Millions of Scots have left their homeland during the last 400 years. Until now, they have been written about in general terms. Scottish Exodus breaks new ground by taking particular emigrants, drawn from the once-powerful Clan MacLeod, and discovering what happened to them and their families. These people became, among other things, French aristocrats, Polish resistance fighters, Texan ranchers, New Zealand shepherds, Australian goldminers, Aboriginal and African-American activists, Canadian mounted policemen and Confederate rebels. One nineteenth-century MacLeod even went so far as to swap his Gaelic for Arabic and his Christianity for Islam before settling down comfortably in Cairo.
This gripping account of Scotland's worldwide diaspora is based on unpublished documents, letters and family histories. It is also based on the author's travels in the company of today's MacLeods - some of them still in Scotland, others further afield.
Scottish Exodus is a tale of disastrous voyages, famine and dispossession, the hazards of pioneering on faraway frontiers. But it is also the moving story of how people separated from Scotland by hundreds of years and thousands of miles continue to identify with the small country where their journeyings began.
- ISBN10 1845961161
- ISBN13 9781845961169
- Publish Date 2 August 2007 (first published 8 September 2005)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 6 August 2016
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Transworld Publishers Ltd
- Imprint Mainstream Publishing
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 416
- Language English