For the past several hundred years, Western science has helped shape the terms on which Europeans encountered and envisioned Africa and Africans. European preoccupations with the germ theory, what Michael Adas has called a European “machine ideology” arising from Western scientific and technological developments, the rise of scientific racism, and the “civilizing mission,” for example, as well as scientific interest in the archaeological, geological, and biological wealth of Africa have all influenced how Westerners have interacted with Africa and Africans. Moreover, belief in their own expertise and in the universal character of science led many Western scientists to believe that they could export Western science unmodified to Africa.

SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, an estimated 3.6 million Scots have left their homeland. This mobility was built on movement since the Middle Ages. During the past two decades, historians have increasingly sought to map the volume, chronology and profile of this migration, conceptualised by some as Scotland's diaspora. The rate of migration (including that to the rest of the United Kingdom) was surpassed in some periods only by Ireland, Norway and Italy and, most strikingly, net out migration continued until the 1990s. Faced with this notable phenomenon, early studies concentrated on motives for migration and the Scottish influence and contributions – particularly economic and cultural – in new lands. More recent work has endeavoured to explore the experiences of migrants including key themes of retention of ethnic characteristics and identities.

Several broad outlines emerge from these studies. First, Scottish mobility can be seen as global, not simply imperial, with the destinations to which Scots gravitated changing over time. Early mobility, for instance, was centred on Europe (especially Scandinavia, the Baltic and Poland), with Scots moving there as soldiers, pedlars and traders. From the seventeenth century, however, Scots began to colonise Ireland in considerable numbers and from the 1650s could be found in the Caribbean and the thirteen eastern colonies of North America. Only after the 1750s, however, did Scottish sojourners and settlers really begin to penetrate North America, the West Indies, Asia, Australasia and Africa. Second, the size of the outflow differed over time. Emigration in the seventeenth century was more voluminous than the eighteenth. But with improved communications, transport and vast new opportunities in the host lands in the nineteenth century, population outflows increased exponentially. The era of mass migration between 1815 and 1930 resulted in at least 50 million people (but more likely 60 million) leaving Europe. Britain and Ireland's portion of this mobility comprised around 18.7 million, which was approximately 36 per cent of all European migrants (at a time when Britain and Ireland constituted between 10 and 11 per cent of Europe's total population). Scotland's share was around 2 million. Third, the motives for migration from Scotland changed in very broad terms, when judged at the macro level, from deprivation to aspiration. Fourth, Scottish distinctiveness in contributions to new lands is visible in such areas as economic enterprise, environmental transformation and missionary activity.

NO SCOTTISH HISTORIAN HAS ever had as prominent a profile as Tom Devine. And it is a profile that is as high among the Scottish public (and further afield) as it is in academia, for he has never pursued his historical activity in an ivory tower. He has always been a fully involved scholar, organically connected to the culture and society that produced him. This helps to explain why he can additionally be described as the most influential modern historian of his generation. That influence can be identified in at least four significant dimensions:

In the pursuit of all of these, Tom has been indefatigable in his involvement in public bodies; in delivering notable lectures not only in Scotland, but elsewhere in the United Kingdom as well as in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and throughout Europe; in writing in newspapers, recently particularly The Herald; and in media appearances on radio and on television. When we put into the mix highly influential positions in three Scottish universities (including a deputy principalship), adjunct professorships in both Canada and the United States, and a striking collection of prizes, medals, honours and honorary degrees from universities in Scotland and Northern Ireland, it becomes hard to believe that he has managed to cram it all into one career.

This tribute could very easily become a series of rather boring lists, for staggeringly long listings, all of them reflecting successfully accomplished projects and publications, constitute the bulk of Tom's curriculum vitae. Just to take the research topics he has undertaken, we find that they cover thirty-two themes.

THE PLURAL IS IMPORTANT. There have been several Scottish diasporas to Africa, not just in the sense of different periods and regions, or in terms of the movement of people as sojourners and settlers, but also in respect of religious and cultural influences, and then again in the realm of perceptions, of both intellectual and popular ideas. It might be thought that there would be a curious asymmetry in charting the connections between one small and poor society in north-western Europe and an entire continent with a host of different peoples and contrasting environmental regions. Yet the nature of the imperial period was such that a study of the inter-penetration of Scotland and Africa is essential, not least in terms of the reciprocal influences stimulated by the relationship. This reciprocity has to be understood, for the influence of Africa on Scotland and Scottish self-perceptions is itself important. Imperial influences were never one-way and cannot be examined solely through the dissemination of people, faiths and ideas. Empire was always about exchanges, negotiations, interactions, and the relationship of Scotland and Africa well reflects this. Moreover, the reciprocities occurred within Africa itself, for there were some intriguing ways in which African societies seem to have adopted Scottish forms into elements of, for example, their dance traditions. All of this indicates the manner in which Scottish ethnicity was undoubtedly seen as being distinct from that of the English. Moreover, the Scottish influence upon Africa certainly took different forms from that of other Britons.

The movement of Scots to Africa was different in kind from migrations to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Although those three territories of settlement all had indigenous societies, whites overwhelmed them in terms of sheer numbers, backed by unstoppable military and political power. In British-controlled Africa, land alienation and indigenous dispossession took place in the territories that became the Union of South Africa, in Southern and Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia), as well as in Nyasaland (Malawi) and Kenya. Most migrants to Africa were either professionals or people with capital, although many migrants to South Africa were working class. All migrants experienced an immediate boost to social status since whites were seldom involved in manual labour. They suddenly found themselves in supervisory roles, controlling low-paid African workers, as well as living with servants.