6 - Expansion within Union: The Nineteenth Century

Summary

Introduction

Scotland was at the centre of the first stages of the development of the modern industrialised world; curiously, it was eventually peripheralised by the same forces that created its centrality. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the country was practically bankrupt, its currency little more than worthless; the danger of civil war was always present. Most external markets were essentially closed due to an English trade embargo, despite Scotland being in all but name England's semi-autonomous colony, rather than an independent nation state. As we saw in the previous chapter, the post-1707 order created considerable opportunities for at least some Scottish people, albeit opportunities which often included the assumption of a new British identity that inevitably involved a downplaying (if not abnegation and abdication) of Scottish identity and culture (including language). These changes also engendered considerable resistance among some creative artists and other thinkers who perceived a virtue in the homegrown and local, again often associated with language. We can make too much of these changes: in 1750 Scotland remained a country of small towns whose economy was based principally upon the ebb and flow of agricultural production, even if the nature and practice of agriculture had begun to move towards capitalist models in some places; differences with the Scotland of 1650 in this respect were incremental rather than revolutionary. The Scotland of 1850 had, however, been altered irrevocably, becoming a country which was increasingly industrialised and urbanised. In the following section we will consider the processes at work in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which created the modern country and its linguistic ecology.

Industrialisation

Scotland – specifically central Scotland, perhaps – possessed vast latent mineral wealth in the eighteenth century. This was particularly the case with coal and iron. New technologies during the period – both in the processing of raw materials and their employment – meant that these could be exploited at something approaching maximum capacity. Many of these innovations were instigated in Scotland. Steam trains and steamboats – many built in the Glasgow area – began to shrink space and standardise the calculation and appreciation of time.