The land and the people; The Estate and Rural community; The farm; Parliamentary legislation and agricultural change; The country house and enclousure; The tenant and his holding; Transport, communications and marketing; Developments in Arabia farming; The grain trade and droving trade; Towards union.
Showcases the latest research on Scotland's rural economy and society. Early modern Scotland was predominantly rural. Agriculture was the main occupation of most people at the time, so what happened in the countryside was crucial: economically, socially and culturally. The essays collected here focus on the years between around 1500 and 1750. This period, although before the main era of agricultural "improvement" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was nevertheless far from static in terms of agrarian development. Specific topics addressed include everyday farming practices; investment; landlords, tenants and estate management; and the cultural context within which agriculture was "imagined". The disastrous famine of 1622-23 is analysed in detail. The volume is completed by a comprehensive survey of recent historiography, setting agricultural history in its broader context.
This book challenges conventional wisdom and provides new insights into Scottish social and economic history. Christopher A. Whatley argues that the Union of 1707 was vital for Scottish success, but in ways which have hitherto been overlooked. He proposes that the central place of Jacobitism in the historiography of the period should be revised. Comprehensive in its coverage, the book is based not only on an exhaustive reading of secondary material but also incorporates a wealth of new evidence from previously little-used or unused primary sources.
During the last twenty years there has been an explosion of new research into the development of Scotland from a small, backward country on the periphery of Europe to one poised to undergo industrialisation in step with England. This book provides an overview of key themes related to social change and economic development in early Modern Scotland aimed at demonstrating how this transformation occurred.
The seventeenth century was one of the most dramatic periods in Scotland's history, with two political revolutions, intense religious strife culminating in the beginnings of toleration, and the modernisation of the state and its infrastructure. This book focuses on the history that the Scots themselves made. Previous conceptualisations of Scotland's "seventeenth century" have tended to define it as falling between 1603 and 1707 - the union of crowns and the union of parliaments. In contrast, this book asks how seventeenth-century Scotland would look if we focused on things that the Scots themselves wanted and chose to do. Here the key organising dates are not 1603 and 1707 but 1638 and 1689: the covenanting revolution and the Glorious Revolution. Within that framework, the book develops several core themes. One is regional and local: the book looks at the Highlands and the Anglo-Scottish Borders. The increasing importance of money in politics and the growing commercialisation of Scottish society is a further theme addressed. Chapters on this theme, like those on the nature of the Scottish Revolution, also discuss central government and illustrate the growth of the state. A third theme is political thought and the world of ideas. The intellectual landscape of seventeenth-century Scotland has often been perceived as less important and less innovative, and such perceptions are explored and in some cases challenged in this volume. Two stories have tended to dominate the historiography of seventeenth-century Scotland: Anglo-Scottish relations and religious politics. One of the recent leitmotifs of early modern British history has been the stress on the "Britishness" of that history and the interaction between the three kingdoms which constituted the "Atlantic archipelago". The two revolutions at the heart of the book were definitely Scottish, even though they were affected by events elsewhere. This is Scottish history, but Scottish history which recognises and is informed by a British context where appropriate. The interconnected nature of religion and politics is reflected in almost every contribution to this volume.SHARON ADAMS is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Freiburg. JULIAN GOODARE is Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh.Contributors: Sharon Adams, Caroline Erskine, Julian Goodare, Anna Groundwater, Maurice Lee Jnr, Danielle McCormack, Alasdair Raffe, Laura Rayner, Sherrilynn Theiss, Sally Tuckett, Douglas Watt
This is a collection of fifteen essays written over the last twenty years by one of Scotland's most eminent historians. The material concentrates on four broad themes in seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish history: Merchants, Unions and Trade; Scottish Economic Development; The Highlands; and the Rural Lowlands.
This book explores the ordinary daily routines, behaviours, experiences and beliefs of the Scottish people during a period of immense political, social and economic change. It underlines the importance of the church in post-Reformation Scottish society, but also highlights aspects of everyday life that remained the same, or similar, notwithstanding the efforts of the kirk, employers and the state to alter behaviours and attitudes.Drawing upon and interrogating a range of primary sources, the authors create a richly coloured, highly-nuanced picture of the lives of ordinary Scots from birth through marriage to death. Analytical in approach, the coverage of topics is wide, ranging from the ways people made a living, through their non-work activities including reading, playing and relationships, to the ways they experienced illness and approached death.This volume:*Provides a rich and finely nuanced social history of the period 1600-1800 *Gets behind the politics of Union and Jacobitism, and the experience of agricultural and industrial 'revolution'*Presents the scholarly expertise of its contributing authors in a accessible way*Includes a guide to further reading indicating sources for further study
Between the early eighteenth and the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Scottish society was transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and major changes in agriculture and rural society. The rate of town and city growth was among the fastest in western Europe, migration and emigration accelerated and the traditional way of life in the Highland and Lowland countryside was brought to an end through the pressures of market demand and landlord strategy. Such a major upheaval created increased social tension. Conflict and Stabilitiy in Scottish Society challenges the previously accepted view that this major upheaval in Scottish life did not stimulate much unrest and that a modern industrial society developed relatively smoothly. The papers here, given at the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar at Strathclyde University in 1988–89, suggest that protest was more common, more enduring and more diverse than is usually supposed.
This splendid portrait of medieval and early modern Scotland through to the Union and its aftermath has no current rival in chronological range, thematic scope and richness of detail. Ian Whyte pays due attention to the wide regional variations within Scotland itself and to the distinctive elements of her economy and society; but he also highlights the many parallels between the Scottish experience and that of her neighbours, especially England. The result sets the development of Scotland within its British context and beyond, in a book that will interest and delight far more than Scottish specialists alone.