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Expansion and empire

The Highland Clearances of the late 18th and early 19th centuries caused the voluntary and involuntary migration of Scottish farmers away from their ancestral villages. Initially this was because many had supported a Catholic-inspired uprising against the British Crown in 1745 but, later, was a result of the creation of large sheep farms. Many migrated to the south of Scotland but many Scottish Highlanders migrated to Canada, and took their Gaelic culture and language with them.

This was also the case with the Glengarry Fencibles who were evicted from their lands near Fort William in the Highlands and went to Canada. They settled in what became Glengarry County, west of Montreal and Ottawa in Ontario. They still spoke Gaelic and many of them remained Catholic. Similar things happened later in the 19th century when many Scots migrated to New Zealand.

There was immigration into Britain towards the end of the 19th century when many migrants, Jewish people in particular, fled from persecution and poverty in Eastern Europe. They tended to settle in urban centres, particularly London, but also Leeds and some other northern towns. They maintained their religious practice, but in many cases they aimed to assimilate culturally with the British.