Empire, industry and emigration
Scotland becomes one of the world's most industrial nations and a powerhouse of the British Empire, while millions of Scots emigrate and some grow rich on slavery.
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2003)
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection — T. M. Devine (ed.), Edinburgh University Press (2015)
- To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2011)
After 1707 Scots seized the opportunities of empire. Glasgow’s “tobacco lords” dominated Britain’s trade in Virginia tobacco by the mid-eighteenth century, and later fortunes were made from Caribbean sugar, cotton and the labour of enslaved Africans; in some Caribbean colonies Scots owned a large share of plantations. Scots were heavily over-represented in the East India Company, the army and colonial administration.
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2003)
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection — T. M. Devine (ed.), Edinburgh University Press (2015)
In the nineteenth century the central belt became one of the world’s great industrial regions: coal, iron, cotton, chemicals, locomotives and, above all, ships. By around 1900 the Clyde built roughly a fifth of the world’s ships, and Glasgow called itself the “Second City of the Empire”. Conditions in its tenements and mining villages were among the worst in Britain.
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
Meanwhile Scots left in huge numbers, from the Highlands and the industrial Lowlands alike. T. M. Devine estimates that more than two million emigrated overseas between 1825 and 1938, to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, besides many who moved to England. Few European countries lost a higher share of their people.
- To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2011)
In 2018 the University of Glasgow published a report finding that it had received donations derived from slavery worth, in today’s money, tens of millions of pounds, and launched a programme of reparative justice.
- Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow — Stephen Mullen and Simon Newman, University of Glasgow (2018)
Scottish ingenuity, education and hard work built ships, railways and institutions across the world, from Canadian banks to Indian tea estates, and Scots were famous as engineers, doctors, missionaries and soldiers.
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2003)
- To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2011)
Glasgow's tobacco and sugar fortunes rested on enslaved labour; Scots owned plantations across the Caribbean and served disproportionately as colonial officials. Institutions from universities to city councils have begun to acknowledge this.
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection — T. M. Devine (ed.), Edinburgh University Press (2015)
- Slavery, Abolition and the University of Glasgow — Stephen Mullen and Simon Newman, University of Glasgow (2018)
Why it matters today
Scots long saw themselves as partners in empire, and pride in the Clyde's ships, Scottish engineers and the global diaspora is still strong. In recent years Scotland has begun reckoning with its role in slavery and colonialism, challenging an older belief that Scots were more victims than beneficiaries of empire. The collapse of heavy industry in the twentieth century left scars still visible in west-central Scotland.