Eighteenth Century Scotland

Parish Life in Eighteenth Century Scotland In 1792 every parish in Scotland responded to a questionnaire covering such areas as lifestyle, customs, industry, agriculture, geology and wildlife. Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster in Caithness sent out these questions with the aim of employing them for the positive benefit of Scotland by demonstrating to the government areas in which specific action was required to "add to the quantum of happiness" in the country. This text presents a selection from the sociological information that was gathered, with extensive quotation from throughout Scotland. It aims to provide a insight into the lives of Scottish people during the 18th century, and therefore should be of interest to those studying social history as well as those wishing to learn more about Scottish history Eighteenth Century Scotland.

Scotland in the Eighteenth Century: Union and Enlightenment This is an introduction to Scottish history in the 18th Century which is completely up-to-date and gives equal emphasis to politics and religion. Once a small and isolated country with an unenviable reputation for poverty and instability, by 1800 Scotland it was emerging as an economic powerhouse, a major colonial power and an internationally acclaimed center of European philosophy, science and literature. This thematic investigation explores the experiences and responses of a people whose world was being fundamentally reconfigured and offers some topical and thought-provoking lessons from a dramatic period when, willingly or with great reluctance, the Scots adapted themselves to rapidly changing circumstances. Starting with the threshold of the Act of Union (1707) and running through to 1800 and the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, This book covers the impact of the Enlightenment on Scotland and Scotland's own very significant contribution to this via Adam Smith, David Hume and their circle. Setting social, cultural and economic analyses within a firm political framework, Scotland's internal story is placed in the wider context of Britain, Europe and Empire, and her role and identity within the newly united Britain assessed.

Burns the Radical: Politics and Poetry in Late Eighteenth-century Scotland In this text, the author looks behind the trivializing image of the "heav'n-taught ploughman" to uncover the intellectual context of the poet's political radicalism. He reveals Burns as a sophisticated political poet whose work draws on a range of intellectual resources: the democratic, contactarian ideology of Scottish Peresbyterianism, the English and Irish "Real Whig" tradition, and the political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. Throwing light on the poet's education and his early reading, Liam McIlvanney provides detailed readings of Burn's major poems. The book also offers research on Burns's links with Irish poets and radicals, providing a radical interpretation of the man who is coming to be recognized as the poet laureate of the radical Enlightenment.

Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century. Full of material that is quite new ... provides an analysis of quite unusual clarity and intellectual power.

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