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Economic history of Scotland

The economic history of Scotland charts economic development in the history of Scotland from earliest times, through seven centuries as an independent state and following Union with England, three centuries as a country of the United Kingdom. Before 1700 Scotland was a poor rural area, with few natural resources or advantages, remotely located on the periphery of the European world. Outward migration to England, and to North America, was heavy from 1700 well into the 20th century. After 1800 the economy took off, and industrialized rapidly, with textile, coal, iron, railroads, and most famously shipbuilding and banking. Glasgow was the centre of the Scottish economy. After the end of the First World War in 1918, Scotland went into a steady economic decline, shedding thousands of high-paying engineering jobs, and having very high rates of unemployment especially in the 1930s. Wartime demand in the Second World War temporarily reversed the decline, but conditions were difficult in the 1950s and 1960s. The discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s brought new wealth, and a new cycle of boom and bust, even as the old industrial base had decayed.[1][2]

Glasgow shipyard in 1944

Earliest times Edit

 
The houses at Knap of Howar, demonstrating the beginning of settled agriculture in Scotland

Scotland is roughly half the size of England and Wales, but has only between a fifth and a sixth of the amount of the arable or good pastoral land, which made marginal pastoral farming and, with its extensive coastline (roughly the same amount of coastline as all of the rest of Great Britain at 4,000 miles (6,400 km)), fishing, the key factors in the pre-modern economy.[3] Only a fifth of Scotland's land is under 60 metres above sea level. Its east Atlantic position means that it has very heavy rainfall: today about 700 cm per year in the east and over 1,000 cm in the west. This encouraged the spread of blanket peat bog, the acidity of which, combined with high level of wind and salt spray, made most of the islands treeless. The existence of hills, mountains, quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult.[4]

Mesolithic hunter-gatherer encampments are the first known settlements in the country, and archaeologists have dated an encampment near Biggar to around 8500 BC.[5] Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements, and the wonderfully well preserved stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray dating from 3500 BC predates by about 500 years the village of similar houses at Skara Brae on West Mainland, Orkney.[6] From the commencement of the Bronze Age to about 2000 BC the archaeological record shows a decline in the number of large new stone buildings constructed. Pollen analyses suggest that at this time woodland increased at the expense of the area under cultivation. Bronze and Iron Age metalworking was slowly introduced to Scotland from Europe over a lengthy period. Scotland's population grew to perhaps 300,000 in the second millennium BC.[7][8]

Following a series of military successes in the south, forces led by Gnaeus Julius Agricola entered Scotland in 79 and later sent a fleet of galleys around the coast as far as the Orkney Islands. The geographer Ptolemy's identified 19 "towns" from intelligence gathered during the Agricolan campaigns. No archaeological evidence of any truly urban places has been found from this time and the names may have indicated hill forts or temporary market and meeting places and most of the names are obscure.[9] Archaeology and dendrochronology suggests that the occupation of southern Scotland started before the arrival of Agricola. Whatever the exact dating, for the next 300 years Rome had some presence along the southern border.

Middle Ages Edit

Early Middle Ages Edit

476 AD – 1000 AD

The early Middle Ages was a period of climate deterioration, with a drop in temperature and an increase in rainfall, resulting in more land becoming unproductive.[10] Lacking the urban centres created under the Romans in the rest of Britain, the economy of Scotland in the early Middle Ages was overwhelmingly agricultural. With a lack of significant transport links and wider markets, most farms had to produce a self-sufficient diet of meat, dairy products and cereals, supplemented by hunter-gathering. Limited archaeological evidence indicates that throughout Northern Britain farming was based around a single homestead or a small cluster of three or four homes, each probably containing a nuclear family, with relationships likely to be common among neighbouring houses and settlements, reflecting the partition of land through inheritance.[11] Farming became based around a system that distinguished between the infield around the settlement, where crops were grown every year and the outfield, further away and where crops were grown and then left fallow in different years, in a system that would continue until the 18th century.[12] The evidence of bones indicates that cattle were by far the most important domesticated animal, followed by pigs, sheep and goats, while domesticated fowl were very rare. Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass, while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working.[13]

High Middle Ages Edit

[around AD 1000 to 1250]

 
Burghs established in Scotland before the accession of Máel Coluim; these were essentially Scotland-proper's first towns.

Although the Scottish economy of this period was still dominated by agriculture and by short-distance, local trade, there was an increasing amount of foreign trade in the period, as well as exchange gained by means of military plunder. By the end of this period, coins were replacing barter goods, but for most of this period most exchange was done without the use of metal currency.[14]

Most of Scotland's agricultural wealth in this period came from pastoralism, rather than arable farming. Arable farming grew significantly in the "Norman period", but with geographical differences, low-lying areas being subject to more arable farming than high-lying areas such as the Highlands, Galloway and the Southern Uplands. Galloway, in the words of G.W.S. Barrow, "already famous for its cattle, was so overwhelmingly pastoral, that there is little evidence in that region of land under any permanent cultivation, save along the Solway coast."[15] The average amount of land used by a husbandman in Scotland might have been around 26 acres.[16] There is a lot of evidence that the native Scots favoured pastoralism, in that Gaelic lords were happier to give away more land to French and Middle English-speaking settlers, whilst holding on tenaciously to more high-lying regions, perhaps contributing to the Highland/Galloway-Lowland division that emerged in Scotland in the later Middle Ages.[17] The main unit of land measurement in Scotland was the davoch (i.e. "vat"), called the arachor in Lennox. This unit is also known as the "Scottish ploughgate." In English-speaking Lothian, it was simply ploughgate.[18] It may have measured about 104 acres (0.42 km2),[19] divided into 4 raths.[20] Cattle, pigs and cheeses were among the most produced foodstuffs,[21] but of course a vast range of foodstuffs were produced, from sheep and fish, rye and barley, to bee wax and honey.

Pre-Davidian Scotland had no known chartered burghs, though most, if not all, of the burghs granted charters by the crown already existed long before the reign of David I. His charters gave them legal status, a new form of recognition. Scotland, outside Lothian, Lanarkshire, Roxburghshire, Berwickshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire and Fife at least, largely was populated by scattered hamlets, and outside that area, lacked the continental style nucleated village. David I established the first chartered burghs in Scotland, copying the burgher charters and Leges Burgorum (rules governing virtually every aspect of life and work in a burgh) almost verbatim from the English customs of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.[22] Early burgesses were usually Flemish, English, French and German, rather than Gaelic Scots. The burgh’s vocabulary was composed totally of either Germanic and French terms.[23] The councils which ran individual burghs were individually known as lie doussane, meaning the dozen.[24]

Late Middle Ages Edit

[around 1300 - 1500]

 
The economy of Scotland in the 14th century

In this period, with difficult terrain, poor roads and methods of transport there was little trade between different areas of the country and most settlements depended on what was produced locally, often with very little in reserve in bad years. Most farming was based on the lowland fermtoun or highland baile, settlements of a handful of families that jointly farmed an area notionally suitable for two or three plough teams, allocated in run rigs to tenant farmers. They usually ran downhill so that they included both wet and dry land, helping to offset some of the problems of extreme weather conditions. Most ploughing was done with a heavy wooden plough with an iron coulter, pulled by oxen, which were more effective and cheaper to feed than horses. Obligations to the local lord usually included supplying oxen for ploughing the lord's land on an annual basis and the much resented obligation to grind corn at the lord's mill.[25] The rural economy appears to have boomed in the 13th century and in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death was still buoyant, but by the 1360s there was a severe falling off incomes that can be seen in clerical benefices, of between a third and half compared with the beginning of the era, to be followed by a slow recovery in the 15th century.[26]

Most of the burghs were on the east coast, and among them were the largest and wealthiest, including Aberdeen, Perth and Edinburgh, whose growth was facilitated by trade with the continent. Although in the south-west Glasgow was beginning to develop and Ayr and Kirkcudbright had occasional links with Spain and France, sea trade with Ireland was much less profitable. In addition to the major royal burghs this era saw the proliferation of less baronial and ecclesiastical burghs, with 51 being created between 1450 and 1516. Most of these were much smaller than their royal counterparts, excluded from international trade they mainly acted as local markets and centres of craftsmanship.[27] In general burghs probably carried out far more local trading with their hinterlands, relying on them for food, raw materials. The wool trade was a major export at the beginning of the period, but the introduction of sheep-scab was a serious blow to the trade and it began to decline as an export from the early 15th century and despite a levelling off, there was another drop in exports as the markets collapsed in the early-16th century Low Countries. Unlike in England, this did not prompt the Scots to turn to large-scale cloth production and only poor quality rough cloths seem to have been significant.[25]

There were relatively few developed crafts in Scotland in this period, although by the later 15th century there were the beginnings of a native iron casting industry, which led to the production of cannon and of the silver and goldsmithing for which the country would later be known. As a result, the most important exports were unprocessed raw materials, including wool, hides, salt, fish, animals and coal, while Scotland remained frequently short of wood, iron and in years of bad harvests grain.[25] Exports of hides and particularly salmon, where the Scots held a decisive advantage in quality over their rivals, appear to have held up much better than wool, despite the general economic downturn in Europe in the aftermath of the plague.[26] The growing desire among the court, lords, upper clergy and wealthier merchants for luxury goods that largely had to be imported led to a chronic shortage of bullion. This, and perennial problems in royal finance, led to several debasements of the coinage, with the amount of silver in a penny being cut to almost a fifth between the late 14th century and the late 15th century. The heavily debased "black money" introduced in 1480 had to be withdrawn two years later and may have helped fuel a financial and political crisis.[25]

Early modern era Edit

Sixteenth century Edit

 
A section of drover's road at Cotkerse near Blairlogie, Scotland.

