This impressive collection of essays is based on a two-year seminar series of the Research centre in Scottish History at the University of Strathclyde. New and original research, as well as historiographical overviews and commentaries, illuminate the study of this formative century in the creation of modern Scotland. Contributors are leading figures in their fields, and the Scottish experience is examined within an international dimension. Topics include Scottish modernisation before the Industrial Revolution, the Union of 1707, Scotland and British expansion, Scottish Jacobitism, the Catholic underground, Scottish national identity, the Scottish Enlightenment, urbanisation, demographic change, Scottish Gaeldom, Highland estate management and tenant emigration, and Scottish radicalism.

Contributors: Thomas M. Devine, John R. Young, Michael Fry, Allan I. Macinnes, James F. McMillan, Alexander Murdoch, Richard J. Finlay, Jane Rendall, Bernard Aspinwall, Ian D. Whyte, Robert E. Tyson, T. C. Smout, Andrew Mackillop, Christopher A. Whatley, Elaine W. McFarland.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1. Preface
• 2. Scottish Modernisation Prior to the Industrial Revolution, 1688–1763
• 3. The Parliamentary Incorporating Union of I707: Political Management, Anti-Unionism and Foreign Policy
• 4. A Commercial Empire: Scotland and British Expansion in the Eighteenth Century
• 5. Scottish Jacobitism: In Search of a Movement
• 6. Mission Accomplished? The Catholic Underground
• 7. Scotland and the Idea of Britain in the Eighteenth Century
• 8. Keeping the Covenant: Scottish National Identity
• 9. Clio, Mars and Minerva: The Scottish Enlightenment and the Writing of Women’s History
• 10. William Robertson and America
• 11. Urbanization in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
• 12. Demographic Change
• 13. The Improvers and the Scottish Environment: Soils, Bogs and Woods
• 14. A Conservative People? Scottish Gaeldom in the Age of Improvement
• 15. Highland Estate Change and Tenant Emigration
• 16. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment? Sorting out Serfdom
• 17. Scottish Radicalism in the Later Eighteenth Century: ‘The Social Thistle and Shamrock’
• Index