public policy, social science, and business studies. This volume has an unashamedly historical focus, and all the contributors are historians to a greater or lesser degree. Still, the volume will interest a broad range of readers with its coverage of contemporary issues, from the activities of “affinity Scots” in Europe to roots tourism and homecomings. Impressively, the contributors are based at institutions across the globe, including Scotland itself, England, Ireland, mainland Europe, North America, and Australasia.

The chapters reflect the variety of contributors. Although some writers in the past have sought to portray the Scots as a “victim” diaspora, escaping from the aftermath of Culloden or the Highland Clearances, this is not a theme which characterizes this volume. Indeed, both Andrew Mackillop and David Alston, in their respective chapters, suggest that many Scots adopted a measured “profit and loss” approach to migration, weighing up the likely gains and losses of leaving Scotland, and the prospects at home and abroad. For Scotland itself, the loss of population might be balanced by the boost to trade and the flow of capital back to the homeland.

Across chapters, a strong focus emerges on the Scots as a hardheaded trading or business diaspora, with Iain Watson exploring the Scots traders of Hong Kong and New Zealand and coeditor Angela McCarthy researching the importance of the Scots in developing the tea plantations of Ceylon. There is also an interesting focus on the ways in which Scots migrants engaged with indigenous peoples across the globe. Thus, Colin Calloway describes the relationships (often marital) between Scots and Native Americans in the southern United States, while Ann Curthoys writes of the interactions between Scots settlers and native Aboriginals in eastern Australia in the nineteenth century. There is also a particularly interesting chapter by MacKenzie in which he discusses the different Scottish diasporas within Africa. As he points out, we are perhaps used to thinking about Scottish settlement in countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where white settlers (including Scots) overran indigenous societies. But in Africa, Scots were moving into black societies and worked alongside Africans and did not overwhelm them. Indeed, many Africans traveled to Scotland to study, so a more reciprocal relationship developed.

The book repeatedly references the associational culture that has developed within the Scottish diaspora and the imagery that accompanies it. Watson describes the importance of Scottish associations in Hong Kong, with individuals selecting their identity from a “buffet of what they believe to be intrinsically Scottish characteristics” (191). Tartan, of course, is important and adopted enthusiastically not only by the ladies' pipe bands described in Erin Grant's chapter but also by the “affinity Scots” of Europe. As David Hesse discusses in his contribution, many Europeans have adopted a form of Scottish identity, despite having little or no Scottish connection—not least because their own cultures may have been tainted by association with fascism. A Scottish identity is somehow seen as being perhaps nobler and more exciting, as well as a “safer playground” (230).

As McCarthy and MacKenzie note in their introduction, they want the book to examine the impact of the diaspora on the homeland, and Tawny Paul's chapter explores the growing phenomenon of “roots tourism,” relying in particular on the experiences of international students in Scotland. Although based in Edinburgh, their vision of Scotland was really a Highland one, and so, as Paul points out, the image and sense of Scotland which people have is often inventive and dynamic. There are, as he points out, multiple ways of imagining and belonging to the homeland.

The book includes a controversial contribution from David Fitzpatrick, in which he casts doubt on whether the Scottish diaspora exists as a distinct entity in the first place. He asks, among other things, if Scottish emigration was exceptional, if emigrants took with them a shared culture, and if they functioned as an ethnic group where they settled. Those of us who have undertaken research with the Scottish diaspora and who have attended Scottish diaspora events would suggest that the Scots abroad are indeed very distinctive, and McCarthy and MacKenzie, in their introduction, would seem to concur. They argue that Fitzpatrick misses core aspects of diaspora emerging from much of the research in this area and that the other chapters in this volume themselves would seem to refute Fitzpatrick's arguments. Nevertheless, if he stimulates further debate and research, he may have achieved his aim.

In sum, this is an important book. It contains a wealth of information for diaspora scholars, often covering less-known aspects of Scottish emigration and less-well-researched emigrant destinations. It reflects the emerging body of scholarship on Scottish diaspora matters, which Tom Devine himself has helped to stimulate. As Eric Richards so appropriately puts it in the book's afterword, “wherever one treads, Tom Devine has been before and has left his indelible mark” (278).