Scotland in the nineteenth century

This is a comprehensive integrated survey of how Scotland emerged from the political, cultural and economic upheavals which marked the years between 1800 and 1914, and how it retained its distinctive identity within the United Kingdom. Successive innovations in industry, commercial growth, increasing specialisation in agriculture and the resulting clearances in the Highlands led not only to particularly severe urban problems, such as housing, but also, and more positively, to programmes of mutual improvement and educational reform. Political and administrative struggles, as much as social and economic forces, shaped Scottish society in the nineteenth century and the author provides a comprehensive account of how its separate administrative structure developed.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.