Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Industrialization
Glasgow was the powerhouse of Scotland's
Industrial Revolution
. he passage from
Glasgow to the Americas was much shorter than that from rival English ports and a
lucrative transatlantic trade in tobacco had developed as early as the seventeenth century.
his stimulated Scottish manufacturing, since, under the terms of the Navigation Acts,
Americans were not allowed to trade manufactured goods. Scottish-produced linen,
paper and wrought iron were exchanged for Virginia tobacco and, when the American
War of Independence disrupted trade in the 1770s and 1780s, the Scots successfully
turned to trade with the West Indies and, most important of all, to the production of
cotton. In 1787, Scotland had only 19 textile mills; by 1840 there were nearly 200.
he growth of the textile industry spurred the development of other industries. In the
mid-eighteenth century, the
Carron Ironworks
was founded near Falkirk, producing
mainly military munitions. By 1800 it was the largest ironworks in Europe. Scotland's
shipbuilding
industry began as early as 1802, when the steam vessel
Charlotte Dundas
was launched on the Forth and Clyde Canal. he growth of the iron and shipbuilding
industries, plus extensive use of steam power, created a massive demand for coal from
the coalfields of southern Scotland.
Industrialization led to a concentration of Scotland's
population
in the central
Lowlands. In 1840 one-third of the country's industrial workers lived in Lanarkshire,
and Glasgow's population grew from 17,000 in the 1740s to more than 200,000 a
century later. Such sudden growth created urban overcrowding on a massive scale and,
as late as 1861, 64 percent of the entire Scottish population lived in one- or two-room
houses. For most Clydesiders, “house” meant a couple of small rooms in a grim
tenement building, where many of the poorest families were displaced Highlanders and
Irish immigrants; the Irish arrived in Glasgow at the rate of 1000 a week during the
potato famine of the 1840s.
By the late nineteenth century a measure of prosperity had emerged from
industrialization, and the well-paid Clydeside engineers went to their forges wearing
bowler hats and starched collars. hey were confident but their optimism was
misplaced. Scotland's industries were very much geared to the export market, and after
World War I
conditions were much changed. During the war, when exports had been
curtailed by a combination of U-boat activity and war production, new industries had
developed in India and Japan, and the eastern market for Scottish goods never
recovered. he postwar world also witnessed a contraction of world trade, which hit the
shipbuilding industry very hard and, in turn, damaged the steel and coal industries.
hese di
culties were compounded by the financial collapse of the early 1930s, and
by 1932 28 percent of the Scottish workforce was unemployed. Some 400,000 Scots
emigrated between 1921 and 1931, and those who stayed endured some of the worst
social conditions in the British Isles. By the late 1930s, Scotland had the highest infant
mortality rate in Europe. here was a partial economic recovery in the mid-1930s, but
high unemployment remained until the start of
World War II
.
The Labour movement
In the late eighteenth century, conditions for the labouring population varied
enormously. Handloom weavers were well paid, whereas the coal miners remained
1843
1846
1886
1890
The Great Disruption: a third
of the Church of Scotland
leave to form the Free Church
of Scotland.
Highland potato
famine: 1.7 million
Scots emigrate.
Crofters' Holdings
Act grants security
of tenure in the
Highlands and Islands.
Forth Rail Bridge
opens, spanning the
Firth of Forth.
