A new departure in Scottish and Irish migration studiesThe Scottish diasporic communities closest to home-those which are part of what we sometimes term the 'near Diaspora'-are those we know least about. Whilst an interest in the overseas Scottish diaspora has grown in recent years, Scots who chose to settle in other parts of the United Kingdom have been largely neglected. This book addresses this imbalance.Scots travelled freely around the industrial centres of northern Britain throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Belfast was one of the most important ports of call for thousands of Scots. The Scots played key roles in shaping Belfast society in the modern period: they were essential to its industrial development; they were at the centre of many cultural, philanthropic and religious initiatives and were welcomed by the host community accordingly.Yet despite their obvious significance, in staunchly Protestant, Unionist, and at times insular and ill at ease Belfast, individual Scots could be viewed with suspicion by their hosts, dismissed as 'strangers' and cast in the role of interfering outsiders.Key FeaturesThe only book-length scholarly study of the Scots in modern Ireland.Brings to light the fundamental importance of Scottish migration to Belfast society during the nineteenth century.Advances our knowledge and understanding of Scotland's 'near diaspora.'Highlights areas of tension in Ulster-Scottish relations during the Home Rule era.Puts forward a new agenda for a better understanding of British in-migration to Ireland in the modern period.

This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city's greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast's civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: 'Linenopolis' was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.

In Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast, Farrell analyzes the career of “political parson” Thomas Drew (1800-70), creator of one of the largest Church of Ireland congregations on the island and leading figure in the Loyal Orange Order. Farrell demonstrates how Drew’s success stemmed from an adaptive combination of his fierce anti-Catholicism and populist Protestant politics, the creation of social and spiritual outreach programs that placed Christ Church at the center of west Belfast life, and the rapid growth of the northern capital. At its core, the book highlights the synthetic nature of Drew’s appeal to a vital cross-class community of Belfast Protestant men and women, a fact that underlines both the success of his ministry and the long-term durability of sectarian lines of division in the city and province. The dynamics Farrell discusses were also not confined to Ireland, and one of the book’s central features is the close attention paid to the ways that developments in Belfast were linked to broader Atlantic and imperial contexts. Based on a wide array of new and underutilized archival sources, Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast is the first detailed examination of not only Thomas Drew, but also the relationships between anti-Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, and populist politics in early Victorian Belfast.

Addressing questions about what it means to be ‘British’ or ‘Irish’ in the twenty-first century, this book focuses its attention on twentieth-century Northern Ireland and demonstrates how the fragmented and disparate nature of national identity shaped and continues to shape responses to social issues such as immigration. Immigrants moved to Northern Ireland in their thousands during the twentieth century, continuing to do so even during three decades of the Troubles, a violent and bloody conflict that cost over 3,600 lives. Foregrounding the everyday lived experiences of settlers in this region, this ground-breaking book comparatively examines the perspectives of Italian, Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese migrants in Northern Ireland, outlining the specific challenges of migrating to this small, intensely divided part of the UK. The book explores whether it was possible for migrants and minorities to remain ‘neutral’ within an intensely politicised society and how internal divisions affected the identity and belonging of later generations. An analysis of diversity and immigration within this divided society enhances our understanding of the forces that can shape conceptions of national insiders and outsiders - not just in the UK and Ireland - but across the world. It provokes and addresses a range of questions about how conceptions of nationality, race, culture and ethnicity have intersected to shape attitudes towards migrants. In doing so, the book invites scholars to embrace a more diverse, ‘four-nation’ approach to UK immigration studies, making it an essential read for all those interested in the history of migration in the UK.

Scotland and the French Revolutionary War, 1792-1802 aims to provide an up-dated discussion of the nature and extent of Scottish support for the British state in the 1790s.

Presents major new research on gender in the Scottish EnlightenmentWhat role did gender play in the Scottish Enlightenment? Combining intellectual and cultural history, this book explores how men and women experienced the Scottish Enlightenment. It examines Scotland in a European context, investigating ideologies of gender and cultural practices among the urban elites of Scotland in the 18th century.The book provides an in-depth analysis of men's construction and performance of masculinity in intellectual clubs, taverns and through the violent ritual of the duel. Women are important actors in this story, and the book presents an analysis of women's contribution to Scottish Enlightenment culture, and it asks why there were no Scottish bluestockings.

Clubbing Together offers the first global study of Scottish ethnic associationalism, exploring transnationally the evolution and role of Scottish clubs and societies.

Masculinities on Clydeside explores the experiences of civilian men on Clydeside during the war, using oral history interviews as a means to explore subjectivity and arguing for continuous personal agency through major historical changes. While men in reserved occupations are understood as extensively influenced by 'imagined' discourses, often resulting in feelings of guilt and emasculation, their subjectivities were nonetheless ultimately rooted in their 'lived' and immediate local vicinities, and the people and places of their everyday lives. This ultimate relevance of lived existence and the everyday also meant that while wartime relations between men and women were clearly shaped by a range of gender discourses and continually renegotiated, gender boundaries were never fixed or truly separate.The analysis looks at wider subjectivities, encompassing national and political identities, class consciousness, religious subjectivities and social activities, as well as examining women's experiences of working in reserved occupations in wartime and their interactions with civilian men.

The third duke of Buccleuch (17461812) presided over the management of one of Britain's largest landed estates during a period of profound agrarian, social and political change. Tutored by the philosopher Adam Smith, the duke was also a leading patron of the Scottish Enlightenment, lauded by the Edinburgh literati as an exemplar of patriotic nobility and civic virtue, while his alliance with Henry Dundas dominated Scottish politics for almost 40 years. Combining the approaches of intellectual, economic and agrarian history, this book examines the life and career of the third duke, focusing in particular on his relationship with Adam Smith and the improvement of his vast Border estates, assessing the influence of Enlightenment thought on agricultural revolution. In its exploration of the cultural as well as the economic roots of Improvement and in its assessment of a previously unappreciated aspect of Smith's career, this book has appeal for both specialist scholars and general readers interested in the Scottish Enlightenment and the culture of Improvement in 18th-century Scotland.

Belfast Charitable Society was established in 1752 with the purpose of raising funds to build a poorhouse and hospital for the poor of Belfast; twenty years later, the foundation stone of the Poorhouse was laid. From here the Society would go on to assume increasing responsibility for a range of matters relating to health, welfare and public order, and its members would play a key part in the civic life of Belfast. It continues to provide vital social services to this day and its Poorhouse, now Clifton House, is still one of the finest buildings in the city. During the century following the establishment of the Society, Belfast was transformed from a relatively small mercantile town into a major industrial city, a transformation that was accompanied by political upheaval and the major societal challenges associated with rapid industrialisation and urban growth. Taking as its focus the work of the Society, the global connections that influenced its thinking and the societal issues it sought to address, this fascinating volume provides valuable insights into the wider social, economic and political life of the nineteenth-century Irish town of which the Society became such an iconic part.