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.

Peter Paul Bajer, Ph.D. (2009) in History, is an Adjunct Research Assistant at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and is currently teaching at Geelong Grammar School. His main areas of academic interest are: Scottish migration to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth XVIth to XVIIIth centuries; history of other ethnic/migrant groups (especially processes of naturalisation and ennoblement of foreigners) in Early Modern Poland; and accounts of contemporary British travellers to Central Europe. His publications include: "Scotsmen and the Polish nobility from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century" (2008), "Scots in the Kraków Reformed Parish in the seventeenth century" (2011) and "‘Noli Me Condemnare’ – Migrant memories set in stone: the seventeen and the eighteenth century Scottish memorials in Poland." (Dec 2011).

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.
Michał Wasiucionek, European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 318-320