Sons of Ulster.(BookTalk)(Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America)(Book Review)

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America By James Webb Broadway, 369 pages, $25.95

The subtitle of James Webb's Born Fighting--How the Scott-Irish Shaped America--implies a much narrower scope than the book embodies. Instead of merely explaining their impact on American life, Webb takes the reader on a journey through the entire history of the Scots-Irish people.

This history begins in the century before the birth of Christ, when Roman armies swept through Europe, defeating the native Celtic tribes. Those Celts, who refused to bow down to foreign rule, either died fighting or were driven north and west, eventually finding themselves in the harsh territory of what is now modern Scotland. When the Romans attempted to conquer all of Britain, they were met with fierce resistance by the Scottish Celts. Unable to tame the unruly highlanders, the Romans in 122 A.D. built a 73-mile barrier known as Hadrian's Wall to protect the sons of Rome from the savages to the north.

In bisecting Britain, Webb notes, this wall created the conditions for development of two distinct cultures on the island. To the south, England would experience the civilizing influences of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans. To the north, Scotland would remain essentially Celtic. "England became highly structured, top-down, and feudal while Scotland remained atomized, bottom-up, and in many respects tribal." The Scots thus developed a rabid individualism and distrust of authority and centralization that they would carry with them wherever they traveled.

And travel they would. One of the most important migrations of the Scottish people was to Ireland. The English had been battling Catholic rebels in Northern Ireland, and hoped to alter the character of the region by establishing a Protestant plantation. The ever-adventurous Scots began to migrate in large numbers to the Ulster region of Ireland. According to Webb, in 1602 fewer than 2 percent of the population of Ireland was of English or Scottish descent. Within a century, that number had climbed to 27 percent, and almost all resided in Ulster.

These "Ulster Scots" developed an identity distinct from their fellows who remained in Scotland, and it was they who would become the Scots-Irish. Like that of their Celtic ancestors, this identity was often shaped by conflict. The Presbyterian Scots and their Catholic Irish neighbors were often violently at odds, planting the seeds of sectarian strife that continues to the modern day. The Ulster Scots also had a hard time getting along with the Anglican English in the area, who considered themselves "conformist" Protestants, versus the "non conformist" Christianity of the Scots. In 1703, Britain's Queen Anne would establish the Test Act, which aimed to bring the Ulster Presbyterians in line with mainstream Anglicanism. "Non conformist" Protestants ...