From the mid-sixteenth century, Scotland experienced a decline in demand for exports of cloth and wool to the continent. Scots responded by selling larger quantities of traditional goods, increasing the output of salt, herring and coal.[28] The late sixteenth century was an era of economic distress, probably exacerbated by increasing taxation and the devaluation of the currency. In 1582 a pound of silver produced 640 shillings, but in 1601 it was 960 and the exchange rate with England was £6 Scots to £1 sterling in 1565, but by 1601 it had fallen to £12. Wages rose rapidly, by between four or five times between 1560 and the end of the century, but failed to keep pace with inflation. This situation was punctuated by frequent harvest failures, with almost half the years in the second half of the sixteenth century seeing local or national scarcity, necessitating the shipping of large quantities of grain from the Baltic. Distress was also exacerbated by outbreaks of plague, with major epidemics in the periods 1584-8 and 1597-1609.[29] There were the beginnings of industrial manufacture in this period, often utilising expertise from the continent, which included a failed attempt to use Flemings to teach new techniques in the developing cloth industry in the north-east, but more successful in bringing a Venetian to help develop a native glass blowing industry. George Bruce used German techniques to solve the drainage problems of his coal mine at Culross. In 1596 the Society of Brewer's was established in Edinburgh and the importing of English hops allowed the brewing of Scottish beer.[30]

Seventeenth century Edit

In the early seventeenth century famine was relatively common, with four periods of famine prices between 1620 and 1625. The invasions of the 1640s had a profound impact on the Scottish economy, with the destruction of crops and the disruption of markets resulting in some of the most rapid price rises of the century.[31] Under the Commonwealth, the country was relatively highly taxed, but gained access to English markets.[32] After the Restoration the formal frontier with England was re-established, along with its customs duties. Economic conditions were generally favourable from 1660 to 1688, as land owners promoted better tillage and cattle-raising.[28] The monopoly of royal burghs over foreign trade was partially ended by and Act of 1672, leaving them with the old luxuries of wines, silk, spices and dyes and opening up trade of increasingly significant salt, coal, corn and hides and imports from the Americas. The English Navigation Acts limited the ability of the Scots to engage in what would have been lucrative trading with England's growing colonies, but these were often circumvented, with Glasgow becoming an increasingly important commercial centre, opening up trade with the American colonies: importing sugar from the West Indies and tobacco from Virginia and Maryland. Exports across the Atlantic included linen, woollen goods, coal and grindstones.[28] The English protective tariffs on salt and cattle were harder to disregard and probably placed greater limitations on the Scottish economy, despite attempts of the King to have it overturned. However, by the end of the century the drovers roads, stretching down from the Highlands through south-west Scotland to north-east England, had become firmly established.[33] Scottish attempts to counter this with tariffs of their own, were largely unsuccessful as Scotland had relatively few vital exports to protect. Attempts by the Privy Council to build up luxury industries in cloth mills, soap works, sugar boiling houses, gunpowder and paper works, proved largely unsuccessful.[34]

 
The colony of New Caledonia on the Isthmus of Darien.

The closing decade of the seventeenth century saw the generally favourable economic conditions that had dominated since the Restoration come to an end. There was a slump in trade with the Baltic and France from 1689 to 1691, caused by French protectionism and changes in the Scottish cattle trade, followed by four years of failed harvests (1695, 1696 and 1698-9), known as the "seven ill years".[35] The result was severe famine and depopulation, particularly in the north.[36] The famines of the 1690s were seem as particularly severe partly because famine had become relatively rare in the second half of the seventeenth century, with only one year of dearth (in 1674) and the shortages of the 1690s would be the last of their kind.[34]

The Parliament of Scotland of 1695 enacted proposals that might help the desperate economic situation, including setting up the Bank of Scotland. Recently founded sugar houses were encouraged in Glasgow and Leith.[37] The "Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies" received a charter to raise capital through public subscription.[35] The "Company of Scotland" invested in the Darien scheme, an ambitious plan devised by William Paterson, the Scottish founder of the Bank of England, to build a colony on the Isthmus of Panama in the hope of establishing trade with the Far East.[38] Since the capital resources of the Edinburgh merchants and landholder elite were insufficient, the company appealed to middling social ranks, who responded with patriotic fervour to the call for money; the lower orders volunteered as colonists.[39] The project proved a disaster, with only one ship and 1,000 colonists returning home. The cost of £150,000 put a severe strain on the Scottish commercial system.[35]

18th century Edit

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 British Empire. The Scottish parliament voted on 6 January 1707, by 110 to 69 to adopt the Treaty of Union. It was 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. England had about five times the population of Scotland at the time, and about 36 times as much wealth.[40]

Agriculture Edit

Contacts with England led to a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility. Turnips and cabbages were introduced, lands enclosed and marshes drained, lime was put down, roads built and woods planted. Drilling and sowing and crop rotation were introduced. The introduction of the potato to Scotland in 1739 greatly improved the diet of the peasantry. Enclosures began to displace the runrig system and free pasture. The Society of Improvers was founded in 1723, including in its 300 members dukes, earls, lairds and landlords.[41]

Scottish proprietors had greater legal powers to direct agrarian improvements than their English counterparts. For example, they could evict tenants at the end of leases, allowing greater freedom to consolidate land and determine the composition of their tenantry. Further, landowners were able to insert improvement clauses into lease contracts and ensure tenants complied through the Sherriff Courts.[42]

The Lothians became a major centre of grain, Ayrshire of cattle breeding and the borders of sheep. However, although some estate holders improved the quality of life of their displaced workers, enclosures led to unemployment and forced migrations to the burghs or abroad.[43]

Exports Edit

The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear, primarily because Scotland was too poor to exploit the opportunities of the greatly expanded free market. Some progress was visible by 1750, such as the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. However, Glasgow immediately re-exported nearly all the tobacco, so it did not stimulate local business, and that port exported few Scottish products. The tobacco trade collapsed during the American Revolution, when it sources were cut off by the British blockade of American ports. An important new trade to develop with the West Indies that made up for the loss of the tobacco business.[44] The Scottish Enlightenment was indeed a remarkable intellectual event, but it had few direct benefits for the economy at large. Scotland in 1700 was a poor rural, agricultural society with a population of 1.3 million. Its transformation into a rich leader of modern industry came suddenly and unexpectedly.[45]

Glasgow Edit

In Glasgow, merchants who profited from the American trade in the 1730-1790 era 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.[46] Initially relying on hired ships, by 1736 it had 67 of its own, a third of which were trading with the New World. Glasgow emerged as the focus of the tobacco trade, re-exporting particularly to France. The merchants dealing in this lucrative business became the wealthy tobacco lords, who dominated the city for most of the century.[47]

By 1790 the expanded and prosperous trade with the West Indies reflected the extensive growth of the cotton industry, the British sweet tooth, and the demand in the West Indies for herring and linen goods. During 1750-1815, 78 Glasgow merchants not only specialized in the importation of sugar, cotton, and rum from the West Indies, but diversified their interests by purchasing West Indian plantations, Scottish estates, or cotton mills. They were not to be self-perpetuating due to the hazards of the trade, the incident of bankruptcy, and the changing complexity of Glasgow's economy.[48]

Other burghs also benefited. Greenock enlarged its port in 1710 and sent its first ship to the Americas in 1719, but was soon playing a major part in importing sugar and rum.[47]

Linen Edit

The linen industry was Scotland's premier industry in the 18th century and formed the basis for the later cotton, jute,[49] and woollen industries as well.[50] The Scottish members of parliament managed to see off an attempt to impose an export duty on linen and from 1727 it received subsidies of £2,750 a year for six years, resulting in a considerable expansion of the trade. Paisley adopted Dutch methods and became a major centre of production. Glasgow manufactured for the export trade, which doubled between 1725 and 1738.[51]

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 subsidized 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.[52]

19th century Edit

 
Evidence of high infant mortality on an Edinburgh gravestone

Scotland's population grew steadily in the 19th century, from 1,608,000 in the census of 1801 to 2,889,000 in 1851 and 4,472,000 in 1901.[53] The economy, traditionally based on agriculture,[54] began to industrialize after 1790. At first the leading industry, based in the west, was the spinning and weaving of cotton. In 1861 the American Civil War suddenly cut off the supplies of raw cotton and caused serious social distress before peace was imposed with the defeat of the Confederacy and the restoration of the Union. Textile production recovered thereafter, concentrated especially in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and by the end of the century J. & P. Coats, arguably the first multinational industrial corporation in the world, was globally synonymous with cotton thread, and the largest industrial company in the United Kingdom. [55] Thanks to its many entrepreneurs and engineers, and its large stock of easily mined coal, Scotland became a world centre for engineering, shipbuilding, and locomotive construction, with steel replacing iron after 1870.[56]

Liberalism emerged from urban Scotland, the free-trade sentiments and strong individualism of entrepreneurs merging with the radical emphasis on education and self-reliance as a means of community betterment. Despite political challenges, especially by the 1900s, these distinctive liberal values remained strong.[57]

Banking Edit

 
The former Head Office of the British Linen Bank in St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh. Now offices of the Bank of Scotland.

The first Scottish banks, Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1695) the Royal Bank of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1727) are still in operation.[58] By the early 19th century Glasgow had strong banks as well and Scotland had a flourishing financial system. There were over 400 branches, amounting to one office per 7000 people, double the level in England. The banks were more lightly regulated than those in England. Historians often emphasize that the flexibility and dynamism of the Scottish banking system contributed significantly to the rapid development of the economy in the 19th century.[59][60]

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. Renamed British Linen Bank in 1906, it was one of Scotland's premier banks until it was bought out by the Bank of Scotland in 1969.[61]

Emigration Edit

Even with the growth of industry there never were enough good jobs, so during the 1841-1931 era, about 2 million Scots emigrated to North America and Australia, and another 750,000 relocated to England. By the 21st century, there were about as many people of Scottish descent in both Canada (see Scotch Canadians) and the U.S. (see Scottish American) as the 5 million remaining in Scotland.[62]

Industrial Revolution Edit

During the Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of the British Empire.[63] Beginning about 1790 the most important industry in the west of Scotland became textiles, especially the spinning and weaving of cotton, which flourished until the American Civil War in 1861 cut off the supplies of raw cotton. However, by that time Scotland had developed heavy industries based on its coal and iron resources. The invention of the hot blast for smelting iron (1828) had revolutionized the Scottish iron industry, and Scotland became a centre for engineering, shipbuilding, and locomotive construction. Toward the end of the 19th century steel production largely replaced iron production. Emigrant Andrew Carnegie built the American steel industry, and spent much of his time and philanthropy in Scotland.

Cities Edit

As the 19th century wore on, Lowland Scotland turned more and more towards heavy industry. Glasgow and the River Clyde became a major shipbuilding centre. Glasgow became one of the largest cities in the world, and known as "the Second City of the Empire" after London.

The industrial developments, while they brought work and wealth, were so rapid that housing, town-planning, and provision for public health did not keep pace with them, and for a time living conditions in some of the towns and cities were notoriously bad, with overcrowding, high infant mortality, and growing rates of tuberculosis.[64]

Dundee Edit

Dundee upgraded its harbour and established itself as an industrial and trading centre. Dundee's industrial heritage was based on "the three Js": jute, jam and journalism. East-central Scotland became too heavily dependent on linens, hemp, and jute. Despite the cyclical nature of the trade which periodically ruined weaker companies, profits held up well in the 19th century. Typical firms were family affairs, even after the introduction of limited liability in the 1890s. The profits helped make the city an important source of overseas investment, especially in North America. However, the profits were seldom invested locally, apart from the linen trade. The reasons were that low wages limited local consumption, and because there were no important natural resources; thus the Dundee region offered little opportunity for profitable industrial diversification.[65]

Coal Edit

 
National Mining Museum of Scotland at Newtongrange, Midlothian, showing a move from heavy industry to tourism about heavy industry

Coal mining became a major industry, and coal production expanded into the 20th century producing the fuel to heat homes and factories and drive steam engines, locomotives and steamships and the raw materials required by the chemical industry. In 1841 26,147 workers were employed in Scottish mines and quarries; by 1911 there were 155,691.[66] The early stereotype of Scottish colliers as brutish, non-religious and socially isolated serfs;[67] was an exaggeration, for their life style resembled coal miners everywhere, with a strong emphasis on masculinity, egalitarianism, group solidarity, and support for radical labour movements.[68]

Railways Edit

Britain was the world leader in the construction of railways, and their use to expand trade and coal supplies. The first line opened in 1831. Not only was good passenger service established by the late 1840s, but an excellent network of freight lines reduce the cost of shipping coal, and made products manufactured in Scotland competitive throughout Britain. For example, railways open the London market to Scottish beef and milk. They enabled the Aberdeen Angus to become a cattle breed of worldwide reputation.[69][70]

Shipbuilding Edit

 
RMS Queen Mary was built in Glasgow at the John Brown & Company shipyard

Shipbuilding on Clydeside (the river Clyde through Glasgow and other points) reached its peak in the years in the 1900-1918 era, with an output of 370 ships completed in 1913, and even more during the First World War. The total output from some 300 firms (that is, 30-40 at any one time) exceeded 25,000 ships.[71]

The first small yards were opened in 1712 at the Scott family's shipyard at Greenock. After 1860 the Clydeside shipyards specialized in steamships made of iron (after 1870, made of steel), which rapidly replaced the wooden sailing vessels of both the merchant fleets and the battle fleets of the world. It became the world's pre-eminent shipbuilding centre. Clydebuilt became an industry benchmark of quality, and the river's shipyards were given contracts for warships, as well as prestigious liners such as the Queen Mary.

