Author: Prof. Eric Richards
Exodus is one of the great themes in modern Highland history – dispersal of the Highlanders from their ancestral homelands across the globe. By the mid 19th century Highlanders were to be found in every part of the ‘Anglosphere’- not only in the south of Scotland and England, but also in India, North America and the Antipodes. There were well-known concentrations of Highlanders in eastern Canada (in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, and Prince Edward Island); there were other groups in the Carolinas, in New York state, and in Upper Canada, in Red River and beyond. There were fascinating pockets of Highlanders in the Falkland Islands and even in continental Europe, sometimes employed as navvies. There were special and large concentrations in the British armies. In Australasia – the particular focus of this paper - there were also identifiable groups of Highlanders – in New England, in the south-east of South Australia, in Gippsland and the Western District of Victoria, a few in Western Australia and some in tropical Queensland. And, of course, in New Zealand they flourished in several places but most famously at Waipu in the North Island. There was a sense of dispersion as well as of concentration, which complicates the story. Whether Highlanders abroad sustained especially cohesive identities, or whether they punched above or below their weight in their new destinations, are difficult questions to answer.
