Scots in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 16th to 18th Centuries

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.

Review:

Bajer's book is an important contribution to the field and the first general attempt in modern scholarship to revise the stereotypical narrative (or even lack thereof) on the Scottish diaspora in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It brings a significant body of data for future analysis, aided by cross-checking between different types of source and puts forward a set of interesting hypotheses. Michal Wasiucionek, European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 318-320