 
Surviving cranes at the former Fairfield shipyard in Govan

Major firms included Denny of Dumbarton, Scotts Shipbuilding & Engineering Company of Greenock, Lithgows of Port Glasgow, Simon and Lobnitz of Renfrew, Alexander Stephen & Sons of Linthouse, Fairfield of Govan, Inglis of Pointhouse, Barclay Curle of Whiteinch, Connell and Yarrow of Scotstoun. Equally important were the engineering firms that supplied the machinery to drive these vessels, the boilers and pumps and steering gear - Rankin & Blackmore, Hastie's and Kincaid's of Greenock, Rowan's of Finnieston, Weir's of Cathcart, Howden's of Tradeston and Babcock & Wilcox of Renfrew.[72] The biggest customer was Sir William Mackinnon, who ran five shipping companies in the 19th century from his base in Glasgow.[73]

A representative entrepreneur in Glasgow was William Lithgow (1854–1908), who at the age of 16 inherited £1,000 and at his death left a fortune of £1.75 million. Starting with partners whom he later bought out, he employed innovative designs and concepts such as interchangeable components, helped finance his customers by purchasing shares in their ships, and continuously expanded his shipyard. When rivals went bankrupt during the depression years of the 1880s and 1890s, Lithgows survived. His children and grandchildren built the company into the world's largest private shipbuilding firm by 1950, but the family sold the yards to the government in 1977 and diversified their holdings into other industries.[74]

The companies attracted rural workers, as well as immigrants from Catholic Ireland, by inexpensive company housing that was a dramatic move upward from the inner-city slums. This paternalistic policy led many owners to endorse government sponsored housing programs as well as self-help projects among the respectable working class.[75]

Rural life Edit

A handful of powerful families, typified by the dukes of Argyll, Atholl, Buccleuch, and Sutherland, owned an enormous quantity of land and, until 1885, had great influence on political affairs. The concentration of land ownership is illustrated by, in 1878, 68 persons owning nearly half of Scotland and 580 people owning over three quarters.[76]

 
One of a cluster of deserted and ruinous cottages on the north side of Loch Tay, Perthshire. The area was affected by the so-called "Breadalbane Clearances" of the 1840s.

Agriculture in the Lowlands was steadily upgraded after 1700, and standards remained high.[77] However, after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, when Britain adopted a free trade policy, grain imports from America undermined the profitability of crop production. The result was a continuous exodus from the land—to the cities, or further afield to England, Canada, America or Australia.[citation needed]

The traditional landed interests held their own politically in the face of the rapidly growing urban middle classes, for the electoral reforms of mid-century were less far-reaching in Scotland than in England. The landed interests managed to ensure that the political weight of numbers was skewed disproportionately in their favour.

The Highlands meanwhile were very poor and traditional, with few connections to the uplift of the Scottish Enlightenment and little role in the Industrial Revolution.[78] The 100 or so wealthiest landlords needed cash to maintain their position in London society, and had less need of soldiers now that warfare had abated. Therefore, they turned to money rents, displaced farmers to raise sheep, and downplayed the traditional patriarchal relationship that had historically sustained the clans. A new group appeared, the crofters, emerging for the first time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were poor families living on "crofts" or very small rented farms used to raise potatoes, with kelping,[79] fishing, and spinning of linen, and military service, as important sources of revenue.[80]

The era of the Napoleonic wars, 1790–1815, brought prosperity, optimism, and economic growth to the Highlands. The economy grew thanks to wages paid by kelping industry (where men burned kelp for the ashes), fisheries, and weaving, as well as large-scale infrastructure spending such as the Caledonian Canal project. On the East Coast, farmlands were improved, and high prices for cattle brought money to the community. Service in the Army was also attractive to young men from Highlands, who sent pay home and retired there with their army pensions.[81][page needed] The prosperity ended after 1815, and long-run negative factors began to undermine the economic position of the poor tenant farmers or "crofters," as they were called. The adoption by the landowners of a market orientation in the century after 1750 dissolved the traditional social and economic structure of the north-west Highlands and Hebrides Islands, causing great disruption for the crofters. The Highland Clearances and the end of the township system followed changes in land ownership and tenancy and the replacement of cattle by sheep.

20th century Edit

Population Edit

The population of Scotland expanded at a modest rate in the early 20th century, growing from 4,760,904 reported in the census of 1911 to 5,096,415 in 1951;[82] thereafter it stabilised at just a little over 5 million people;[83] the Census of 2001 enumerated a population of 5,064,200 [84] The employment structure in Scotland, as in the rest of the United Kingdom, reflected the growth of the services sector at the relative expense of manufacturing.[85]

Trade unions Edit

Scottish workers played a major role in the nationwide industrial upheavals of 1910-14. The National Sailors' and Firemen's Union Directed strike activities in many port cities across Britain, while activists in the Glasgow Trades Council took the lead locally. The strongly local character of the strike movement and its leadership in Glasgow shaped both the strikes themselves - which were more unified and coherent in Glasgow than in some other centres - and the subsequent development of waterfront organisation on the Clyde, marked as it was by the emergence of independent locally based unions among both dockers and seamen.[86]

Ships Edit

Clydeside shipyards before the 1914 had been the busiest in the world, turning out more than one-third of the entire British output. They expanded dramatically during the war, primarily to produce transports of the sort that German submarines were busy sinking. Confident of postwar expansion, the companies borrowed heavily to expand their facilities. But after the war, employment tumbled as the yards proved too big, too expensive, and too inefficient; in any case world demand was down. The most skilled craftsmen were especially hard hit, because there were few alternative uses for their specialised skills.[87] A serious weakness on the engineering side was a lag in developing the new technology of turbine engines, diesel engines, and welding techniques. The yards went into a long period of decline, interrupted only by the Second World War's temporary expansion. In the 21st century, only a handful of shipyards remain active.[88]

Fish Edit

The years before the First World War were the golden age of the inshore fisheries. The main port was Aberdeen. Landings reached new heights, and Scottish catches dominated Europe's herring trade, accounting for one-third of the British catch. The boats employed 34,000 men in 1911, with another 50,000 women on shore employed part-time in processing. High productivity came about thanks to the transition to more productive steam-powered boats, while the rest of Europe's fishing fleets were slower because they were still powered by sails. Scotland's fishermen had acquired nearly one thousand steam drifters by 1914, valued over two million pounds. However, the escalating level of capital expenditure necessitated new sources of capital; it came principally from merchants and fish salesmen. The fishermen now had to share their profits, and became entangled in informal contracts, tie-in sales and fast-accumulating debts. The shared cultural background facilitated mutual trust. The option of state intervention and government money was debated and rejected.[89] By 2001 Peterhead was by far the largest fish-landing port in Europe; taken together with neighbouring Fraserburgh, a third of the fish landed in UK was landed in the North East of Scotland. [90] Nevertheless, in common with other UK fishing ports, landed catch in Peterhead fell by nearly 20% after the UK left the European Union.[91]

Deindustrialisation Edit

Deindustrialisation took place rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, as most of the traditional industries drastically shrank or were completely closed down. A new service-oriented economy emerged to replace traditional heavy industries.[92][93]

Oil Edit

Since the Second World War, the economy has been fully integrated into the overall British economy, with the most distinctive feature being the discovery of oil offshore in the North Sea. The oil brought new wealth and new people to the most isolated areas.

The discovery of the giant Forties oilfield in October 1970 was an initial sign that Scotland was about to become a major oil producing nation, a view confirmed when Shell Expro discovered the giant Brent oilfield in the northern North Sea east of Shetland the following year. Oil production started from the Argyll field (now Ardmore) in June 1975[94] followed by Forties in November of that year.[95]

John Brown & Company's shipyard at Clydebank transformed itself from a traditional shipbuilding business to a factor in the high technology offshore oil and gas drilling industry. After 1972, the firm has been owned by three multinational corporations, and its adaptation to drilling has been affected by the complexities of fluctuating international markets and changing technologies. Employment in the yard is far lower.[96]

