of England, with the
Cross of St. Andrew of Scotland. Scotland was a poor rural, agricultural society with a population of 1.3 million in 1755. Although Scotland lost home rule, the Union allowed it to break free of a stultifying system and opened the way for the
Scottish Enlightenment as well as a great expansion of trade and increase in opportunity and wealth. Edinburgh economist
Adam Smith concluded in 1776 that "By the union with England, the middling and inferior ranks of people in Scotland gained a complete deliverance from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them." Historian
Jonathan Israel holds that the Union "proved a decisive catalyst politically and economically," by allowing ambitious Scots entry on an equal basis to a rich expanding empire and its increasing trade. Scotland's transformation into a rich leader of modern industry came suddenly and unexpectedly in the next 150 years, following its union with England in 1707 and its integration with the advanced English and imperial economies. The transformation was led by two cities that grew rapidly after 1770.
Glasgow, on the river Clyde, was
the base for the tobacco and sugar trade with an emerging textile industry.
Edinburgh was the administrative and intellectual centre where the Scottish Enlightenment was chiefly based.
Union with England By the start of the 18th century, a
political union between Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing English Empire. With economic stagnation since the late 17th century, which was particularly acute in 1704, the country depended more and more heavily on sales of cattle and linen to England, who used this to create pressure for a union. The Scottish parliament voted on 6 January 1707, by 110 to 69, to adopt the
Treaty of Union. It was also a full economic union; indeed, most of its 25 articles dealt with economic arrangements for the new state known as "Great Britain". It added 45 Scots to the 513 members of the House of Commons and 16 Scots to the 190 members of the House of Lords, and ended the Scottish parliament. It also replaced the Scottish systems of currency, taxation and laws regulating trade with laws made in London. Scottish law remained separate from English law, and the religious system was not changed. England had about five times the population of Scotland at the time, and about 36 times as much wealth.
Jacobitism , known as
The Young Pretender and
Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led the '45 rising Jacobitism was revived by the unpopularity of the union. In 1708, James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James VII, who became known as "The Old Pretender", attempted an invasion with a French fleet carrying 6,000 men, but the Royal Navy prevented it from landing troops. A more serious attempt occurred in 1715, soon after the death of Anne and the accession of the first Hanoverian king, the eldest son of Sophie, as
George I of Great Britain. This rising (known as ''The 'Fifteen
) envisaged simultaneous uprisings in Wales, Devon, and Scotland. However, government arrests forestalled the southern ventures. In Scotland, John Erskine, Earl of Mar, nicknamed Bobbin' John'', raised the Jacobite clans but proved to be an indecisive leader and an incompetent soldier. Mar captured Perth, but let a smaller government force under the
Duke of Argyll hold the Stirling plain. Part of Mar's army joined up with risings in northern England and southern Scotland, and the Jacobites fought their way into England before being defeated at the
Battle of Preston, surrendering on 14 November 1715. The day before, Mar had failed to defeat Argyll at the
Battle of Sheriffmuir. At this point, James belatedly landed in Scotland, but was advised that the cause was hopeless. He fled back to France. An attempted Jacobite invasion with Spanish assistance in 1719 met with little support from the clans and ended in defeat at the
Battle of Glen Shiel. In 1745, the Jacobite rising known as ''The 'Forty-Five
began. Charles Edward Stuart, son of the Old Pretender
, often referred to as Bonnie Prince Charlie
or the Young Pretender'', landed on the island of
Eriskay in the
Outer Hebrides.
Post-Jacobite politics , and dominant political figure in Scotland, 1720s–1761 With the advent of the
Union and the demise of Jacobitism, access to London and the Empire opened up very attractive career opportunities for ambitious middle-class and upper-class Scots, who seized the chance to become entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and soldiers. Thousands of Scots, mainly Lowlanders, took up positions of power in politics, civil service, the army and navy, trade, economics, colonial enterprises and other areas across the nascent
British Empire. Historian
Neil Davidson notes that "after 1746 there was an entirely new level of participation by Scots in political life, particularly outside Scotland". Davidson also states that "far from being ‘peripheral’ to the British economy, Scotland – or more precisely, the Lowlands – lay at its core". British officials especially appreciated Scottish soldiers. As the Secretary of War told Parliament in 1751, "I am for having always in our army as many Scottish soldiers as possible...because they are generally more hardy and less mutinous". The national policy of aggressively recruiting Scots for senior civilian positions stirred up resentment among Englishmen, ranging from violent diatribes by
John Wilkes, to vulgar jokes and obscene cartoons in the popular press, and the haughty ridicule by intellectuals such as
Samuel Johnson that was much resented by Scots. In his great
Dictionary Johnson defined oats as, "a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." To which Lord Elibank retorted, "Very true, and where will you find such men and such horses?" Scottish politics in the late 18th century was dominated by the
Whigs, with the benign management of
Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761), who was in effect the "viceroy of Scotland" from the 1720s until his death in 1761. Scotland generally supported the king with enthusiasm during the
American Revolution.
