Between 1735 and 1748 hundreds of young men and their families emigrated from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia coast to settle and protect the new British colony. These men were recruited by the trustees of the colony and military governor James Oglethorpe, who wanted settlers who were accustomed to hardship, militant in nature, and willing to become frontier farmer-soldiers. In this respect, the Highlanders fit the bill perfectly through training and tradition. Recruiting and settling the Scottish Highlanders as the first line of defense on the southern frontier in Georgia was an important decision on the part of the trustees and crucial for the survival of the colony, but this portion of Georgia's history has been sadly neglected until now. By focusing on the Scots themselves, Anthony W. Parker explains what factors motivated the Highlanders to leave their native glens of Scotland for the pine barrens of Georgia and attempts to account for the reasons their cultural distinctiveness and "old world" experience aptly prepared them to play a vital role in the survival of Georgia in this early and precarious moment in its history.

A provocative account of the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders and its crucial place in history. The remarkable story of the men of the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders moves from the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland, through the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution, to the War of 1812. Simon Fraser, chief of the Clan Fraser of Lovat, raised the 78th Highlanders, a regiment that played a major role in defeating the French on the Plains of Abraham. Driv’n by Fortune tackles the myths embedded in nationalistic history and in fictional accounts of these Highland soldier-settlers who brought the Scottish Enlightenment to North America. The impact of the 78th Fraser’s Highlanders, which extended far beyond Scotland and the Canada of their times, is finally being told.

This distinguished monograph is a treatise on the causes and character of Scottish emigration to North America prior to the American Revolution. Entire chapters are then devoted to Lowland and Highland emigration, forced transportation of felons and the drafting of Scottish troops to the colonies, rising rents and other factors in the Scottish social structure, and the British government's role in colonization. Three concluding chapters cover the geographical centers of Scottish settlement--especially the Carolinas.

Covers the period of colonial history from the beginning of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere up to the time of the American Revolution.