See also Edit

Notes Edit

  1. ^ R. A. Houston, A. and W. Knox, eds., New Penguin History of Scotland, (2001)
  2. ^ Bruce Lenman, An Economic History of Modern Scotland, 1660-1976 (1977)
  3. ^ E. Gemmill and N. J. Mayhew, Changing Values in Medieval Scotland: a Study of Prices, Money, and Weights and Measures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ISBN 0-521-47385-3, pp. 8-10.
  4. ^ C. Harvie, Scotland: a Short History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), ISBN 0-19-210054-8, pp. 10-11.
  5. ^ "Signs of Earliest Scots Unearthed". BBC News. 2009-04-09. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  6. ^ C. Arnold, Stone Age Farmers Beside the Sea: Scotland's Prehistoric Village of Skara Brae (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997), ISBN 0-395-77601-5, p. 13.
  7. ^ A. Moffat, Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), pp. 154, 158 and 161.
  8. ^ Whittington, Graeme and Edwards, Kevin J. (1994) "Palynology as a predictive tool in archaeology" (pdf) Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 124 pp. 55–65.
  9. ^ A. Moffat, Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), pp. 268-70.
  10. ^ P. Fouracre and R. McKitterick, eds, The New Cambridge Medieval History: c. 500-c. 700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-521-36291-1, p. 234.
  11. ^ A. Woolf, From Pictland to Alba: 789 - 1070 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-7486-1234-3, pp. 17-20.
  12. ^ H. P. R. Finberg, The Formation of England 550-1042 (London: Paladin, 1974), ISBN 978-0-586-08248-5, p. 204.
  13. ^ K. J. Edwards and I. Ralston, Scotland after the Ice Age: Environment, Archaeology and History, 8000 BC - AD 1000 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), ISBN 0-7486-1736-1, p. 230.
  14. ^ Stringer, "Emergence of a Nation State", pp. 66–69
  15. ^ Barrow, Kingship and Unity, (1981), p. 12
  16. ^ Barrow, Kingship and Unity, (1981), p. 18
  17. ^ e.g. for Galloway, Oram, Lordship, pp. 212–213; for Strathearn and Lennox, see Neville, Native Lordship, pp. 79–130
  18. ^ Barrow, Kingship and Unity, p. 12–15
  19. ^ Barrow, Kingship and Unity, (1981), p. 15
  20. ^ Neville, Native Lordship, p. 96
  21. ^ Driscoll, Alba, (2002), p. 53
  22. ^ Barrow, Kingship and unity, p. 98
  23. ^ Murison, "Linguistic Relations", (1974), p. 74
  24. ^ Murison, "Linguistic Relations", (1974), p. 102
  25. ^ a b c d J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-7486-0276-3, pp. 41-55.
  26. ^ a b S. H. Rigby, ed., A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), ISBN 0-631-21785-1, pp. 111-6.
  27. ^ R. Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London: Routledge, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-415-27880-5, p. 78.
  28. ^ a b c C. A. Whatley, Scottish Society, 1707-1830: Beyond Jacobitism, Towards Industrialisation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), ISBN 071904541X, p. 17.
  29. ^ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0748602763, pp. 166-8.
  30. ^ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470-1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN 0748602763, pp. 172-3.
  31. ^ R. Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London: Routledge, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0415278805, pp. 291-3.
  32. ^ J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN 0140136495, pp. 226-9.
  33. ^ R. A. Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), ISBN 0521890888, p. 16.
  34. ^ a b R. Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London: Routledge, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0415278805, pp. 254-5.
  35. ^ a b c R. Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London: Routledge, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0415278805, pp. 291-2 and 301-2.
  36. ^ K. J. Cullen, Famine in Scotland: The “Ill Years” of the 1690s (Edinburgh University Press, 2010)
  37. ^ T. C. Smout, 'The Early Scottish Sugar Houses, 1660-1720', Economic History Review, 14:2 (1960), pp. 240–253.
  38. ^ E. Richards, Britannia's Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland since 1600 (Continuum, 2004), ISBN 1852854413, p. 79.
  39. ^ D. R. Hidalgo, "To Get Rich for Our Homeland: The Company of Scotland and the Colonization of the Darién", Colonial Latin American Historical Review, 10:3 (2001), p. 156.
  40. ^ Smout, "The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. I: The Economic Background" pp 455-67 in JSTOR
  41. ^ J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN 0140136495, pp. 288-91.
  42. ^ T. M. Devine, 'Scotland' in Roderick Floud, Paul Johnson (eds.)The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, Volume 1: industrialisation, 1700-1860 (2004), p. 406.
  43. ^ J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN 0140136495, pp. 288-91.
  44. ^ R. H. Campbell, "The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. II: The Economic Consequences," Economic History Review, April 1964 vol. 16, pp. 468-477 in JSTOR
  45. ^ Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (1963)
  46. ^ T. M. Devine, "The Colonial Trades and Industrial Investment in Scotland, c. 1700-1815," Economic History Review, Feb 1976, Vol. 29#1 pp. 1-13.
  47. ^ a b J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN 0140136495, p. 296.
  48. ^ T. M. Devine, "An Eighteenth-Century Business Élite: Glasgow-West India Merchants, C 1750-1815," Scottish Historical Review, April 1978, vol. 57#1 pp 40-67
  49. ^ Louise Miskell and C. A. Whatley, "'Juteopolis' in the Making: Linen and the Industrial Transformation of Dundee, c. 1820-1850," Textile History, Autumn 1999, vol. 30#2 pp. 176-98.
  50. ^ Alastair J. Durie, "The Markets for Scottish Linen, 1730-1775," Scottish Historical Review vol. 52, no. 153, Part 1 (April, 1973), pp. 30-49 in JSTOR
  51. ^ J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN 0140136495, pp. 292-3.
  52. ^ Alastair Durie, "Imitation in Scottish Eighteenth-Century Textiles: The Drive to Establish the Manufacture of Osnaburg Linen," Journal of Design History, 1993, vol. 6#2 pp. 71-6.
  53. ^ A. K. Cairncross, The Scottish economy (1953) p 10.
  54. ^ Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (1963)
  55. ^ C.H. Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom: the Economy and the Union in the twentieth century (Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 32-3.
  56. ^ Olive Checkland and Sydney Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832 - 1914 (2nd ed. 1989)
  57. ^ J. McCaffrey, Scotland in the Nineteenth Century (1998)
  58. ^ Richard Saville, Bank of Scotland: a history, 1695-1995 (1996)
  59. ^ M.J. Daunton, Progress and Poverty (1995) p 344
  60. ^ Tyler Cowen and Randall Kroszner, "Scottish Banking before 1845: A Model for Laissez-Faire?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking vol. 21, no. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 221-231 in JSTOR
  61. ^ Charles Alexander Malcolm, The history of the British Linen Bank (1950)
  62. ^ R. A. Houston and W. W. Knox, eds. The New Penguin History of Scotland (2001) p. xxxii.
  63. ^ Henry Hamilton, Industrial Revolution in Scotland (1966)
  64. ^ C.H. Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom: the Economy and the Union in the twentieth century (Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 43.
  65. ^ Bruce Lenman, and Kathleen Donaldson, "Partners' Incomes, Investment and Diversification in the Scottish Linen Area 1850–1921," Business History, Jan 1971, vol. 13#1 pp 1-18
  66. ^ C.H. Lee, British regional employment statistics, 1841-1971.
  67. ^ Christopher A. Whatley, "Scottish 'collier serfs', British coal workers? Aspects of Scottish collier society in the eighteenth century," Labour History Review, Fall 1995, vol. 60 Issue 2, pp 66-79
  68. ^ Alan Campbell, Scottish Miners, 1874-1939. vol. 1: Industry, Work & Community; The Scottish Miners, 1874-1939. Vol. 2: Trade Unions and Politics. (2000)
  69. ^ Checkland and Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832-1914, pp. 17-52.
  70. ^ Wray Vamplew, "Railways and the Transformation of the Scottish Economy," Economic History Review, Feb 1971, vol. 24, issue 1, pp. 37-54.
  71. ^ John Shields, Clyde built: a history of ship-building on the River Clyde (1949)
  72. ^ Ronald Johnston, ''Clydeside capital, 1870-1920: a social history of employers (2000)
  73. ^ J. Forbes Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire: Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network, 1823-1893 (2003) p 494
  74. ^ Michael S. Moss, "William Todd Lithgow - Founder of a Fortune," Scottish Historical Review, April 1983, vol. 62#1, pp. 47-72.
  75. ^ Joseph Melling, "Employers, Industrial Housing and the Evolution of Company Welfare Policies in Britain's Heavy Industry: West Scotland, 1870-1920," International Review of Social History, Dec 1981, vol. 26#3 pp. 255-301.
  76. ^ Henry Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections 1885-1910 (1960), p. 373.
  77. ^ Thomas Martin Devine, The transformation of rural Scotland: social change and the agrarian economy, 1660-1815 (Edinburgh UP, 1994)
  78. ^ Malcolm Gray, The Highland Economy, 1750-1850 (1957)
  79. ^ The burning of seaweed ("kelp") makes alkali used in the making of glass.
  80. ^ M. J. Daunton, Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-1850 (1995), p. 85.
  81. ^ Malcolm Gray, The Highland Economy, 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957).
  82. ^ C.H. Lee, British regional employment statistics, 1841-1971.
  83. ^ C.H. Lee, Scotland and the United Kingdom: The Economy and the Union in the twentieth century, (1995)
  84. ^ Public Health Scotland.
  85. ^ C.H. Lee, British regional employment statistics, 1841-1971.
  86. ^ Matt Vaughan Wilson, "The 1911 Waterfront Strikes in Glasgow: Trade Unions and Rank-and-File Militancy in the Labour Unrest of 1910–1914." International Review of Social History 53#2 (2008): 261-292.
  87. ^ Lewis Johnman and Hugh Murphy, "An Overview of the Economic and Social Effects of the Interwar Depression on Clydeside Shipbuilding Communities," International Journal of Maritime History, June 2006, Vol. 18#1 pp 227-254
  88. ^ A. J. Robertson, "Clydeside revisited: A reconsideration of the Clyde shipbuilding industry 1919-1938" in W. H. Chaloner and Barrie M. Ratcliffe, eds. Trade and transport (1977) pp. 258 et subs.
  89. ^ C. Reid, "Intermediation, Opportunism and the State Loans Debate in Scotland's Herring Fisheries before World War I," International Journal of Maritime History, June 2004, vol. 16#1 pp. 1-26.
  90. ^ U.K Fisheries annual statistics
  91. ^ "Has the Brexit fishing promise come true?". BBC News. 2023-02-06. Retrieved 2023-08-24.
  92. ^ Peter L. Payne, "The End of Steelmaking in Scotland, c. 1967-1993," Scottish Economic and Social History (1995) 15#1, pp 66-84
  93. ^ Richard Finlay, "Decay: 1975-1987," Modern Scotland: 1914-2000 (2004), ch. 9.
  94. ^ . UK Offshore Operators Association. Archived from the original on 2009-02-09. Retrieved 2008-11-29.
  95. ^ "1975: North Sea oil begins to flow". BBC. 1975-11-03. Retrieved 2010-01-03.
  96. ^ Sam McKinstry, "Transforming John Brown's Shipyard: The Drilling Rig and Offsore Fabrication Business of Marathon," Scottish Economic and Social History, 1998, vol. 18 Issue 1, pp. 33-60.

