The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social StructureTobias Lunde
The Scottish Lowlands was one of the world’s first industrialised regions. By the early 19th century, Scotland was the global centre of several industries; Glasgow was the Second City of the Empire; and Edinburgh was a centre of the Enlightenment, home to both Adam Smith and David Hume. Several seminal innovations from the period were made by Scots, including James Watt’s critically important improvements to the steam engine; Andrew Meikle’s threshing mill; and Charles Tennant’s bleaching powder. Despite this, however, Scotland is almost entirely absent from the vast literature on the Industrial Revolution.
James Eckford Lauder, James Watt and the Steam Engine: The Dawn of the Nineteenth Century. National Galleries of Scotland.
The absence is unfortunate, because Scotland’s transformation may teach us much about the hows and whys of early industrialisation. In what ways was it similar to England’s transformation, and in what ways did it differ? The answers to these questions have implications for how we are to understand the process of early industrialisation.
The transformation of Scotland started later and was much more contracted than in England. Wages were much lower in Scotland than in England prior to industrialisation. Skilled labourers were almost entirely absent from 17th-century Scotland, quite unlike England. However, it was not a simple case of Scotland “catching up” to England – in several important ways, Scotland eventually took the lead.
The transformation of Scottish industry
While the beginning of the Industrial Revolution used to be dated to c.1760, recent research has shown that the industrialisation of England was already well underway by the 17th century. There is no evidence of a similar early transformation in Scotland. By the time of the Act of Union between Scotland and England in 1707, Scotland was one of the least urbanised countries in Europe. There were only a few fledgeling attempts at manufacturing, and the few products Scots did manufacture for trade were largely of low quality.
Wages appear to have been considerably lower in Scotland than in England. Estimates suggest craftsmen’s real wages were about 75 percent lower in Scotland compared to England in the 1640s. In the 1730s, they were 66 percent lower due to stagnating wage growth in Scotland.
In the first half of the 18th century there are signs of increased urbanisation in Scotland, driven by a declining mortality rate, and around 1760 manufacturing output started to increase considerably. From that point, towns grew rapidly and new ones appeared, primarily located on coal fields, near rivers and the coast, with easy access to coal, waterpower, and trade routes. By 1800, Scotland was one of the fastest urbanising countries in Europe.
In the western Lowlands, manufacturing was focused on cottons and cheaper printed textiles. The eastern Lowlands produced linens and coarse textiles. Specialised manufacturers appeared throughout the Lowlands, often in energy-intensive industries near coal mines. The Carron Works, established in 1759, became one of the largest iron works in Europe. The St Rollox Chemical Works was established in 1799, and by the 1830s it was largest chemical manufacturer in the world. By the 1850s, Dundee had a near global monopoly on the manufacture of jute. At that point, the occupational structure of Scotland was similar to that of England.
The transformation of Scottish agriculture
During the 17th century, farmers in some parts of England, such as Norfolk and Suffolk, had started to introduce new ways of farming. There is no evidence of a similar early shift in Scotland. By the early 18th century, only a small handful of wealthy estate owners had introduced new crops, agricultural technologies, and methods on their own farms. Potatoes, wheat, crop rotations, and drainage systems remained rarities in Scotland until the mid-18th century, and the “Old Scots plough”, or cas-chrom, remained common. It is a simple implement where a wooden stick with an iron sock at the tip is used in a way that is more akin to scratching the soil, and which often required eight oxen. In parts of England, ploughs with wheels and mouldboards that turn the soil and required fewer animals had been common since the 17th century.
However, once the transformation of Scottish agriculture started, it was rapid. The old outfields and infields were turned into flat, drained fields; new crops were introduced; and farmers experimented with a wide range of crop rotations. In the 1780s, the Scottish farmer and agriculturalist John Small invented his swing plough. It made numerous, smaller improvements on ploughs he must have seen while in Yorkshire. It was better at turning the soil, required less animal force, and increased ploughing speed. By the 1790s it was in widespread use in Scotland.
