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A prime reason for English mistrust and dislike of the Scots was envy (unlike their mistrust of the Welsh that was based on total bewilderment at
hearing and seeing their strange language). By the middle of the 18th century, Scotland had begun its transformation into a great industrial power. Glasgow began a period of phenomenal growth, fueled enormously by the
flourishing tobacco trade with the American colonies. When the successful American Revolution ended the tobacco trade, linen took its place dominating the Scottish economy for a century. Many Scottish tobacco merchants
had made huge fortunes, but equal wealth now came from the rapid expansion of the new linen industry. Aided by grants of Parliament bounties and grants of assistance from the British Linen Company, established in 1746,
linen became Scotland's chief export.A newer and more promising source of profit was cotton, and by 1786, the New Lanark Mills were the largest in the world and cotton had become Scotland's largest industry. Another
war in America, the Civil War of the 1860's that ended slavery, put an end to the import of cotton from the southern states and brought still further change. Money made in cotton was transferred to heavy industries. At
the end of the century, Scotland led the world in engineering and shipbuilding and had invested enormously in iron, steel and coal. The rapid growth in Scottish industry had been set in motion as early as 1757. For this
was the year that James Watt of Greenock, at age 22, was accepted as mathematical instrument maker to the University of Glasgow where he was given a workshop to try out his experiments. His discovery of the separate
condenser for the steam engine in 1765 changed the world forever. To the illustrious name of James Watt, we can add that of bridge and road building genius, Thomas Telford to attest to the enormous influence that
Scotland's finest had on the Industrial Revolution that was to so quickly transform the world. On rainy days, how many of us have not blessed the name of Charles Macintosh for helping keep us dry? Born in Glasgow in
1766, chemist Charles invented a method for waterproofing garments. He was one of many to whom the world owes a debt of gratitude. In an age where rapid progress in industry could be so easily obstructed by poor
communications between workplace and store, between factory and port, it was the work of another Scotsman John Loudon McAdam that made the crucial difference. McAdam's name is known throughout the world as the father of
modern road building; he invented the Macadam road surface that facilitated travel and communications and opened up so many areas to so many influences. After making a fortune in New York City, John had returned to
Scotland, where his attention was arrested by the poor conditions of the roads in Ayrshire. It was there he began his experiments that would transform the ancient, inefficient methods of road building worldwide. In
1815, he put his theories to the test as surveyor general of the roads at Bristol. His methods seem simple enough in retrospect: roads were to be raised above the adjacent ground for good drainage. They were first
covered with large rocks, then layers of smaller stones, the whole to be covered with gravel or slag. The success of his road building program in Scotland led to his methods being adopted in many other countries, most
notably, the USA. It was another Scot, James Neilson, in 1828 who invented the process of heating the air before it was blown into a blast furnace, an idea that was adopted by Welshman David Thomas and taken to the
United States in 1839 to completely revolutionize that country's anthracite iron industry. In Scotland, it led to a 30-fold increase in the production of pig iron in the same number of years. One of the most famous iron
works was the Carron Works whose light cannon or "carronades" became a standard weapon of armies worldwide. The Carron Works also produced everything from pots and pans, ploughs and spades, grates and stoves,
railings and gates, thus freeing countless thousands of consumers from reliance on their local blacksmith or forge master for basic household needs. Fueled by locally produced iron, the shipbuilding industries of the
Clyde soon became the envy of the world. Watt's great invention, among other things, led to steam replacing sail, from time immemorial the capricious and cumbersome method of propelling ships. Perhaps the definite
moment came in 1812 when Henry Bell 's Comet used steam power on its experimental run on the River Clyde (forerunners such as Fulton's Clermont
in 1807 had showed the way). By 1823, Scotland had built 95 steamships. Even before the general adaptation of the steam engine to marine engineering, however, the dredging of the Clyde had allowed Glasgow to accept ocean-going vessels and to quickly rise to preeminence as Scotland's leading port.