Bibliography Edit

  • Campbell, R. H. Scotland Since 1707: The Rise of an Industrial Society (2nd ed. 1985)
  • Houston, R.A. and W. Knox (eds), New Penguin History of Scotland, (2001). ISBN 0-14-026367-5
  • Lee, C.H. British regional employment statistics, 1841-1971, Statistical Series, county and regional employment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(1979) ISBN 052122666X
  • Lee, C.H. Scotland and the United Kingdom: The Economy and the Union in the twentieth century, Manchester: Manchester University Press.(1995) ISBN 0719041015
  • Lenman, Bruce. An Economic History of Modern Scotland, 1660-1976 (1977)
  • Lythe, S. G. E An economic history of Scotland, 1100-1939 (1975)
  • Mackie, J. D. A History of Scotland (1984) excerpt and text search
  • Lynch, Michael, ed. The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. (2007). 732 pp. excerpt and text search
  • McNeill, Peter G.B. and Hector L. MacQueen, eds. Atlas of Scottish History to 1707. Edinburgh: The Scottish Medievalists and Department of Geography, 1996.
  • Panton, Kenneth J. and Keith A. Cowlard. Historical Dictionary of the United Kingdom. Vol. 2: Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Scarecrow, 1998. 465 pp.
  • Smout, T. C., Alan R. MacDonald, and Fiona Watson. A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland, 1500-1920 (2007)

Since 1700 Edit

  • Campbell, Alan. Scottish Miners, 1874-1939. vol. 1: Industry, Work & Community; The Scottish Miners, 1874-1939. vol. 2: Trade Unions and Politics (2000)
  • Checkland, O. and S. Checkland. Industry and Ethos: Scotland 1832 - 1914 (1989), New History of Scotland excerpt and text search
  • Cooke, Anthony. The Rise and Fall of the Scottish Cotton Industry, 1778-1914 (Manchester University Press, 2010) 237 pages
  • Daunton, M.J. Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-1850 (1995)
  • Devine, Tom, Clive Lee, and George Peden. The Transformation of Scotland: The Economy since 1700 (2005) excerpt and text search
  • Hassan, Gerry ed., The Scottish Labour Party: History, Institutions and Ideas. (2004) 255pp. ISBN 0-7486-1784-1. stress is post 1950
  • Hamilton, Henry. An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (1963)
  • Hamilton, Henry. Industrial Revolution in Scotland (1966)
  • Hood, John. John Brown Engineering: power contractors to the world. (2004) 115pp, makers of heavy-duty gas turbines closed in 2001
  • Paterson, Lindsay, et al. Living in Scotland: social and economic change since 1980 (2004) 236pp. ISBN 0-7486-1785-X.
  • Turnock, David. Historical geography of Scotland since 1707: geographical aspects of modernisation (1982)
  • Weir, Ronald B. The History of the Distillers Company, 1877-1939: Diversification and Growth in Whisky and Chemicals. (1996). 417 pp.
  • BBC, 'Has the Brexit fishing promise come true?'https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/64430216

Primary sources Edit

UK Sea Fisheries https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-sea-fisheries-annual-statistics-report-2019

