"This book identifies some of the Scots who settled in France and its colonies in the Americas between 1550 and 1850. It also contains references to a number of Frenchmen found in contemporary Scotland." -- author [v].

During the 17th century, tens of thousands of Scots settled in Scandinavia, and a number of them would eventually become engaged as planters and merchants in the Danish colony of the Virgin Islands. Leaving no aspect of Scottish emigration to go unaddressed, David Dobson here identifies about 1,200 Scots who took up residence in Scandinavia and some of whose progeny made their way to the Americas.

Despite the fact that the Bremen passenger lists were destroyed during World War II, these fourteen lists survived because they had been reprinted in the obscure weekly newspaper from Rudolstadt, Thuringia, entitled the Allgemeine Auswanderungs-Zeitung. The emigrants, who are arranged alphabetically, are identified by place of origin and sometimes by the number of persons in the passenger's family or the names of traveling companions.

In the tradition of his earlier books on Dutch, Huguenot, and Polish connections to Scotland, Dr. David Dobson has now collected several thousand references that establish specific immigration connections between Scotland and the future country of Germany 1550-1850. Scottish links with Germany can be traced back to the medieval period. For example, on 11 October 1297, Andrew Moray and William Wallacq, as guardians of the Community of Scotland and leaders of the Army of the Kingdom of Scotland, wrote to the mayors and citizens of Lubeck and Hamburg thanking them for their assistance in resisting English domination and offering them safe access to Scottish ports. However, trade between them was relatively small-scale, the majority of Scots commerce being with Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, and the Netherlands. Consequently, the settlement of Scots merchants and their factors was minimal and limited to ports such as Hamburt, Bremen, and Lubeck.

By 1675 some Scots scholars, merchants, and Covenanters (Calvinists) were gravitating to Holland, Zealand, and Flanders, but the majority were soldiers fighting for the United Provinces for independence from the Spanish Hapsburgs and later France. Some of these Scots or their descendants came with the Dutch immigrants to America.

Mr. Dobson combed through a variety of sources to produce lists of Scots who settled in Poland, Russia, and the Baltic states. Arranged alphabetically, the entries furnish the individual's name with variants, a place of residence in Eastern Europe, the date of the record, and its source. Given the widely disparate character of the subject matter, one may also find a reference to the individual's place of origin in Scotland, occupation, relationships to other persons named (i.e., parent, spouse, offspring), membership in a fraternal organization, etc.