In 1786, Andrew Meikle made the first working version of his threshing mills, which automated the process of separating grains from straw – previously a very labour-intensive process. Several people had attempted to automate threshing before Meikle, but his design was the first that became widely used, and it became the standard mechanism for threshing mills going forward. By the 1790s several farmers had installed threshing mills and by 1810 they were common in several counties. The first steam powered threshing mill is claimed to have been installed by a Scottish tenant farmer in 1811, and by the 1830s they appear in 35 parishes. The rapid transformation of Scottish agriculture was undoubtedly aided by learning from foreign farmers, but Scots also made key contributions.
A. Reddock, Andrew Meikle; National Portrait Gallery, London.
Explaining the Industrial Revolution in Scotland
Several widely-cited explanations for why the British Industrial Revolution happened where and when it did fare poorly in light of the transformation of Scotland. Robert Allen has famously argued that Britain had a unique combination of relatively expensive labour compared to the cost of energy. This is supposed to have incentivised people to innovate and adapt labour-saving technologies, thereby leading to technological improvements and the Industrial Revolution. However, labour was relatively cheap and abundant in Scotland – yet despite this lack of the incentives described by Allen, Scots still innovated and adopted labour-saving technologies.
Joel Mokyr has emphasised the role of enlightenment thinking and innovations in the Industrial Revolution. Together with Morgan Kelly and Cormac Ó. Gráda, he has argued that early industrialisation occurred in places with low wages and high mechanical skill. The main reason for Britain’s transformation, they argue, was a high level of human capital. However, while Scotland did become a centre of the Enlightenment, it was notably lacking in skilled labour in the early 18th century. In response to this shortfall, foreign skilled spinners, weavers, and bleachers were ‘induced’ to move to Scotland.
Then how are we to explain the transformation of Scotland? Four factors appear to have been important. First, the European Enlightenment – this may help explain the timing of industrialisation in Scotland, as the increase of economic activity coincided with a broad engagement with Enlightenment thinking in Scottish society.
Second, coal – this may help explain the location of Scotland’s Industrial Revolution, given how centred and dependent Scottish industry and urbanisation was on coal. Third, colonial trade played a vital role in every major Scottish industry, by providing a combination of capital, raw materials, and demand for manufactured goods.
John Atkinson Grimshaw, Shipping on the Clyde, 1881.
Finally, population growth appears to have played a key role. Evidence is scant, but it seems fairly clear that the Scottish population started to grow decades before the economy did, due to a decline in mortality. This allowed for “Smithian growth” driven by division of labour and regional specialisation, and which was aided by the increased market access that resulted from the Act of Union.
We do not know what caused the decline in mortality in Scotland, and it is clearly something in need of further research. However, it seems highly likely that the decline was driven by the same factors that caused the decline in English mortality.
The major differences between England and Scotland suggest that the Industrial Revolution was far from a geographically uniform process. Widely cited claims about its timing and character do not align with the Scottish evidence. It may therefore be more appropriate to think of the Industrial Revolution as a regional and geographically uneven phenomenon, rather than a single, British experience. Widely accepted generalisations about the British Industrial Revolution may need to be revised or at least confined to England.
Further reading
- Allen, R., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- Durie, A. J., The Scottish Linen Industry in the Eighteenth Century (1979).
- Gibson, A. J. S., and Smout, T. C.. Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 1550 – 1780 (Cambridge University Press, 1994).
- Kelly, M., Mokyr, J., and Ó. Gráda, C., ‘Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution’, Annual Review of Economics 6:1 (2014).
- Kelly, M., Mokyr, J., and Ó Gráda, C., ‘The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Political Economy 131:1 (2023).
- Lunde, T., An Economic Geography of the Industrial Revolution in Scotland, c.1760–1840. PhD thesis (University of Cambridge, 2022). doi:10.17863/CAM.99086.
- Mokyr, J., The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 (Yale University Press, 2009).