See also Edit

economic, history, scotland, economic, history, scotland, charts, economic, development, history, scotland, from, earliest, times, through, seven, centuries, independent, state, following, union, with, england, three, centuries, country, united, kingdom, befor. The economic history of Scotland charts economic development in the history of Scotland from earliest times through seven centuries as an independent state and following Union with England three centuries as a country of the United Kingdom Before 1700 Scotland was a poor rural area with few natural resources or advantages remotely located on the periphery of the European world Outward migration to England and to North America was heavy from 1700 well into the 20th century After 1800 the economy took off and industrialized rapidly with textile coal iron railroads and most famously shipbuilding and banking Glasgow was the centre of the Scottish economy After the end of the First World War in 1918 Scotland went into a steady economic decline shedding thousands of high paying engineering jobs and having very high rates of unemployment especially in the 1930s Wartime demand in the Second World War temporarily reversed the decline but conditions were difficult in the 1950s and 1960s The discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s brought new wealth and a new cycle of boom and bust even as the old industrial base had decayed 1 2 Glasgow shipyard in 1944 Contents 1 Earliest times 2 Middle Ages 2 1 Early Middle Ages 2 2 High Middle Ages 2 3 Late Middle Ages 3 Early modern era 3 1 Sixteenth century 3 2 Seventeenth century 3 3 18th century 3 4 Agriculture 3 5 Exports 3 6 Glasgow 3 7 Linen 4 19th century 4 1 Banking 4 2 Emigration 4 3 Industrial Revolution 4 4 Cities 4 4 1 Dundee 4 5 Coal 4 6 Railways 4 7 Shipbuilding 4 8 Rural life 5 20th century 5 1 Population 5 2 Trade unions 5 3 Ships 5 4 Fish 5 5 Deindustrialisation 5 6 Oil 6 See also 7 Notes 8 Bibliography 8 1 Since 1700 8 2 Primary sources 9 See alsoEarliest times EditMain article Agriculture in prehistoric Scotland nbsp The houses at Knap of Howar demonstrating the beginning of settled agriculture in ScotlandScotland is roughly half the size of England and Wales but has only between a fifth and a sixth of the amount of the arable or good pastoral land which made marginal pastoral farming and with its extensive coastline roughly the same amount of coastline as all of the rest of Great Britain at 4 000 miles 6 400 km fishing the key factors in the pre modern economy 3 Only a fifth of Scotland s land is under 60 metres above sea level Its east Atlantic position means that it has very heavy rainfall today about 700 cm per year in the east and over 1 000 cm in the west This encouraged the spread of blanket peat bog the acidity of which combined with high level of wind and salt spray made most of the islands treeless The existence of hills mountains quicksands and marshes made internal communication and conquest extremely difficult 4 Mesolithic hunter gatherer encampments are the first known settlements in the country and archaeologists have dated an encampment near Biggar to around 8500 BC 5 Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements and the wonderfully well preserved stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray dating from 3500 BC predates by about 500 years the village of similar houses at Skara Brae on West Mainland Orkney 6 From the commencement of the Bronze Age to about 2000 BC the archaeological record shows a decline in the number of large new stone buildings constructed Pollen analyses suggest that at this time woodland increased at the expense of the area under cultivation Bronze and Iron Age metalworking was slowly introduced to Scotland from Europe over a lengthy period Scotland s population grew to perhaps 300 000 in the second millennium BC 7 8 Following a series of military successes in the south forces led by Gnaeus Julius Agricola entered Scotland in 79 and later sent a fleet of galleys around the coast as far as the Orkney Islands The geographer Ptolemy s identified 19 towns from intelligence gathered during the Agricolan campaigns No archaeological evidence of any truly urban places has been found from this time and the names may have indicated hill forts or temporary market and meeting places and most of the names are obscure 9 Archaeology and dendrochronology suggests that the occupation of southern Scotland started before the arrival of Agricola Whatever the exact dating for the next 300 years Rome had some presence along the southern border Middle Ages EditMain article Economy of Scotland in the Middle Ages Early Middle Ages Edit 476 AD 1000 ADThe early Middle Ages was a period of climate deterioration with a drop in temperature and an increase in rainfall resulting in more land becoming unproductive 10 Lacking the urban centres created under the Romans in the rest of Britain the economy of Scotland in the early Middle Ages was overwhelmingly agricultural With a lack of significant transport links and wider markets most farms had to produce a self sufficient diet of meat dairy products and cereals supplemented by hunter gathering Limited archaeological evidence indicates that throughout Northern Britain farming was based around a single homestead or a small cluster of three or four homes each probably containing a nuclear family with relationships likely to be common among neighbouring houses and settlements reflecting the partition of land through inheritance 11 Farming became based around a system that distinguished between the infield around the settlement where crops were grown every year and the outfield further away and where crops were grown and then left fallow in different years in a system that would continue until the 18th century 12 The evidence of bones indicates that cattle were by far the most important domesticated animal followed by pigs sheep and goats while domesticated fowl were very rare Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working 13 High Middle Ages Edit around AD 1000 to 1250 Main article Economy of Scotland in the High Middle Ages nbsp Burghs established in Scotland before the accession of Mael Coluim these were essentially Scotland proper s first towns Although the Scottish economy of this period was still dominated by agriculture and by short distance local trade there was an increasing amount of foreign trade in the period as well as exchange gained by means of military plunder By the end of this period coins were replacing barter goods but for most of this period most exchange was done without the use of metal currency 14 Most of Scotland s agricultural wealth in this period came from pastoralism rather than arable farming Arable farming grew significantly in the Norman period but with geographical differences low lying areas being subject to more arable farming than high lying areas such as the Highlands Galloway and the Southern Uplands Galloway in the words of G W S Barrow already famous for its cattle was so overwhelmingly pastoral that there is little evidence in that region of land under any permanent cultivation save along the Solway coast 15 The average amount of land used by a husbandman in Scotland might have been around 26 acres 16 There is a lot of evidence that the native Scots favoured pastoralism in that Gaelic lords were happier to give away more land to French and Middle English speaking settlers whilst holding on tenaciously to more high lying regions perhaps contributing to the Highland Galloway Lowland division that emerged in Scotland in the later Middle Ages 17 The main unit of land measurement in Scotland was the davoch i e vat called the arachor in Lennox This unit is also known as the Scottish ploughgate In English speaking Lothian it was simply ploughgate 18 It may have measured about 104 acres 0 42 km2 19 divided into 4 raths 20 Cattle pigs and cheeses were among the most produced foodstuffs 21 but of course a vast range of foodstuffs were produced from sheep and fish rye and barley to bee wax and honey Pre Davidian Scotland had no known chartered burghs though most if not all of the burghs granted charters by the crown already existed long before the reign of David I His charters gave them legal status a new form of recognition Scotland outside Lothian Lanarkshire Roxburghshire Berwickshire Angus Aberdeenshire and Fife at least largely was populated by scattered hamlets and outside that area lacked the continental style nucleated village David I established the first chartered burghs in Scotland copying the burgher charters and Leges Burgorum rules governing virtually every aspect of life and work in a burgh almost verbatim from the English customs of Newcastle Upon Tyne 22 Early burgesses were usually Flemish English French and German rather than Gaelic Scots The burgh s vocabulary was composed totally of either Germanic and French terms 23 The councils which ran individual burghs were individually known as lie doussane meaning the dozen 24 Late Middle Ages Edit around 1300 1500 nbsp The economy of Scotland in the 14th centuryIn this period with difficult terrain poor roads and methods of transport there was little trade between different areas of the country and most settlements depended on what was produced locally often with very little in reserve in bad years Most farming was based on the lowland fermtoun or highland baile settlements of a handful of families that jointly farmed an area notionally suitable for two or three plough teams allocated in run rigs to tenant farmers They usually ran downhill so that they included both wet and dry land helping to offset some of the problems of extreme weather conditions Most ploughing was done with a heavy wooden plough with an iron coulter pulled by oxen which were more effective and cheaper to feed than horses Obligations to the local lord usually included supplying oxen for ploughing the lord s land on an annual basis and the much resented obligation to grind corn at the lord s mill 25 The rural economy appears to have boomed in the 13th century and in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death was still buoyant but by the 1360s there was a severe falling off incomes that can be seen in clerical benefices of between a third and half compared with the beginning of the era to be followed by a slow recovery in the 15th century 26 Most of the burghs were on the east coast and among them were the largest and wealthiest including Aberdeen Perth and Edinburgh whose growth was facilitated by trade with the continent Although in the south west Glasgow was beginning to develop and Ayr and Kirkcudbright had occasional links with Spain and France sea trade with Ireland was much less profitable In addition to the major royal burghs this era saw the proliferation of less baronial and ecclesiastical burghs with 51 being created between 1450 and 1516 Most of these were much smaller than their royal counterparts excluded from international trade they mainly acted as local markets and centres of craftsmanship 27 In general burghs probably carried out far more local trading with their hinterlands relying on them for food raw materials The wool trade was a major export at the beginning of the period but the introduction of sheep scab was a serious blow to the trade and it began to decline as an export from the early 15th century and despite a levelling off there was another drop in exports as the markets collapsed in the early 16th century Low Countries Unlike in England this did not prompt the Scots to turn to large scale cloth production and only poor quality rough cloths seem to have been significant 25 There were relatively few developed crafts in Scotland in this period although by the later 15th century there were the beginnings of a native iron casting industry which led to the production of cannon and of the silver and goldsmithing for which the country would later be known As a result the most important exports were unprocessed raw materials including wool hides salt fish animals and coal while Scotland remained frequently short of wood iron and in years of bad harvests grain 25 Exports of hides and particularly salmon where the Scots held a decisive advantage in quality over their rivals appear to have held up much better than wool despite the general economic downturn in Europe in the aftermath of the plague 26 The growing desire among the court lords upper clergy and wealthier merchants for luxury goods that largely had to be imported led to a chronic shortage of bullion This and perennial problems in royal finance led to several debasements of the coinage with the amount of silver in a penny being cut to almost a fifth between the late 14th century and the late 15th century The heavily debased black money introduced in 1480 had to be withdrawn two years later and may have helped fuel a financial and political crisis 25 Early modern era EditMain article Economy of Scotland in the early modern era Sixteenth century Edit nbsp A section of drover s road at Cotkerse near Blairlogie Scotland From the mid sixteenth century Scotland experienced a decline in demand for exports of cloth and wool to the continent Scots responded by selling larger quantities of traditional goods increasing the output of salt herring and coal 28 The late sixteenth century was an era of economic distress probably exacerbated by increasing taxation and the devaluation of the currency In 1582 a pound of silver produced 640 shillings but in 1601 it was 960 and the exchange rate with England was 6 Scots to 1 sterling in 1565 but by 1601 it had fallen to 12 Wages rose rapidly by between four or five times between 1560 and the end of the century but failed to keep pace with inflation This situation was punctuated by frequent harvest failures with almost half the years in the second half of the sixteenth century seeing local or national scarcity necessitating the shipping of large quantities of grain from the Baltic Distress was also exacerbated by outbreaks of plague with major epidemics in the periods 1584 8 and 1597 1609 29 There were the beginnings of industrial manufacture in this period often utilising expertise from the continent which included a failed attempt to use Flemings to teach new techniques in the developing cloth industry in the north east but more successful in bringing a Venetian to help develop a native glass blowing industry George Bruce used German techniques to solve the drainage problems of his coal mine at Culross In 1596 the Society of Brewer s was established in Edinburgh and the importing of English hops allowed the brewing of Scottish beer 30 Seventeenth century Edit In the early seventeenth century famine was relatively common with four periods of famine prices between 1620 and 1625 The invasions of the 1640s had a profound impact on the Scottish economy with the destruction of crops and the disruption of markets resulting in some of the most rapid price rises of the century 31 Under the Commonwealth the country was relatively highly taxed but gained access to English markets 32 After the Restoration the formal frontier with England was re established along with its customs duties Economic conditions were generally favourable from 1660 to 1688 as land owners promoted better tillage and cattle raising 28 The monopoly of royal burghs over foreign trade was partially ended by and Act of 1672 leaving them with the old luxuries of wines silk spices and dyes and opening up trade of increasingly significant salt coal corn and hides and imports from the Americas The English Navigation Acts limited the ability of the Scots to engage in what would have been lucrative trading with England s growing colonies but these were often circumvented with Glasgow becoming an increasingly important commercial centre opening up trade with the American colonies importing sugar from the West Indies and tobacco from Virginia and Maryland Exports across the Atlantic included linen woollen goods coal and grindstones 28 The English protective tariffs on salt and cattle were harder to disregard and probably placed greater limitations on the Scottish economy despite attempts of the King to have it overturned However by the end of the century the drovers roads stretching down from the Highlands through south west Scotland to north east England had become firmly established 33 Scottish attempts to counter this with tariffs of their own were largely unsuccessful as Scotland had relatively few vital exports to protect Attempts by the Privy Council to build up luxury industries in cloth mills soap works sugar boiling houses gunpowder and paper works proved largely unsuccessful 34 nbsp The colony of New Caledonia on the Isthmus of Darien The closing decade of the seventeenth century saw the generally favourable economic conditions that had dominated since the Restoration come to an end There was a slump in trade with the Baltic and France from 1689 to 1691 caused by French protectionism and changes in the Scottish cattle trade followed by four years of failed harvests 1695 1696 and 1698 9 known as the seven ill years 35 The result was severe famine and depopulation particularly in the north 36 The famines of the 1690s were seem as