Henry Dundas (1742–1811) dominated political affairs in the latter part of the century. Dundas defeated advocates of intellectual and social change through his ruthless manipulation of patronage in alliance with Prime Minister
William Pitt the Younger, until he lost power in 1806. The main unit of local government was the parish, and since it was also part of the church, the elders imposed public humiliation for what the locals considered immoral behaviour, including fornication, drunkenness, wife beating, cursing and Sabbath breaking. The main focus was on the poor and the landlords ("lairds") and gentry, and their servants, were not subject to the parish's control. The policing system weakened after 1800 and disappeared in most places by the 1850s.
Collapse of the clan system The clan system of the Highlands and Islands had been seen as a challenge to the rulers of Scotland from before the 17th century.
James VI's various measures to exert control included the
Statutes of Iona, an attempt to force clan leaders to become integrated into the rest of Scottish society. This started a slow process of change which, by the second half of the 18th century, saw clan chiefs start to think of themselves as commercial landlords, rather than as patriarchs of their people. To their tenants, initially this meant that monetary rents replaced those paid in kind. Later, rent increases became common. In the 1710s the Dukes of Argyll started putting leases of some of their land up for auction; by 1737 this was done across the Argyll property. This commercial attitude replaced the principle of '''', which included the obligation on clan chiefs to provide land for clan members. The shift of this attitude slowly spread through the Highland elite (but not among their tenants). As clan chiefs became more integrated into Scottish and British society, many of them built up large debts. It became easier to borrow against the security of a Highland estate from the 1770s onwards. As the lenders became predominantly people and organisations outside the Highlands, there was a greater willingness to foreclose if the borrower defaulted. Combined with an astounding level of financial incompetence among the Highland elite, this ultimately forced the sale of the estates of many Highland landed families over the period 1770–1850. (The greatest number of sales of whole estates was toward the end of this period.) The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 gave a final period of importance to the ability of Highland clans to raise bodies of fighting men at short notice. With the defeat at Culloden, any enthusiasm for continued warfare disappeared and clan leaders returned to their transition to being commercial landlords. This was arguably accelerated by some of the punitive laws enacted after the rebellion. These included the
Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 (
20 Geo. 2. c. 43), which removed judicial roles from clan chiefs and gave them to the Scottish law courts.
T. M. Devine warns against seeing a clear cause and effect relationship between the post-Culloden legislation and the collapse of clanship. He questions the basic effectiveness of the measures, quoting
W. A. Speck who ascribes the pacification of the area more to "a disinclination to rebel than to the government's repressive measures." Devine points out that social change in Gaeldom did not pick up until the 1760s and 1770s, as this coincided with the increased market pressures from the industrialising and urbanising Lowlands. The change of clan leaders from patriarchs of their people to commercial landowners gave rise to the first phase of the
Highland clearances, with many tenant farmers being evicted and resettled in crofting communities. In 1846 the
Highland potato famine struck the crofting communities of the North and West Highlands. By 1850 the charitable relief effort was wound up, despite the continuing crop failure, and landlords, charities and the government resorted to encouraging emigration. The overall result was that almost 11,000 people were provided with "assisted passages" by their landlords between 1846 and 1856, with the greatest number travelling in 1851. A further 5,000 emigrated to Australia, through the
Highland and Island Emigration Society. To this should be added an unknown, but significant number, who paid their own fares to emigrate, and a further unknown number assisted by the
Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. This was out of a famine-affected population of about 200,000 people. Many of those who remained became even more involved in temporary migration for work in the Lowlands, both out of necessity during the famine and having become accustomed to working away by the time the famine ceased. Much longer periods were spent out of the Highlands – often for much of the year or more. One illustration of this migrant working was the estimated 30,000 men and women from the far west of the Gaelic speaking area who travelled to the east coast fishing ports for the herring fishing season – providing labour in an industry that grew by 60% between 1854 and 1884. The clearances were followed by a period of even greater emigration from the Highlands, which continued (with a brief lull for the First World War) up to the start of the
Great Depression.
