Death in the Diaspora

Pioneering comparative study of how and why migrants from Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales displayed attachment to home on headstones and memorial markers erected across the British World between the 17th and 20th centuries.

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As British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to their old and new worlds. This book expands upon earlier examination of cultural imperialism to reveal how individuals, kinship groups and occupational connections identified with place and space over time.

With analyses based on gravestones and memorial markers in the UK and Ireland, Australasia, Asia, Africa and the Americas, the contributors explore how this evidence can inform 21st-century ideas about the attachments that British and Irish migrants had to 'home' - in both life and death.