particularly severe partly because famine had become relatively rare in the second half of the seventeenth century with only one year of dearth in 1674 and the shortages of the 1690s would be the last of their kind 34 The Parliament of Scotland of 1695 enacted proposals that might help the desperate economic situation including setting up the Bank of Scotland Recently founded sugar houses were encouraged in Glasgow and Leith 37 The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies received a charter to raise capital through public subscription 35 The Company of Scotland invested in the Darien scheme an ambitious plan devised by William Paterson the Scottish founder of the Bank of England to build a colony on the Isthmus of Panama in the hope of establishing trade with the Far East 38 Since the capital resources of the Edinburgh merchants and landholder elite were insufficient the company appealed to middling social ranks who responded with patriotic fervour to the call for money the lower orders volunteered as colonists 39 The project proved a disaster with only one ship and 1 000 colonists returning home The cost of 150 000 put a severe strain on the Scottish commercial system 35 18th century Edit Main article History of Scotland 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 British Empire The Scottish parliament voted on 6 January 1707 by 110 to 69 to adopt the Treaty of Union It was 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 England had about five times the population of Scotland at the time and about 36 times as much wealth 40 Agriculture Edit Contacts with England led to a conscious attempt to improve agriculture among the gentry and nobility Turnips and cabbages were introduced lands enclosed and marshes drained lime was put down roads built and woods planted Drilling and sowing and crop rotation were introduced The introduction of the potato to Scotland in 1739 greatly improved the diet of the peasantry Enclosures began to displace the runrig system and free pasture The Society of Improvers was founded in 1723 including in its 300 members dukes earls lairds and landlords 41 Scottish proprietors had greater legal powers to direct agrarian improvements than their English counterparts For example they could evict tenants at the end of leases allowing greater freedom to consolidate land and determine the composition of their tenantry Further landowners were able to insert improvement clauses into lease contracts and ensure tenants complied through the Sherriff Courts 42 The Lothians became a major centre of grain Ayrshire of cattle breeding and the borders of sheep However although some estate holders improved the quality of life of their displaced workers enclosures led to unemployment and forced migrations to the burghs or abroad 43 Exports Edit The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear primarily because Scotland was too poor to exploit the opportunities of the greatly expanded free market Some progress was visible by 1750 such as the sales of linen and cattle to England the cash flows from military service and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740 However Glasgow immediately re exported nearly all the tobacco so it did not stimulate local business and that port exported few Scottish products The tobacco trade collapsed during the American Revolution when it sources were cut off by the British blockade of American ports An important new trade to develop with the West Indies that made up for the loss of the tobacco business 44 The Scottish Enlightenment was indeed a remarkable intellectual event but it had few direct benefits for the economy at large Scotland in 1700 was a poor rural agricultural society with a population of 1 3 million Its transformation into a rich leader of modern industry came suddenly and unexpectedly 45 Glasgow Edit In Glasgow merchants who profited from the American trade in the 1730 1790 era 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 46 Initially relying on hired ships by 1736 it had 67 of its own a third of which were trading with the New World Glasgow emerged as the focus of the tobacco trade re exporting particularly to France The merchants dealing in this lucrative business became the wealthy tobacco lords who dominated the city for most of the century 47 By 1790 the expanded and prosperous trade with the West Indies reflected the extensive growth of the cotton industry the British sweet tooth and the demand in the West Indies for herring and linen goods During 1750 1815 78 Glasgow merchants not only specialized in the importation of sugar cotton and rum from the West Indies but diversified their interests by purchasing West Indian plantations Scottish estates or cotton mills They were not to be self perpetuating due to the hazards of the trade the incident of bankruptcy and the changing complexity of Glasgow s economy 48 Other burghs also benefited Greenock enlarged its port in 1710 and sent its first ship to the Americas in 1719 but was soon playing a major part in importing sugar and rum 47 Linen Edit The linen industry was Scotland s premier industry in the 18th century and formed the basis for the later cotton jute 49 and woollen industries as well 50 The Scottish members of parliament managed to see off an attempt to impose an export duty on linen and from 1727 it received subsidies of 2 750 a year for six years resulting in a considerable expansion of the trade Paisley adopted Dutch methods and became a major centre of production Glasgow manufactured for the export trade which doubled between 1725 and 1738 51 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 subsidized 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 52 19th century EditMain article Industrial Revolution in Scotland nbsp Evidence of high infant mortality on an Edinburgh gravestoneScotland s population grew steadily in the 19th century from 1 608 000 in the census of 1801 to 2 889 000 in 1851 and 4 472 000 in 1901 53 The economy traditionally based on agriculture 54 began to industrialize after 1790 At first the leading industry based in the west was the spinning and weaving of cotton In 1861 the American Civil War suddenly cut off the supplies of raw cotton and caused serious social distress before peace was imposed with the defeat of the Confederacy and the restoration of the Union Textile production recovered thereafter concentrated especially in Paisley Renfrewshire and by the end of the century J amp P Coats arguably the first multinational industrial corporation in the world was globally synonymous with cotton thread and the largest industrial company in the United Kingdom 55 Thanks to its many entrepreneurs and engineers and its large stock of easily mined coal Scotland became a world centre for engineering shipbuilding and locomotive construction with steel replacing iron after 1870 56 Liberalism emerged from urban Scotland the free trade sentiments and strong individualism of entrepreneurs merging with the radical emphasis on education and self reliance as a means of community betterment Despite political challenges especially by the 1900s these distinctive liberal values remained strong 57 Banking Edit nbsp The former Head Office of the British Linen Bank in St Andrew Square Edinburgh Now offices of the Bank of Scotland The first Scottish banks Bank of Scotland Edinburgh 1695 the Royal Bank of Scotland Edinburgh 1727 are still in operation 58 By the early 19th century Glasgow had strong banks as well and Scotland had a flourishing financial system There were over 400 branches amounting to one office per 7000 people double the level in England The banks were more lightly regulated than those in England Historians often emphasize that the flexibility and dynamism of the Scottish banking system contributed significantly to the rapid development of the economy in the 19th century 59 60 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 Renamed British Linen Bank in 1906 it was one of Scotland s premier banks until it was bought out by the Bank of Scotland in 1969 61 Emigration Edit Even with the growth of industry there never were enough good jobs so during the 1841 1931 era about 2 million Scots emigrated to North America and Australia and another 750 000 relocated to England By the 21st century there were about as many people of Scottish descent in both Canada see Scotch Canadians and the U S see Scottish American as the 5 million remaining in Scotland 62 Industrial Revolution Edit During the Industrial Revolution Scotland became one of the commercial intellectual and industrial powerhouses of the British Empire 63 Beginning about 1790 the most important industry in the west of Scotland became textiles especially the spinning and weaving of cotton which flourished until the American Civil War in 1861 cut off the supplies of raw cotton However by that time Scotland had developed heavy industries based on its coal and iron resources The invention of the hot blast for smelting iron 1828 had revolutionized the Scottish iron industry and Scotland became a centre for engineering shipbuilding and locomotive construction Toward the end of the 19th century steel production largely replaced iron production Emigrant Andrew Carnegie built the American steel industry and spent much of his time and philanthropy in Scotland Cities Edit As the 19th century wore on Lowland Scotland turned more and more towards heavy industry Glasgow and the River Clyde became a major shipbuilding centre Glasgow became one of the largest cities in the world and known as the Second City of the Empire after London The industrial developments while they brought work and wealth were so rapid that housing town planning and provision for public health did not keep pace with them and for a time living conditions in some of the towns and cities were notoriously bad with overcrowding high infant mortality and growing rates of tuberculosis 64 Dundee Edit Dundee upgraded its harbour and established itself as an industrial and trading centre Dundee s industrial heritage was based on the three Js jute jam and journalism East central Scotland became too heavily dependent on linens hemp and jute Despite the cyclical nature of the trade which periodically ruined weaker companies profits held up well in the 19th century Typical firms were family affairs even after the introduction of limited liability in the 1890s The profits helped make the city an important source of overseas investment especially in North America However the profits were seldom invested locally apart from the linen trade The reasons were that low wages limited local consumption and because there were no important natural resources thus the Dundee region offered little opportunity for profitable industrial diversification 65 Coal Edit nbsp National Mining Museum of Scotland at Newtongrange Midlothian showing a move from heavy industry to tourism about heavy industryCoal mining became a major industry and coal production expanded into the 20th century producing the fuel to heat homes and factories and drive steam engines locomotives and steamships and the raw materials required by the chemical industry In 1841 26 147 workers were employed in Scottish mines and quarries by 1911 there were 155 691 66 The early stereotype of Scottish colliers as brutish non religious and socially isolated serfs 67 was an exaggeration for their life style resembled coal miners everywhere with a strong emphasis on masculinity egalitarianism group solidarity and support for radical labour movements 68 Railways Edit Britain was the world leader in the construction of railways and their use to expand trade and coal supplies The first line opened in 1831 Not only was good passenger service established by the late 1840s but an excellent network of freight lines reduce the cost of shipping coal and made products manufactured in Scotland competitive throughout Britain For example railways open the London market to Scottish beef and milk They enabled the Aberdeen Angus to become a cattle breed of worldwide reputation 69 70 Shipbuilding Edit nbsp RMS Queen Mary was built in Glasgow at the John Brown amp Company shipyardShipbuilding on Clydeside the river Clyde through Glasgow and other points reached its peak in the years in the 1900 1918 era with an output of 370 ships completed in 1913 and even more during the First World War The total output from some 300 firms that is 30 40 at any one time exceeded 25 000 ships 71 The first small yards were opened in 1712 at the Scott family s shipyard at Greenock After 1860 the Clydeside shipyards specialized in steamships made of iron after 1870 made of steel which rapidly replaced the wooden sailing vessels of both the merchant fleets and the battle fleets of the world It became the world s pre eminent shipbuilding centre Clydebuilt became an industry benchmark of quality and the river s shipyards were given contracts for warships as well as prestigious liners such as the Queen Mary nbsp Surviving cranes at the former Fairfield shipyard in GovanMajor firms included Denny of Dumbarton Scotts Shipbuilding amp Engineering Company of Greenock Lithgows of Port Glasgow Simon and Lobnitz of Renfrew Alexander Stephen amp Sons of Linthouse Fairfield of Govan Inglis of Pointhouse Barclay Curle of Whiteinch Connell and Yarrow of Scotstoun Equally important were the engineering firms that supplied the machinery to drive these vessels the boilers and pumps and steering gear Rankin amp Blackmore Hastie s and Kincaid s of Greenock Rowan s of Finnieston Weir s of Cathcart Howden s of Tradeston and Babcock amp Wilcox of Renfrew 72 The biggest customer was Sir William Mackinnon who ran five shipping companies in the 19th century from his base in Glasgow 73 A representative entrepreneur in Glasgow was William Lithgow 1854 1908 who at the age of 16 inherited 1 000 and at his death left a fortune of 1 75 million Starting with partners whom he later bought out he employed innovative designs and concepts such as interchangeable components helped finance his customers by purchasing shares in their ships and continuously expanded his shipyard When rivals went bankrupt during the depression years of the 1880s and 1890s Lithgows survived His children and grandchildren built the company into the world s largest private shipbuilding firm by 1950 but the family sold the yards to the government in 1977 and diversified their holdings into other industries 74 The companies attracted rural workers as well as immigrants from Catholic Ireland by inexpensive company housing that was a dramatic move upward from the inner city slums This paternalistic policy led many owners to endorse government sponsored housing programs as well as self help projects among the respectable working class 75 Rural life Edit A handful of powerful families typified by the dukes of Argyll Atholl Buccleuch and Sutherland owned an enormous quantity of land and until 1885 had great influence on political affairs The concentration of land ownership is illustrated by in 1878 68 persons owning nearly half of Scotland and 580 people owning over three quarters 76 nbsp One of a cluster of deserted and ruinous cottages on the north side of Loch Tay Perthshire The area was affected by the so called Breadalbane Clearances of the 1840s Agriculture in the Lowlands was steadily upgraded after 1700 and standards remained high 77 However after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 when Britain adopted a free trade policy grain imports from America undermined the profitability of crop production The result was a continuous exodus from the land to the cities or further afield to England Canada America or Australia citation needed The traditional landed interests held their own politically in the face of the rapidly growing urban middle classes for the electoral reforms of mid century were less far reaching in Scotland than in England The landed interests managed to ensure that the political weight of numbers was skewed disproportionately in their favour The Highlands meanwhile were very poor and traditional with few connections to the uplift of the Scottish Enlightenment and little role in the Industrial Revolution 78 The 100 or so wealthiest landlords needed cash to maintain their position in London society and had less need of soldiers now that warfare had abated Therefore they turned to money rents displaced farmers to raise sheep and downplayed the traditional patriarchal relationship that had historically sustained the clans A new group appeared the crofters emerging for the first time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries They were poor families living on crofts or very small rented farms used to raise potatoes with kelping 79 fishing and spinning of linen and military service as important sources of revenue 80 The era of the Napoleonic wars 1790 1815 brought prosperity optimism and economic growth to the Highlands The economy grew thanks to wages paid by kelping industry where men burned kelp for the ashes fisheries and weaving as well as large scale infrastructure spending such as the Caledonian Canal project On the East Coast farmlands were improved and high prices for cattle brought money to the community Service