Enlightenment , the father of modern economics Historian
Jonathan Israel argues that by 1750 Scotland's major cities had created an intellectual infrastructure of mutually supporting institutions, such as universities, reading societies, libraries, periodicals, museums and masonic lodges. The Scottish network was "predominantly liberal Calvinist, Newtonian, and 'design' oriented in character which played a major role in the further development of the transatlantic Enlightenment ." In France
Voltaire said "we look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization", and the Scots in turn paid close attention to French ideas. Historian Bruce Lenman says their "central achievement was a new capacity to recognize and interpret social patterns." The first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment was
Francis Hutcheson, who held the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1729 to 1746. A moral philosopher who produced alternatives to the ideas of
Thomas Hobbes, one of his major contributions to world thought was the
utilitarian and
consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words, "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". Much of what is incorporated in the
scientific method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience, and causation) and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by his protégés
David Hume and
Adam Smith. Hume became a major figure in the
skeptical philosophical and
empiricist traditions of philosophy. He and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed what he called a '
science of man', which was expressed historically in works by authors including
James Burnett,
Adam Ferguson,
John Millar and
William Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behave in ancient and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces of
modernity. Modern sociology largely originated from this movement and Hume's philosophical concepts that directly influenced
James Madison (and thus the
United States Constitution) and when popularised by
Dugald Stewart, would be the basis of classical liberalism. Adam Smith published
The Wealth of Nations, often considered the first work on modern economics. It had an immediate impact on British economic policy and in the 21st century still framed discussions on
globalisation and tariffs. The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from intellectual and economic matters to the specifically scientific as in the work of the physician and chemist
William Cullen, the agriculturalist and economist
James Anderson, chemist and physician
Joseph Black, natural historian
John Walker and
James Hutton, the first modern geologist.
Beginnings of industrialisation in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh. Now offices of the Bank of Scotland. With tariffs with England now abolished, the potential for trade for Scottish merchants was considerable. However, Scotland in 1750 was still a poor rural, agricultural society with a population of 1.3 million. Some progress was visible: agriculture in the Lowlands was steadily upgraded after 1700 and standards remained high. There were the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow
Tobacco Lords after 1740. Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glassworks, breweries, and soapworks, setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial centre after 1815. The tobacco trade collapsed during the American Revolution (1776–1783), when its sources were cut off by the British blockade of American ports. However, trade with the West Indies began to make up for the loss of the tobacco business, Linen was Scotland's premier industry in the 18th century and formed the basis for the later
cotton,
jute, and woollen industries. Scottish industrial policy was made by the board of trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland, which sought to build an economy complementary, not competitive, with England. Since England had woollens, this meant linen. Encouraged and subsidised by the Board of Trustees so it could compete with German products, merchant entrepreneurs became dominant in all stages of linen manufacturing and built up the market share of Scottish linens, especially in the American colonial market. The British Linen Company, established in 1746, was the largest firm in the Scottish linen industry in the 18th century, exporting linen to England and America. As a joint-stock company, it had the right to raise funds through the issue of promissory notes or bonds. With its bonds functioning as bank notes, the company gradually moved into the business of lending and discounting to other linen manufacturers, and in the early 1770s banking became its main activity. It joined the established Scottish banks such as the Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1695) and the
Royal Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1727). Glasgow would soon follow and Scotland had a flourishing financial system by the end of the century. There were over 400 branches, amounting to one office per 7,000 people, double the level in England, where banks were also more heavily regulated. Historians have emphasised that the flexibility and dynamism of the Scottish banking system contributed significantly to the rapid development of the economy in the 19th century. German sociologist
Max Weber mentioned Scottish Presbyterianism in
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), and many scholars argued that "this worldly asceticism" of Calvinism was integral to Scotland's rapid economic modernisation. More recent scholarship however emphasises other factors. These include technology transfers from England and the appeal of a highly mobile, low-cost labour-force for English investors like Richard Arkwright. Scotland's natural resources in water power, black-band ironstone and coal were also important foundations for mechanised industry.
