Book Review

This curious and somewhat exasperating book represents one of the few attempts by a modern scholar in the United States to take the story of the Scots beyond the eighteenth century. Terminology and the question of inclusion and exclusion in ethnic studies on this continent have always been serious problems, and, despite the author's attempt to be very clear about terminological usage in his preface, there continues to be trouble. Ferenc Morton Szasz quite properly distinguishes between English and British as well as among English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, and Scotch-Irish. The United States has usually regarded the Scotch- (or Scots)-Irish as Scottish, while Canada has typically seen them as northern Irish. But if Szasz makes distinctions on the British side of the Atlantic, he does not carry on the policy on this side of the ocean. Part of the difficulty derives from the author's insistence that "America, when used by Scots writers, almost always meant North America rather than simply the United States, a usage that continued until the middle of the nineteenth century." Whether such usage by Scots writers back in Scotland, even if common, justifies the virtual elimination of the border between British North America/Canada and the United States—and the consequent "border effect"—is another matter, however.

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