The Great Immigration

In the second half of the sixteenth century, Scottish immigrants to Little Poland became a visible ethnic minority in numerous towns of that province and particularly in its capital, Cracow. This is the first study to examine this urbanized immigration in the period until the 1660s, when Poland-Lithuania, devastated by the mid-century Swedish invasion, was no longer an attractive migrant destination. From around the 1570s, affluent Scottish merchants developed intense commercial relations in central Europe, while peddlers of that nationality distributed so-called 'Scotch goods' at local markets. The majority of Scots participated in the life of local Evangelical congregations and suffered religious persecutions together with their co-religionists. This prompted their collaboration with the Swedish occupants against their Catholic neighbors.