Religious fragmentation , whose actions led to the establishment of the
Secession Church In the 1690s the Presbyterian establishment purged the land of Episcopalians and heretics, and made blasphemy a capital crime. Thomas Aitkenhead, the son of an Edinburgh surgeon, aged 18, was indicted for blasphemy by order of the Privy Council for calling the New Testament "The History of the Imposter Christ"; he was hanged in 1696. Their extremism led to a reaction known as the "Moderate" cause that ultimately prevailed and opened the way for liberal thinking in the cities. The early 18th century saw the beginnings of a fragmentation of the
Church of Scotland. These fractures were prompted by issues of government and patronage, but reflected a wider division between the hard-line
Evangelicals and the theologically more tolerant
Moderate Party. The battle was over fears of fanaticism by the former and the promotion of Enlightenment ideas by the latter. The
Patronage Act 1711 was a major blow to the evangelicals, for it meant that local landlords could choose the minister, not the members of the congregation. Schisms erupted as the evangelicals left the main body, starting in 1733 with the
First Secession headed by figures including
Ebenezer Erskine. The second schism in 1761 lead to the foundation of the independent
Relief Church. These churches gained strength in the
Evangelical Revival of the later 18th century. A key result was the main Presbyterian church was in the hands of the Moderate faction, which provided critical support for the Enlightenment in the cities. Long after the triumph of the Church of Scotland in the Lowlands, Highlanders and Islanders clung to an old-fashioned Christianity infused with animistic folk beliefs and practices. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw some success, owing to the efforts of the
SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society. Catholicism had been reduced to the fringes of the country, particularly the Gaelic-speaking areas of the Highlands and Islands. Conditions also grew worse for Catholics after the Jacobite rebellions and Catholicism was reduced to little more than a poorly run mission. Also important was Episcopalianism, which had retained supporters through the civil wars and changes of regime in the 17th century. Since most Episcopalians had given their support to the Jacobite rebellions in the early 18th century, they also suffered a decline in fortunes.
James Macpherson was the first Scottish poet to gain an international reputation, claiming to have found poetry written by
Ossian, he published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the
Classical epics.
Fingal written in 1762 was speedily translated into many European languages, and its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the
Romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature, influencing
Herder and
Goethe. Eventually it became clear that the poems were not direct translations from the Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience. Both the major literary figures of the following century,
Robert Burns and Walter Scott, would be highly influenced by the Ossian cycle. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is widely regarded as the
national poet of Scotland and a major figure in the Romantic movement. As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected
folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or
adapting them. His poem (and song) "
Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at
Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "
Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial
national anthem of the country.
Education , rebuilt in 1789 according to plans drawn up by
Robert Adam A legacy of the Reformation in Scotland was the aim of having a school in every parish, which was underlined by an act of the Scottish parliament in 1696 (reinforced in 1801). In rural communities this obliged local landowners (heritors) to provide a schoolhouse and pay a schoolmaster, while ministers and local
presbyteries oversaw the quality of the education. The headmaster or "dominie" was often university educated and enjoyed high local prestige. The kirk schools were active in the rural lowlands but played a minor role in the Highlands, the islands, and in the fast-growing industrial towns and cities. The schools taught in English, not in Gaelic, because that language was seen as a leftover of Catholicism and was not an expression of Scottish nationalism. In cities such as Glasgow the Catholics operated their own schools, which directed their youth into clerical and middle class occupations, as well as religious vocations. A "democratic myth" emerged in the 19th century to the effect that many a "lad of pairts" had been able to rise up through the system to take high office and that literacy was much more widespread in Scotland than in neighbouring states, particularly England. Historical research has largely undermined the myth. Kirk schools were not free, attendance was not compulsory and they generally imparted only basic literacy such as the ability to read the Bible. Poor children, starting at age 7, were done by age 8 or 9; the majority were finished by age 11 or 12. The result was widespread basic reading ability; since there was an extra fee for writing, half the people never learned to write. Scots were not significantly better educated than the English and other contemporary nations. A few talented poor boys did go to university, but usually they were helped by aristocratic or gentry sponsors. Most of them became poorly paid teachers or ministers, and none became important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. By the 18th century there were five universities in Scotland, at
Edinburgh,
Glasgow,
St. Andrews and
King's and
Marischial Colleges in Aberdeen, compared with only two in England. Originally oriented to clerical and legal training, after the religious and political upheavals of the 17th century they recovered with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry. It helped the universities to become major centres of medical education and to put Scotland at the forefront of Enlightenment thinking. ==19th century==