in the Army was also attractive to young men from Highlands who sent pay home and retired there with their army pensions 81 page needed The prosperity ended after 1815 and long run negative factors began to undermine the economic position of the poor tenant farmers or crofters as they were called The adoption by the landowners of a market orientation in the century after 1750 dissolved the traditional social and economic structure of the north west Highlands and Hebrides Islands causing great disruption for the crofters The Highland Clearances and the end of the township system followed changes in land ownership and tenancy and the replacement of cattle by sheep 20th century EditPopulation Edit The population of Scotland expanded at a modest rate in the early 20th century growing from 4 760 904 reported in the census of 1911 to 5 096 415 in 1951 82 thereafter it stabilised at just a little over 5 million people 83 the Census of 2001 enumerated a population of 5 064 200 84 The employment structure in Scotland as in the rest of the United Kingdom reflected the growth of the services sector at the relative expense of manufacturing 85 Trade unions Edit Scottish workers played a major role in the nationwide industrial upheavals of 1910 14 The National Sailors and Firemen s Union Directed strike activities in many port cities across Britain while activists in the Glasgow Trades Council took the lead locally The strongly local character of the strike movement and its leadership in Glasgow shaped both the strikes themselves which were more unified and coherent in Glasgow than in some other centres and the subsequent development of waterfront organisation on the Clyde marked as it was by the emergence of independent locally based unions among both dockers and seamen 86 Ships Edit Clydeside shipyards before the 1914 had been the busiest in the world turning out more than one third of the entire British output They expanded dramatically during the war primarily to produce transports of the sort that German submarines were busy sinking Confident of postwar expansion the companies borrowed heavily to expand their facilities But after the war employment tumbled as the yards proved too big too expensive and too inefficient in any case world demand was down The most skilled craftsmen were especially hard hit because there were few alternative uses for their specialised skills 87 A serious weakness on the engineering side was a lag in developing the new technology of turbine engines diesel engines and welding techniques The yards went into a long period of decline interrupted only by the Second World War s temporary expansion In the 21st century only a handful of shipyards remain active 88 Fish Edit The years before the First World War were the golden age of the inshore fisheries The main port was Aberdeen Landings reached new heights and Scottish catches dominated Europe s herring trade accounting for one third of the British catch The boats employed 34 000 men in 1911 with another 50 000 women on shore employed part time in processing High productivity came about thanks to the transition to more productive steam powered boats while the rest of Europe s fishing fleets were slower because they were still powered by sails Scotland s fishermen had acquired nearly one thousand steam drifters by 1914 valued over two million pounds However the escalating level of capital expenditure necessitated new sources of capital it came principally from merchants and fish salesmen The fishermen now had to share their profits and became entangled in informal contracts tie in sales and fast accumulating debts The shared cultural background facilitated mutual trust The option of state intervention and government money was debated and rejected 89 By 2001 Peterhead was by far the largest fish landing port in Europe taken together with neighbouring Fraserburgh a third of the fish landed in UK was landed in the North East of Scotland 90 Nevertheless in common with other UK fishing ports landed catch in Peterhead fell by nearly 20 after the UK left the European Union 91 Deindustrialisation Edit Deindustrialisation took place rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s as most of the traditional industries drastically shrank or were completely closed down A new service oriented economy emerged to replace traditional heavy industries 92 93 Oil Edit Main article North Sea oil Since the Second World War the economy has been fully integrated into the overall British economy with the most distinctive feature being the discovery of oil offshore in the North Sea The oil brought new wealth and new people to the most isolated areas The discovery of the giant Forties oilfield in October 1970 was an initial sign that Scotland was about to become a major oil producing nation a view confirmed when Shell Expro discovered the giant Brent oilfield in the northern North Sea east of Shetland the following year Oil production started from the Argyll field now Ardmore in June 1975 94 followed by Forties in November of that year 95 John Brown amp Company s shipyard at Clydebank transformed itself from a traditional shipbuilding business to a factor in the high technology offshore oil and gas drilling industry After 1972 the firm has been owned by three multinational corporations and its adaptation to drilling has been affected by the complexities of fluctuating international markets and changing technologies Employment in the yard is far lower 96 See also EditEconomic history of the United Kingdom History of trade unions in the United KingdomNotes Edit R A Houston A and W Knox eds New Penguin History of Scotland 2001 Bruce Lenman An Economic History of Modern Scotland 1660 1976 1977 E Gemmill and N J Mayhew Changing Values in Medieval Scotland a Study of Prices Money and Weights and Measures Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1995 ISBN 0 521 47385 3 pp 8 10 C Harvie Scotland a Short History Oxford Oxford University Press 2002 ISBN 0 19 210054 8 pp 10 11 Signs of Earliest Scots Unearthed BBC News 2009 04 09 Retrieved 2009 07 15 C Arnold Stone Age Farmers Beside the Sea Scotland s Prehistoric Village of Skara Brae Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 1997 ISBN 0 395 77601 5 p 13 A Moffat Before Scotland The Story of Scotland Before History London Thames and Hudson 2005 pp 154 158 and 161 Whittington Graeme and Edwards Kevin J 1994 Palynology as a predictive tool in archaeology pdf Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 124 pp 55 65 A Moffat Before Scotland The Story of Scotland Before History London Thames and Hudson 2005 pp 268 70 P Fouracre and R McKitterick eds The New Cambridge Medieval History c 500 c 700 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2005 ISBN 0 521 36291 1 p 234 A Woolf From Pictland to Alba 789 1070 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2007 ISBN 0 7486 1234 3 pp 17 20 H P R Finberg The Formation of England 550 1042 London Paladin 1974 ISBN 978 0 586 08248 5 p 204 K J Edwards and I Ralston Scotland after the Ice Age Environment Archaeology and History 8000 BC AD 1000 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2003 ISBN 0 7486 1736 1 p 230 Stringer Emergence of a Nation State pp 66 69 Barrow Kingship and Unity 1981 p 12 Barrow Kingship and Unity 1981 p 18 e g for Galloway Oram Lordship pp 212 213 for Strathearn and Lennox see Neville Native Lordship pp 79 130 Barrow Kingship and Unity p 12 15 Barrow Kingship and Unity 1981 p 15 Neville Native Lordship p 96 Driscoll Alba 2002 p 53 Barrow Kingship and unity p 98 Murison Linguistic Relations 1974 p 74 Murison Linguistic Relations 1974 p 102 a b c d J Wormald Court Kirk and Community Scotland 1470 1625 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1991 ISBN 0 7486 0276 3 pp 41 55 a b S H Rigby ed A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages Oxford Wiley Blackwell 2003 ISBN 0 631 21785 1 pp 111 6 R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0 415 27880 5 p 78 a b c C A Whatley Scottish Society 1707 1830 Beyond Jacobitism Towards Industrialisation Manchester Manchester University Press 2000 ISBN 071904541X p 17 J Wormald Court Kirk and Community Scotland 1470 1625 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1991 ISBN 0748602763 pp 166 8 J Wormald Court Kirk and Community Scotland 1470 1625 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1991 ISBN 0748602763 pp 172 3 R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0415278805 pp 291 3 J D Mackie B Lenman and G Parker A History of Scotland London Penguin 1991 ISBN 0140136495 pp 226 9 R A Houston Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England 1600 1800 Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2002 ISBN 0521890888 p 16 a b R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0415278805 pp 254 5 a b c R Mitchison A History of Scotland London Routledge 3rd edn 2002 ISBN 0415278805 pp 291 2 and 301 2 K J Cullen Famine in Scotland The Ill Years of the 1690s Edinburgh University Press 2010 T C Smout The Early Scottish Sugar Houses 1660 1720 Economic History Review 14 2 1960 pp 240 253 E Richards Britannia s Children Emigration from England Scotland Wales and Ireland since 1600 Continuum 2004 ISBN 1852854413 p 79 D R Hidalgo To Get Rich for Our Homeland The Company of Scotland and the Colonization of the Darien Colonial Latin American Historical Review 10 3 2001 p 156 Smout The Anglo Scottish Union of 1707 I The Economic Background pp 455 67 in JSTOR J D Mackie B Lenman and G Parker A History of Scotland London Penguin 1991 ISBN 0140136495 pp 288 91 T M Devine Scotland in Roderick Floud Paul Johnson eds The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain Volume 1 industrialisation 1700 1860 2004 p 406 J D Mackie B Lenman and G Parker A History of Scotland London Penguin 1991 ISBN 0140136495 pp 288 91 R H Campbell The Anglo Scottish Union of 1707 II The Economic Consequences Economic History Review April 1964 vol 16 pp 468 477 in JSTOR Henry Hamilton An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century 1963 T M Devine The Colonial Trades and Industrial Investment in Scotland c 1700 1815 Economic History Review Feb 1976 Vol 29 1 pp 1 13 a b J D Mackie B Lenman and G Parker A History of Scotland London Penguin 1991 ISBN 0140136495 p 296 T M Devine An Eighteenth Century Business Elite Glasgow West India Merchants C 1750 1815 Scottish Historical Review April 1978 vol 57 1 pp 40 67 Louise Miskell and C A Whatley Juteopolis in the Making Linen and the Industrial Transformation of Dundee c 1820 1850 Textile History Autumn 1999 vol 30 2 pp 176 98 Alastair J Durie The Markets for Scottish Linen 1730 1775 Scottish Historical Review vol 52 no 153 Part 1 April 1973 pp 30 49 in JSTOR J D Mackie B Lenman and G Parker A History of Scotland London Penguin 1991 ISBN 0140136495 pp 292 3 Alastair Durie Imitation in Scottish Eighteenth Century Textiles The Drive to Establish the Manufacture of Osnaburg Linen Journal of Design History 1993 vol 6 2 pp 71 6 A K Cairncross The Scottish economy 1953 p 10 Henry Hamilton An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century 1963 C H Lee Scotland and the United Kingdom the Economy and the Union in the twentieth century Manchester University Press 1995 p 32 3 Olive Checkland and Sydney Checkland Industry and Ethos Scotland 1832 1914 2nd ed 1989 J McCaffrey Scotland in the Nineteenth Century 1998 Richard Saville Bank of Scotland a history 1695 1995 1996 M J Daunton Progress and Poverty 1995 p 344 Tyler Cowen and Randall Kroszner Scottish Banking before 1845 A Model for Laissez Faire Journal of Money Credit and Banking vol 21 no 2 May 1989 pp 221 231 in JSTOR Charles Alexander Malcolm The history of the British Linen Bank 1950 R A Houston and W W Knox eds The New Penguin History of Scotland 2001 p xxxii Henry Hamilton Industrial Revolution in Scotland 1966 C H Lee Scotland and the United Kingdom the Economy and the Union in the twentieth century Manchester University Press 1995 p 43 Bruce Lenman and Kathleen Donaldson Partners Incomes Investment and Diversification in the Scottish Linen Area 1850 1921 Business History Jan 1971 vol 13 1 pp 1 18 C H Lee British regional employment statistics 1841 1971 Christopher A Whatley Scottish collier serfs British coal workers Aspects of Scottish collier society in the eighteenth century Labour History Review Fall 1995 vol 60 Issue 2 pp 66 79 Alan Campbell Scottish Miners 1874 1939 vol 1 Industry Work amp Community The Scottish Miners 1874 1939 Vol 2 Trade Unions and Politics 2000 Checkland and Checkland Industry and Ethos Scotland 1832 1914 pp 17 52 Wray Vamplew Railways and the Transformation of the Scottish Economy Economic History Review Feb 1971 vol 24 issue 1 pp 37 54 John Shields Clyde built a history of ship building on the River Clyde 1949 Ronald Johnston Clydeside capital 1870 1920 a social history of employers 2000 J Forbes Munro Maritime Enterprise and Empire Sir William Mackinnon and His Business Network 1823 1893 2003 p 494 Michael S Moss William Todd Lithgow Founder of a Fortune Scottish Historical Review April 1983 vol 62 1 pp 47 72 Joseph Melling Employers Industrial Housing and the Evolution of Company Welfare Policies in Britain s Heavy Industry West Scotland 1870 1920 International Review of Social History Dec 1981 vol 26 3 pp 255 301 Henry Pelling Social Geography of British Elections 1885 1910 1960 p 373 Thomas Martin Devine The transformation of rural Scotland social change and the agrarian economy 1660 1815 Edinburgh UP 1994 Malcolm Gray The Highland Economy 1750 1850 1957 The burning of seaweed kelp makes alkali used in the making of glass M J Daunton Progress and Poverty An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700 1850 1995 p 85 Malcolm Gray The Highland Economy 1750 1850 Edinburgh 1957 C H Lee British regional employment statistics 1841 1971 C H Lee Scotland and the United Kingdom The Economy and the Union in the twentieth century 1995 Public Health Scotland C H Lee British regional employment statistics 1841 1971 Matt Vaughan Wilson The 1911 Waterfront Strikes in Glasgow Trade Unions and Rank and File Militancy in the Labour Unrest of 1910 1914 International Review of Social History 53 2 2008 261 292 Lewis Johnman and Hugh Murphy An Overview of the Economic and Social Effects of the Interwar Depression on Clydeside Shipbuilding Communities International Journal of Maritime History June 2006 Vol 18 1 pp 227 254 A J Robertson Clydeside revisited A reconsideration of the Clyde shipbuilding industry 1919 1938 in W H Chaloner and Barrie M Ratcliffe eds Trade and transport 1977 pp 258 et subs C Reid Intermediation Opportunism and the State Loans Debate in Scotland s Herring Fisheries before World War I International Journal of Maritime History June 2004 vol 16 1 pp 1 26 U K Fisheries annual statistics Has the Brexit fishing promise come true BBC News 2023 02 06 Retrieved 2023 08 24 Peter L Payne The End of Steelmaking in Scotland c 1967 1993 Scottish Economic and Social History 1995 15 1 pp 66 84 Richard Finlay Decay 1975 1987 Modern Scotland 1914 2000 2004 ch 9 Key Dates in UK Offshore Oil amp Gas Production UK Offshore Operators Association Archived from the original on 2009 02 09 Retrieved 2008 11 29 1975 North Sea oil begins to flow BBC 1975 11 03 Retrieved 2010 01 03 Sam McKinstry Transforming John Brown s Shipyard The Drilling Rig and Offsore Fabrication Business of Marathon Scottish Economic and Social History 1998 vol 18 Issue 1 pp 33 60 Bibliography EditCampbell R H Scotland Since 1707 The Rise of an Industrial Society 2nd ed 1985 Houston R A and W Knox eds New Penguin History of Scotland 2001 ISBN 0 14 026367 5 Lee C H British regional employment statistics 1841 1971 Statistical Series county and regional employment Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1979 ISBN 052122666X Lee C H Scotland and the United Kingdom The Economy and the Union in the twentieth century Manchester Manchester University Press 1995 ISBN 0719041015 Lenman Bruce An Economic History of Modern Scotland 1660 1976 1977 Lythe S G E An economic history of Scotland 1100 1939 1975 Mackie J D A History of Scotland 1984 excerpt and text search Lynch Michael ed The Oxford Companion to Scottish History 2007 732 pp excerpt and text search McNeill Peter G B and Hector L MacQueen eds Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 Edinburgh The Scottish Medievalists and Department of Geography 1996 Panton Kenneth J and Keith A Cowlard Historical Dictionary of the United Kingdom Vol 2 Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland Scarecrow 1998 465 pp Smout T C Alan R MacDonald and Fiona Watson A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland 1500 1920 2007 Since 1700 Edit Campbell Alan Scottish Miners 1874 1939 vol 1 Industry Work amp Community The Scottish Miners 1874 1939 vol 2 Trade Unions and Politics 2000 Checkland O and S Checkland Industry and Ethos Scotland 1832 1914 1989 New History of Scotland excerpt and text search Cooke Anthony The Rise and Fall of the Scottish Cotton Industry 1778 1914 Manchester University Press 2010 237 pages Daunton M J Progress and Poverty An Economic and Social History of Britain 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