‘Based on innovative archival research in South Africa and written in an accessible and lucid style, this is a significant contribution to South Africa, Scottish imperial and emigration history.’ — Tom Devine, University of Edinburgh.

‘An outstanding piece of scholarly research, written in a style which will make it accessible to the general reader, Mackenzie’s book provides, for the first time, an historical overview of the crucial and neglected impact of Scots migrants on South African society and state.’ — Jonathan Hyslop, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The description of South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’ has always been taken to embrace the black, the brown and the white peoples who constitute its population. But each of these groups can be sub-divided, and in the white case the Scots have made one of the most distinctive contributions to the country’s history.

This book is the first full-length study of their role from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. It highlights the interaction of  Scots with African peoples, the manner in which missions and schools were credited with producing ‘black Scotsmen’ and the ways in which they pursued many distinctive policies. It also deals with the inter-weaving of issues of gender; class and race as well as with the means by which Scots clung to their ethnicity through founding various social and cultural societies.