The Migration of Scots

• Landlords continuously raised rent until tenants could no longer afford to live there, meaning that they was no record they were evicted and instead chose to leave
• Landlords knew that long-term, investing in other industries such as deer and sheep was more profitable than collecting rent, and so made the short-term sacrifice to pay tenants to leave to make room for farm land
• Many workers only got paid during the active season of their particular industry, meaning they were unemployed and not earning money for up to half of the year. This was financially unviable, and so they were forced to emigrate and look for work elsewhere during that period.
• A possible sentence for a criminal before 1868 was transportation, in which the offender was forced to move abroad to carry out their sentence, which often involved doing hard unpaid labour.
• Long bouts of bad weather (such as rain) had many negative effects on life in Scotland; for example, crop soil was too wet and crops suffered lack of oxygen and died, meaning businesses were put into ruin, and flooding would damage housing.
• 7600 Scottish convicts were sent to Australia on transportation, and many chose to stay after their sentence was finished. If finanically possible, many families chose to follow their relative abroad.
• Some Scottish Christians believed it was their duty to convert people from other countries. They were attracted to New Zealand because of its Free Church of Scotland which was an incredibly barebones Church group.
• Canda offered free land to convince displaced farmers to emigrate and work there instead to improve the growing economy. This was a life-changing offer to those who were living in poverty in the countryside.
• Developments of steamships meant that the time taken to get to places such as Australia was cut down immensely which allowed people to have a ‘safety net’ of being able to return if things went badly, making emigration less daunting.
• Most colonial governments put considerable effort into attracting Scots to live there through advertisements and agents, although the British government only started to help with emigration after World War 1 because they saw it as a way to deal with unemployment