This book offers an original approach to the study of the Scottish diaspora in Europe. It highlights the activities of a group of emigrants and exiles who served the twin-headed Habsburg dynasty during the first half of the seventeenth century.

This work reveals the hitherto unrepresented relationship that developed between Scotland and Sweden during the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. Sweden's emergence as an independent Nordic, and indeed European, power required continual military and economic growth, which in turn necessitated a constant supply of manpower. The initially piecemeal migration of private individuals from Scotland bringing both martial and mercantile skills to Sweden gradually grew into an informal alliance, albeit officially sanctioned by the Swedes, based on personal networks. Equally the impact of Sweden's support for the Scottish Covenanting movement on British state-formation is scrutinized. This fresh perspective on Scottish-Swedish connections is aimed at those interested in state-formation, migration studies, diplomatic developments, and military history.

In the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries a considerable number of Scots migrated to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Some sojourned there for some time, while others stayed permanently and exercised commercial business and crafts. The migration stopped in the eighteenth century, and the Scots who remained in Poland seem to have lost their ethnic identity. This book offers an examination and assessment of this migration: numbers of migrants; patterns of settlement; laws regulating Scottish presence in Poland-Lithuania; their commercial, academic, religious and military activities; their social advancement into the Polish nobility; their assimilation and then the eventual disappearance as a distinct ethnic group in Poland-Lithuania.

Exploring Irish-Scottish connections in the period 1603–60, this book brings important new perspectives to the study of the early Stuart state. Acknowledging the pivotal role of the Hiberno-Scottish world, it identifies some of the limits of England’s Anglicising influence in the northern and western ‘British Isles’ and the often slight basis on which the Stuart pursuit of a new ‘British’ consciousness operated. Regarding the Anglo-Scottish relationship, it was chiefly in Ireland that the English and Scots intermingled after 1603, with a variety of consequences, often destabilising. The importance of the Gaelic sphere in Irish-Scottish connections also receives much greater attention here than in previous accounts. This Gaedhealtacht played a central role in the transmission of religious radicalism, both Catholic and Protestant, in Ireland and Scotland, ultimately leading to political crisis and revolution within the British Isles.

Analysing the make-up and workings of the Royalist party in Scotland and Ireland during the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century, Royalists at War is the first major study to explore who Royalists were in these two countries and why they gave their support to the Stuart kings. It compares and contrasts the actions, motivations and situations of key Scottish and Irish Royalists, paying particular attention to concepts such as honour, allegiance and loyalty, as well as practical considerations such as military capability, levels of debt, religious tensions, and political geography. It also shows how and why allegiances changed over time and how this impacted on the royal war effort. Alongside this is an investigation into why the Royalist cause failed in Scotland and Ireland and the implications this had for crown strategy within a wider British context. It also examines the extent to which Royalism in Scotland and Ireland differed from their English counterpart, which in turn allows an assessment to be made as to what constituted core elements of British and Irish Royalism.

Analyses the relations between nobility, crown and state, first in Scotland and then in the first courts of the unified kingdoms.

Discussing a series of economic, confessional, political and espionage networks, this volume provides an illuminating study of network history in Northern Europe in the early modern period. The empirically researched chapters advance existing 'social network theory' into accessible historical discussion.