Billy Kay's The Scottish World

All too familiar sentiments, but these statements come from the 17^th century, the writers are Polish and the subject is the Scots. Up to 60,000 Scots could be found plying their trade in Poland, then a rich nation. The status of merchant was not valued by Poles, and Scots sailed in to fill the gap, as both wealthy merchant and door-to-door hawker. It was said that a Polish citizen could not even die peacefully without a Scot appearing immediately to offer goods and services.

Billy Kay's new book The Scottish World looks at the influence Scots had on the world around them, in exchanges of trade, culture and religious tenets. He starts in Northern Europe and, chapter by chapter, moves around the world, looking at how Scots integrated and affected their environment, whether that meant founding churches in faraway places, taking white funk music to Hawaii, or improving the recipé for port, despite its long association with the English (Scots traditionally drank the claret of their Gallic allies).

Those expecting a rigorous and scholarly investigation will be somewhat disappointed, but as a patchwork collection of snippets, yarns, personal anecdotes and testimonies, it is highly entertaining. Much of the information was gathered by Kay as research for the scripts of various TV and radio shows (and the seams between script and manuscript sometimes show) but this happily means that the focus is often on the social rather than political and military history of the Scottish diaspora.

As a Scot with French roots, I was drawn to the chapter detailing the history of the Auld Alliance. Though things have changed in recent decades, with the help of Franco-Scottish societies and twin town initiatives, the Alliance was more warmly recalled some distance north of La Manche, its association with the pre-Revolutionary aristocrats and the harbouring of pro-Royalist Jacobites causing it to be infra dig to the modern French.

Among the book's darker moments is the suggestion that a Celtic nationalism is replacing the underlying redneck racism in the American South, the result of an out of touch understanding of nationhood, post-nationhood perhaps, a filtered idea of Scottishness derived from history. The surprising popularity and social influence of Walter Scott's novels among exiles and their families in the 19th century seems to have left its legacy.

The book is least thorough on the Scots in Africa, most of the subject being reduced to part of a chapter proposing a rose-scented view of the Scottish missionary tradition. Kay may feel pride for those who took the gospel overseas, but many Scots would disagree with him - "book learning and the Bible went hand in hand to the benefit of all" is a statement that will stick in many a craw.

Those seeking more positive reasons to celebrate the Scots abroad will enjoy Kay's chapter on football, part 'we invented everything' pinch-of-salt and part fair case for the strong Scots involvement in the popularisation of the game, and which ends with his claim for a Scottish World Cup final goal (via the Scots blood of Argentina's José Brown).