From the Shankill to the Shenandoah: A Personal View of the Scotch Irish

The island of Ireland has had more than the average share of troubles visited on it by outsiders. Despite, or perhaps because of, its location on the Atlantic coast of Europe, the English monarchy has taken a close but generally unsuccessful interest in its western neighbour. This book first looks at the attempt to plant Scots Protestants in Catholic Ulster, and the consequences for the island itself. Then, perhaps more dramatically, it chronicles the effect of the arrival, on the shores of North America, of around 250,000 Ulster migrants. The balance of the population of the emergent colony was now tilted towards those disaffected migrants who had no loyalty to England, nor Scotland, nor the newly-formed United Kingdom. Without the Scotch Irish, would the American War of Independence have been won and lost?