Improvements in road building aided in the growth of the towns. In 1803, working for the Highland Commission for Roads and Bridges, Thomas Telford began to supervise the building of the new "parliamentary
roads" that, with the necessary bridges, were to provide stagecoach links between almost inaccessible parts of the country. Feverish activity in road building was matched by progress in the construction of canals,
though the hilly nature of most of the terrain prohibited such successful developments such as were taking place in England. Nevertheless, canals linked the major industrial centers, proving their worth in securing
large profits from freight and passenger traffic. In 1767, James Craig designed his great showpiece, Edinburgh New Town, as a center of British patriotism and an assertion of that city's (and Scotland's) place in the
Union. St. Andrew's Square had its counterpart in St. George's Square; the principal streets were named Princes, George, Queen, Hanover and Frederick. Only 22 years after Culloden, the erection of such fine buildings
showed Scotland's greatly increased prosperity in a country whose economy was expanding faster than that of any other part of Great Britain. They showed a proud and tasteful opulence matched in many other Scottish
towns, made fat on commerce. With the benefits brought about by imperial trade came the Scottish enlightenment, a movement unparalleled for its achievements in so many intellectual and artistic endeavors. While
Glasgow was getting rich from trade, (its Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1783, was the first in Britain) Edinburgh was moving in another direction. In the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th,
Edinburgh, no longer the capital of an independent state, was also booming. It shucked off its loss of stature by becoming one of the great literary, intellectual and artistic centers of Europe. In 1757, David Hume, one
of the world's greatest philosophers in that or any age, marveled that, "at a time when we have lost our Princes, our Parliaments, our independent Government, even the presence of our chief nobility, are unhappy in
our accent and pronunciation, speak a very corrupt dialect of the tongue in which we make use of; is it not strange, I say, that, in these circumstances, we should really be the people most distinguished for literature
in Europe." It was not an idle boast. Hume's outstanding work in philosophy (in which he conceived of the discipline as the inductive, experimental science of human nature, which had a profound influence on
European thought) was matched by that of William Robertson in history, Joseph Black in science, John Millar in social theory and the towering Adam Smith in economics. Smith's 1776 publication of his Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
proved to be one of the greatest, certainly one of the most influential classics of all time. And it was Scotsmen Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, who founded the Encyclopedia Britannica
in 1768. By the beginning of the 19th century, Scotland's universities, with their "open-door policies" of accepting poor but talented students, were turning out far more, and far-better educated graduates than their counterparts in Oxford and Cambridge, both of which were mired in their medieval curricula in which Latin and Greek predominated. Scotland's universities were more in tune with what was required to sustain a growing economy and population.
As early as 1726, Edinburgh had created a full Faculty of Medicine with Chairs of Botany, Medicine, Anatomy, Chemistry and Midwifery. Medicine became a particularly strong discipline in all the Scottish universities
and Scottish doctors began to fill English practices (they still do). In 1729, Edinburgh's famous infirmary, far ahead of its time in its approach to treatment of the sick opened. Another innovation was the substitution
of English instead of Latin as the language of the lecture room. This not only greatly facilitated the study of Isaac Newton in physics and John Locke in philosophy, but also made their works available to a much wider
audience. David Hume published his Treatise of Human Nature in 1739-40; it was the first series of his books on philosophy. In 1754, he published the first volume of his History of England, a book to be
re-issued countless times. The book was followed by William Robertson's History of Scotland
in 1759, also an instantaneous success. At Edinburgh in 1764, Allan Ramsay founded a literary society. At the same time, there was a surprising revival of interest in Scots dialect verse, including the publication of James Watson's
Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems; William Hamilton's edition of Blind Harry's "Wallace," (which greatly influenced Robert Burns); and the anthologies of Allan Ramsay, including The
Gentle Shepherd, the Evergreen, and Tea-table Miscellany. In this explosion of arts and letters, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen became centers of a lively press. Papers such as the Edinburgh
Evening Courant and the Caledonian Mercury were matched by the Aberdeen Journal, begun in 1747 and surviving still as the Press and Journal. They were eagerly sought by, and had a tremendous
effect on, the general reading public. In 1771, the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica began a tradition that has lasted for centuries and which has had an incalculable effect on generation after
generation of scholar, pupil, teacher and inquirer of knowledge. In 1791, an immense leap forward in the difficult art of biography was achieved by James Boswell, whose Life of Samuel Johnson remains the standard
by which all subsequent biographies have been judged. The discipline of architecture too, was superbly represented by Scotsmen Robert Adam and Sir William Chambers, both of whom were directly employed (and heavily
