History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 to 1800


Book Description

This book explores the ordinary daily routines, behaviours, experiences and beliefs of the Scottish people during a period of immense political, social and economic change. It underlines the importance of the church in post-Reformation Scottish society, but also highlights aspects of everyday life that remained the same, or similar, notwithstanding the efforts of the kirk, employers and the state to alter behaviours and attitudes.Drawing upon and interrogating a range of primary sources, the authors create a richly coloured, highly-nuanced picture of the lives of ordinary Scots from birth through marriage to death. Analytical in approach, the coverage of topics is wide, ranging from the ways people made a living, through their non-work activities including reading, playing and relationships, to the ways they experienced illness and approached death.This volume:*Provides a rich and finely nuanced social history of the period 1600-1800 *Gets behind the politics of Union and Jacobitism, and the experience of agricultural and industrial 'revolution'*Presents the scholarly expertise of its contributing authors in a accessible way*Includes a guide to further reading indicating sources for further study




History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland


Book Description

Over the twentieth century Scots' lives changed infast, dramatic and culturally significant ways. By examining their bodies,homes, working lives, rituals, beliefs and consumption, this volume exposeshow the very substance of everyday life was composed, tracing both theintimate and the mass changes that the people endured. Using novelperspectives and methods, chapters range across the experiences of work, artand death, the way Scots conceived of themselves and their homes, and theway the 'old Scotland' of oppressive community rules broke down frommid-century as the country reinvented its everyday life and culture. Thisvolume brings together leading cultural historians of twentieth-centuryScotland to study the apparently mundane activities of people's lives,traversing the key spaces where daily experience is composed to expose thecontroversial personal and national politics that ritual and practice cangenerate. Key features: *Contains an overview of the material changesexperienced by Scots in their everyday lives during the course of thecentury*Focuses on some of the key areas of change in everyday experience,from the way Scots spent their Sundays to the homes in which they lived,from the work they undertook to the culture they consumed and eventually theway they died. *Pays particular attention to identity as well asexperience




History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1800 to 1900


Book Description

This volume covers the nineteenth century, a period of profound change in Scottish history.




Scotland in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

This ambitious project surveys the massive changes the 20th century has brought to Scotland. The nation's leading commentators give an overview of the most important trends, providing new insights and fresh perspectives. Comparative reference to other societies in the UK and Europe highlight the unique elements of Scotland's distinctive development. Home Rule issues, the discovery of oil, deindustrialisation, public housing, education, landownership, the role of women, social class, and many more areas of Scottish life are assessed and explored in this rich, rewarding and comprehensive study.




The Invention of Scotland


Book Description

This book argues that while Anglo-Saxon culture has given rise to virtually no myths at all, myth has played a central role in the historical development of Scottish identity. Hugh Trevor-Roper explores three myths across 400 years of Scottish history: the political myth of the "ancient constitution" of Scotland; the literary myth, including Walter Scott as well as Ossian and ancient poetry; and the sartorial myth of tartan and the kilt, invented--ironically, by Englishmen--in quite modern times. Trevor-Roper reveals myth as an often deliberate cultural construction used to enshrine a people's identity. While his treatment of Scottish myth is highly critical, indeed debunking, he shows how the ritualization and domestication of Scotland's myths as local color diverted the Scottish intelligentsia from the path that led German intellectuals to a dangerous myth of racial supremacy. This compelling manuscript was left unpublished on Trevor-Roper's death in 2003 and is now made available for the first time. Written with characteristic elegance, lucidity, and wit, and containing defiant and challenging opinions, it will absorb and provoke Scottish readers while intriguing many others. "I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it."-Hugh Trevor-Roper




Scottish Fairy Belief


Book Description

The authorities told folk what they ought to believe, but what did they really believe? Throughout Scottish history, people have believed in fairies. They were a part of everyday life, as real as the sunrise, and as incontrovertible as the existence of God. While fairy belief was only a fragment of a much larger complex, the implications of studying this belief tradition are potentially vast, revealing some understanding of the worldview of the people of past centuries. This book, the first modern study of the subject, examines the history and nature of fairy belief, the major themes and motifs, the demonising attack upon the tradition, and the attempted reinstatement of the reality of fairies at the end of the seventeenth century, as well as their place in ballads and in Scottish literature.




Scotland: A History from Earliest Times


Book Description

In this book, Alistair Moffat brings vividly to life the story of this great nation, from the dawn of prehistory through to the twenty-first century. Ambitious, richly detailed and highly readable, Scotland: A History From Earliest Times skilfully weaves together a dazzling array of fact and anecdote from a vast range of sources. The result is an imaginative, informative, balanced and varied portrait of Scotland, seen not just through the experience of the kings, saints, warriors, aristocrats and politicians who populate the pages of conventional history books, but also through that of ordinary people who have lived Scotland's history and have played their own important part in shaping its destiny.




How the Scots Invented the Modern World


Book Description

An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.




Nine Centuries of Man


Book Description

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries?Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ahard man has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of what masculinity actually means for men (and women) in a Scottish context. This interdisciplinary collection explores a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, examining the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour.How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romance, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men a work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce a the book also illustrates the range of masculinities which affected or were internalised by men. Together, they illustrate some of the ways Scotlands gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how more generally masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history.ContributorsLynn Abrams, University of GlasgowKatie Barclay, University of AdelaideAngela Bartiem University of EdinburghRosalind Carr, University of East LondonTanya Cheadle, University of GlasgowHarriet Cornell, University of EdinburghSarah Dunnigan, University of EdinburghElizabeth Ewan, University of GuelphAlistair Fraser, University of GlasgowSergi Mainer, University of EdinburghJeffrey Meek, University of GlasgowCynthia J. Neville, Dalhousie University Janay Nugent, University of Lethbridge Tawny Paul, Northumbria University




Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

Examining working class welfare in the age of deindustrialisation through the experiences of the Scottish coal minerThroughout the twentieth century Scottish miners resisted deindustrialisation through collective action and by leading the campaign for Home Rule. This book argues that coal miners occupy a central position in Scotland's economic, social and political history, and highlights the role of miners in formulating labour movement demands for political-constitutional reforms that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The book also uses the struggle of the mineworkers to explore working class wellbeing more broadly during the prolonged and politicised period of deindustrialisation that saw jobs, workplaces and communities devastated. Key featuresExamines deindustrialisation as long-running, phased and politicised processUses generational analysis to explain economic and political changeRelates Scottish Home Rule to long-running debates about economic security and working class welfareAnalyses the longer history of Scottish coal miners in terms of changing industrial ownership, production techniques and workplace safetyRelates this economic and industrial history to changes in mining communities and gender relations