"Space of Time or Distance of Place": Presbyterian Diffusion in South-western Scotland and Ulster, 1603-1690

A number of scholars argue that Protestant Scots¿ migrations to Ireland in the seventeenth century were precipitated by overpopulation and economic hardships, especially those that struck South- western Scotland. Cultural geographer Barry Aron Vann challenges that assessment. He unravels the complex assemblage of push and pull factors that played roles in seventeenth-century Scottish migrations. ¿Space of Time or Distance of Place¿ is an apt title for his book. Those words were part of a letter written by the Scottish born and educated Rev Robert Blair (1593-1666) to his Glasgow University mentor. Blair, as a key religious leader of a Scottish community living in seventeenth-century Ireland, demonstrated that he remained a member of an imagined community that Vann calls the Melvillian Scottish ecclesiastical intelligentsia. Vann uniquely demonstrates how religious thought worlds tied to space and nation, which he calls geotheology¿ a concept borrowed from the older geographer John K. Wright--served as lenses through which many migration decisions were made.