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1 - Population mobility in early modern Scotland
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- By I.D. Whyte
- Edited by Robert Allen Houston, University of St Andrews, Scotland, Ian D. Whyte, Lancaster University
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- Book:
- Scottish Society, 1500–1800
- Published online:
- 08 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 02 February 1989, pp 37-58
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- Chapter
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Population mobility has attracted the attention of social and economic historians and historical geographers seeking to understand past societies. Levels and patterns of geographical mobility reflect many aspects of social conditions and are in turn an important influence on society. Geographical mobility is closely linked to social mobility, together demonstrating the degree to which past societies were fixed and rigid or fluid and permeable. Population mobility is also closely linked as both a dependent and an independent variable to family and household structures, regional contrasts in agricultural systems, holding structures and patterns of rural industry, and levels of urbanisation and is therefore an important social indicator and determinant.
Recent research has altered the image of geographical mobility in pre-industrial European societies, overturning past preconceptions which regarded them as being static and immobile. Studies of rural mobility and migration to the towns have shown that movement was normal, particularly among younger people, though often over limited distances. For early modern England, population mobility has been linked to the development of the economy and society in the prelude to the Industrial Revolution. Given that Scotland underwent major social and economic changes between the sixteenth and later eighteenth centuries, the question arises as to whether the scale and pattern of mobility in Scotland was comparable with England or, more generally, with the patterns which have been identified more widely in Western Europe.
Introduction: Scottish society in perspective
- Edited by Robert Allen Houston, University of St Andrews, Scotland, Ian D. Whyte, Lancaster University
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- Book:
- Scottish Society, 1500–1800
- Published online:
- 08 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 02 February 1989, pp 1-36
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Scotland before 1750 was a small and rather poor country whose significance for European political, economic and, to a lesser extent, intellectual life was at best peripheral. Her economy and society were transformed in the century after 1750 by agrarian and industrial changes which catapulted Scotland to prominence in world affairs, a standing that the early modern period had barely presaged. Until the advent of a largely urbanised and industrialised society in the nineteenth century, historians have tended to assume that the social structure of Scotland retained archaic forms which had long disappeared from more ‘developed’ countries such as England. Scotland's economy and level of wealth in the pre-industrial period have often seemed closest to those of Scandinavian countries or Ireland. Not only was Scotland peripheral to mainstream European history, but her society was so distinctive as to be of little relevance to an understanding of social organisation and change in a wider context. This introductory chapter sets out to question these preconceptions by analysing Scottish society between the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution in a European context and, by presenting a brief and accessible outline of social structures and trends, to assess the typicality or distinctiveness of Scotland.
In this task, the social historian is constrained by the comparative lack of academic research on pre-nineteenth-century Scottish society. Some aspects of Scottish social history have always been attractive to the Scots themselves, but the society of Scotland in the past has received remarkably little attention from scholars.