Between the early eighteenth and the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Scottish society was transformed by industrialisation, urbanisation and major changes in agriculture and rural society. The rate of town and city growth was among the fastest in western Europe, migration and emigration accelerated and the traditional way of life in the Highland and Lowland countryside was brought to an end through the pressures of market demand and landlord strategy. Such a major upheaval created increased social tension.

Conflict and Stabilitiy in Scottish Society challenges the previously accepted view that this major upheaval in Scottish life did not stimulate much unrest and that a modern industrial society developed relatively smoothly. The papers here, given at the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar at Strathclyde University in 1988–89, suggest that protest was more common, more enduring and more diverse than is usually supposed.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contributors
• Contents
• 1. How tame were the Scottish Lowlanders during the Eighteenth Century?
• 2. From Reformers to ‘Jacobins’: The Scottish Association of the Friends of the People
• 3. The Failure of Radical Reform in Scotland in the Late Eighteenth Century: the Social and Economic Context
• 4. Political Reform and the ‘Ordering’ of Middle-Class Protest
• 5. Protest in the Pews. Interpreting Presbyterianism and Society in Fracture During the Scottish Economic Revolution
• 6. Early Chartism in Scotland: A ‘Moral Force’ Movement?
• 7. Continuity and Challenge: The Perpetuation of the Landed Interest
• Index