WE hear from many politicians and pundits that these islands stand apart from the rest of Europe and have always had separate history and destiny. But this is simply untrue.

There are many stories of how each of the four nations has influenced and been influenced by events elsewhere.

This is the first in a new series examining Scotland’s historic links with the wider world, showing that the country and its people have long had deep connections with the rest of Europe and beyond.

One such link is the Scottish diaspora, those Scots who emigrated to settle elsewhere. That many Scots migrated to North America, Australia, and New Zealand in the 19th century is well known. But an earlier destination for Scottish emigrants was eastern Europe.

We first find Scots in the region in the medieval period, when strong trade links developed with the Baltic. Scottish merchants would import hemp and iron and export wool and fish in their trade with the Hanseatic League, a confederation of ports and towns stretching from the Netherlands to Estonia.

In the 14th and early 15th centuries, Scottish knights and nobles would travel to Latvia and Prussia to join the Teutonic Order on their crusade against the pagan Lithuanians. The order even had factors in Edinburgh and Linlithgow to trade with the Scots and recruit crusaders. The comings and goings of merchants and crusaders soon led to permanent Scottish settlements in the region.

Poland had a Scottish population by 1380, when Scots settled in a suburb of Gdansk called Alt Schottland, or Old Scotland. Another district and site of Scottish settlement in the city is still known today as Nowe Szkoty, or New Scotland.

Warsaw, Poznan, and Lublin also hosted Scottish emigrants. Others settled in Narva in Estonia and Vilnius in Lithuania. Most of these settlers came from eastern Scotland, particularly Aberdeen, Dundee, and Fife. As well as trade opportunities, many Protestants and Catholics moved to Poland attracted by the greater religious freedom that could be found there compared to Presbyterian Scotland in the 17th century.

And Prince Charles Edward Stuart, of course, had a Polish mother, Maria Clementina Sobieska.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw many Scots fighting for various armies in the region, with one, the Jacobite James Keith (1696-1758), even becoming Prussian general field marshal.

Some Scots went even further east. In around 1495, Christian I of Denmark sent a Peter David of Aberdeen as an ambassador to Tsar Ivan III of Moscow.

One of the most prolific Scots in Russia was Patrick Gordon (1635-99), the son of a minor Aberdeenshire laird. As a younger son and a Catholic in a fiercely anti-Catholic country, he soon sought his fortune abroad, among the Scottish emigre community in Poland.

After a couple of years studying at a Jesuit college there, he left to join the Swedish army but was captured in battle by the Poles and then recaptured by the Swedes, switching from one side to the other each time. After fighting for the Poles against the Russians at the Battle of Chudnovo in 1660, he decided to go to Moscow to offer his services to the Russian tsar.

Gordon helped defeat a rebellion in 1662 and was repeatedly sent as a Russian ambassador to England and Scotland but his main work for Russia was in Ukraine, where he was sent in 1670.

It was then controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and Gordon fought for most of the decade to drive the Turks out. This culminated in 1677, when he captured the fortress of Chyhyryn. The following year, he would lead its defence during a siege by the Ottomans after the Russian governor was killed by a bomb. He was promoted to major-general and given command of the Kyiv garrison.

Over the next 20 years, he would fight in Crimea, conquer the city of Azov, defeat another rebellion, support Peter the Great’s coup against his half-sister Sophia, be appointed director of fireworks, and even found the first Russian navy. The ensign of the Russian Navy today is still a blue Saltire on a white field, the reverse of Scotland’s St Andrew’s Cross.

The Scottish influence on Russia’s navy did not end with Gordon. Another Scot, Thomas Gordon, left the British Royal Navy due to his Jacobite sympathies. He entered Russian service in 1698, and became a rear-admiral in 1719. Unable to speak Russian, he communicated with his subordinates in Dutch.

Samuel Greig (1735-88), from Inverkeithing, was a full admiral in Russia’s Baltic Fleet. All four of his sons also served in Russia’s Navy.

Gordon’s successes led Peter the Great to hire more Scots as soldiers, officials, including Dr Robert Erskine as his personal doctor.

The tsar also founded the Order of St Andrew in 1698, still an honour awarded by the Russian government today. Scottish doctors continued to serve Russia’s rulers into the mid-19th century. James Wylie was the army’s chief medical inspector from 1806-54.

Scottish settlements were also established in the Russian Empire, such as Karas, near Georgievsk in the Northern Caucasus. Tsar Alexander I established a community of Scottish missionaries there in 1802 to convert the local Muslim population.

Other small Scots communities could be found in St Petersburg and Moscow. There were also several aristocratic families with Scottish ancestry, including Bruces, Stuarts, Barclays, Rutherfords, and Sutherlands. They were often the descendants of prominent Scots soldiers who had been rewarded for their services with lands and a title.

Patrick Gordon was not the first Scot to fight in Ukraine.

Scottish soldiers captured by Ivan the Terrible in 1572, during the Livonian War against Poland-Lithuania, later fought for him in Crimea against the Tatars. Nor was he the last, as around 100 Scots have joined Ukraine’s foreign legion to fight against Russia’s illegal invasion.

Ukraine, Russia and eastern Europe as a whole are not disconnected from Scotland’s story. Rather, it is a region that many Scots have visited, settled in, fought over, and died for over the centuries and continue to do so today.