Scotland before the Industrial Revolution：An Economic and Social History c.1050-c. 1750

Until recently, the study of Scotland's economic and social development in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution has lagged behind research on England. Yet Scotland's story is a very remarkable one, and demands careful examination. For, starting from a much lower baseline than her larger and wealthier neighbour, Scotland underwent a major transformation in the later years covered by this book, which enabled her to industrialise alongside England in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. How was it that such a small, poor, underpopulated country on the periphery of Europe was able to claim a place in history as one of first industrial economies of the modern world? What were the conditions in early modern Scotland that made such an unlikely advance possible?
After years of comparative neglect, the last two decades have seen a dramatic upsurge of new research into Scotland before the Industrial Revolution which has enriched our knowledge of these centuries, and altered our understanding of their significance for Scotland's subsequent development. These new perspectives inform Ian Whyte's survey throughout. In it, he pays due attention to the wide regional variations within Scotland itself, and to the distinctive elements of her economy and society; but he also highlights the many parallels between the Scottish experience and that of her neighbours, especially England. The result sets Scotland within both a British and a European context.
For anyone studying the development of the Scottish people, this book will be necessary reading; but it has a wider value, too, for students of British economic and social history more generally, since it provides a fresh perspective on a subject too often dominated by its English dimension. Since it is notably well written with a telling use of unfamiliar detail, it will also appeal to general readers interested in reaching behind the romanticised images of popular tradition to find out how the ordinary men and women - in lowland and highland, in town and country, in good times and bad - really lived and worked in pre-industrial Scotland.

Ian D. Whyte is Reader in Historical Geography at the University of Lancaster.