Kin Kilts & Kolonie : Scottish Sojourners in the Dutch Empire in Asia

Scotland’s diaspora, reframed through the Dutch East Indies: the intertwined lives of Highland lairds, Islay farmers and metropolitan merchants who built fortunes, and families, on the island of Java. A vivid group portrait of Scots who embedded themselves in the Dutch colonial world.Centering on the Batavia firm of Maclaine Watson & Co., G.Roger Knight draws on letters, newspapers, government and family archives to trace how sugar, trade and marriage created trans-imperial networks from Mull and Islay to Java, Singapore, the Low Countries and Australia.A fresh, unromantic, sharply observed study of Scottish ambition, mobility and identity across imperial bounds in the long-nineteenth century. From masked balls in Batavia to deer-stalking on Mull, Kin, Kilts and Kolonie follows Scots who made their lives and livelihoods within another European empire.At its heart stands Maclaine Watson & Co., a Batavia merchant house linking Highland clans, Scots ‘glocalisers’, and trans imperial merch