favored) by George III. The Highland poets were also busy. The great failure of the Jacobite Rebellion provided lots of material for a continuation of the Celtic literary tradition. By this time, Scots Gaelic had
evolved very differently from Irish and was beginning to assert its cultural independence by producing its own literature. In 1751, Alexander MacDonald published his patriotic and martial verse, the first literary work
to appear in Scots Gaelic. Traditional Highland lovesongs and paeans to the mountain scenery then appeared in 1768 in the works of Duncan Ban MacIntyre. In 1763, the "translations" of James MacPherson of
the Gaelic epic poet Ossian (Fingal and Temora) caused a sensation throughout literary Europe. Though subsequently denounced by Dr. Samuel Johnson as the work of an impostor, the poems whetted the appetite
for more Celtic lore. They helped grow a mythology of popular Scottish romantic heroes such as Robert Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, Rob Roy MacGregor, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Flora MacDonald. Of more importance, however
for the survival of the Gaelic language was the publication of Dugald Buchanan's hymns in 1767. In a remarkably short time after Culloden, Edinburgh had become known throughout Europe and North America as the
"Athens of the North." Its literary achievements were remarkable. A short list of what was produced there includes Tobias Smollett's Humphrey Clinker; Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling
, Elizabeth Hamilton's The Cottagers of Glenburnie
and three novels by Susan Ferrier. All these before Walter Scott and Robert Burns appeared on the scene to put a cap on this remarkable period of Scottish imaginative writing. If this were not enough, Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie made their own glorious contributions on their canvases. The former in his portraits of those who mattered--the viscounts, chiefs, judges and high-society women; the latter of those who didn't--the simple country folk about their everyday business.
Yet, not everything was well in Scotland, this long-neglected area of the New Britain. Destruction of the powerful clans meant the disappearance of old traditions and a loss of identity for many of the Highland
people. The government in London sought to break the patriarchal links between the chief and his clan. Through legislation, they reduced the old powerful chiefs to nothing more than landed proprietors, more interested
in making their estates pay than in the welfare of their clansmen. Thus, a stroke of the pen in London was able to transform a way of life that had existed from time immemorable. To make an estate pay meant
clearing land and clearing land meant dispossessing tenants. Hence, the infamous Highland clearances took place. The old English complaint that "sheep do eateth up people" could now be aptly applied to the
Highlands if we add cattle to sheep. It wasn't just the political scene that was affected by union with England. The Act of Union gave a great stimulus to the traditional Scottish industry of cattle rearing which
took advantage of the revolutionary advances made in English farming in the early part of the 18th century. When "Turnip" Townsend showed how cattle could be kept fat and healthy even during winter, it was
inevitable that Scottish farmers would take notice. The adoption of the simple turnip and the introduction of crop rotation worked wonders. There was a lucrative market for Scottish cattle south of the border. From huge
cattle markets such as at Crieff, a flow of capital back to the farms helped transform Scottish agriculture enormously; making it a highly profitable business. The great Scottish lairds quickly took advantage of what
was going on in England and set about making improvements to their vast and hitherto often wasted land holdings. In 1723, they formed the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland. In 1764, James
Small invented a light, easily manageable plough that was to become an enormous benefit on the improved estates. In 1786, Andrew Meikle invented the threshing machine that quickly replaced the hand-operated and wasteful
flail that had been used since the beginnings of agriculture. The notorious Corn Laws, which artificially kept the price of wheat high and did so much damage to Ireland, were passed in 1815. Many of its beneficiaries
were the owners of the huge landed estates in Scotland, where enclosures brought unwelcome social change and led to further displacement of those who had worked their little subsistence farms for centuries. Despite the
introduction in the late 18th century of potato cultivation, which provided a cheap and easily grown food, the displacement of the people of the Highlands, continued unabated. So, it came to pass that while Scotland
as a whole was being completely transformed economically and socially, the Highlands regressed. The loss of lands, population and language continued unabated. It wasn't just Culloden that destroyed the Gaelic culture.
Thousands of Highlanders, landless and homeless, now found themselves "clanless" with no option but to join the armed services, or add to the numbers of dispossessed in the rapidly growing cities in the
economic transfiguration of the Clyde Valley, or simply to emigrate. There just weren't enough opportunities for everyone to become a fisherman or a crofter. The notorious Sutherland clearances, depriving thousands of
tenants of their holdings, lasted well into the reign of Victoria, regardless of the sympathy for and identification with the country the Queen loved to visit. In the 1840's, the situation wasn't helped any by the
forced absorption of countless thousands of Irish, forced to flee their native land in an even worse plight brought on by the potato famine. |
