The Repatriation of Capital to Scotland: a case study of seventeenth-century Dutch testaments and miscellaneous notarial instruments

It is commonly assumed, and frequently asserted, that poverty and desperation drove a massive exodus of migrants from Scotland in the Early Modern Period. It is claimed that once abroad, these migrants never thought of home and had severed all ties with their native land. This article takes a corpus of 151 wills, testaments and other notarial documents from the Rotterdam City Archive and tests this assumption. The findings reveal that the existing orthodoxy is wrong and that even the common soldiers, sailors and artisans who drew up these documents were profoundly concerned with ensuring the enrichment of their families, even if these remained in Scotland and there was little likelihood they would ever see them again. The method of repatriation is discussed while the potential impact for Scottish families explored.