[nolu chan] I have moved this discussion here as it was off topic where it was. In any case, it is my belief that perceived inaccuracies should not be left unchallenged.
Vicomte13 #29 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=48373&Disp=29#C29
#29. To: nolu chan (#27)
If my time in Scotland taught me anything, it is that the people are Scots, and Scotch is a golden nectar of the gods given to the people.
The Scotch-Irish did not come from Scotland. They came from Northern Ireland. They were the Presbyterian descendants of the Scots who migrated to the "Irish Plantation" launched by James I in 1606, whereby he authorized the Protestants of Scotland to invade Ireland and take what they pleased from the Catholics.
They did, but they only got so far before the native Catholic Irish resistance stopped their momentum and drove them into their Ulster bunker, where they remain today.
Ulster did well for awhile, but then the English in the early 1700s, ever greedy for London interests, imposed laws on Ulster that effectively broke the textile industry, creating massive unemployment, and emigration from Ireland to America.
The men who came over were not Scots, they were from Ireland. And the Americans of the period, and those people themselves, called themselves Scotch- Irish or just Irish, not Scots-Irish.
Today, people punctilious about Scottishness, insist on the Scots being called Scots, not Scotch. That's fine.
But the particular group that emigrated to America in the 1700s are not properly called "Scots-Irish". They were, and are, properly called "Scotch- Irish", because that's what they called themselves, and because they are not Scots, they are Irish. The word change indicates that important difference. Scots don't like to be called Scotch. The Scotch-Irish are not Scottish, however. They're Irish. Protestant Irish. The Orange. The Ulstermen.
The use of the offensive word, to Scots, today, highlights that difference. The English Parliament did not break Scotland with its tariffs and rules. But it DID break Presbyterian Ireland, destroyed its economy, prompting a great deal of animus between the Irish Presbyterians and their English government, causing massive immigration to the Americas, where they settled on the frontiers as Scotch-Irish - and thought (and still think) of themselves as Irish in origin, not Scottish. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are descended from the Scotch-Irish. When they referred to their ethnicities, which was rarely, it was within the context of the internecine Irish rivalry, and they identified themselves as being of Irish extraction.
The Scottish are Scots. The Presbyterian Irish who came over in the 1700s are Scotch-Irish.
Vicomte13 posted on 2016-10-27 10:57:13 ET