Through the lens of emergent laws of climatology developed to advance the scientific foundations and popular reach of practical meteorology in the nineteenth century, this article examines the checks on population and the global movement of people linked to reoccurring climate patterns and abnormal climatic events. Meteorological research contributed to debates within political economy and the public health movement, and to the disputed moral rationale for poor law reform. Scientific authority for this new analysis rested on a network of personal, religious, and professional links between T.R. Malthus, Thomas Chalmers, Francis Jeffrey, David Brewster, James D. Forbes, James Stark, Edwin Chadwick and William Pulteney Alison. The work of climate determinists argued that several causations were simultaneously affecting the nation’s vital statistics. The potential advantage to health from moving on a permanent basis to a more salubrious climate was explored. Adding further to the conundrum of colonisation, and the case for assisted migration, the laws of climatology offered reasons why any migrants pulled into parts of urban and Highland Scotland by freed resource – the vacuum effect – would still experience a positive Malthusian check on their life chances.
{"title":"Population Checks and Natural Laws: Malthus, Climate Determinism and Emigration","authors":"Graeme Morton","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0305","url":null,"abstract":"Through the lens of emergent laws of climatology developed to advance the scientific foundations and popular reach of practical meteorology in the nineteenth century, this article examines the checks on population and the global movement of people linked to reoccurring climate patterns and abnormal climatic events. Meteorological research contributed to debates within political economy and the public health movement, and to the disputed moral rationale for poor law reform. Scientific authority for this new analysis rested on a network of personal, religious, and professional links between T.R. Malthus, Thomas Chalmers, Francis Jeffrey, David Brewster, James D. Forbes, James Stark, Edwin Chadwick and William Pulteney Alison. The work of climate determinists argued that several causations were simultaneously affecting the nation’s vital statistics. The potential advantage to health from moving on a permanent basis to a more salubrious climate was explored. Adding further to the conundrum of colonisation, and the case for assisted migration, the laws of climatology offered reasons why any migrants pulled into parts of urban and Highland Scotland by freed resource – the vacuum effect – would still experience a positive Malthusian check on their life chances.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141025935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between 1966 and 1969, Scotland’s police forces and water services were amalgamated into larger regional bodies. The mergers provoked significant protest in Orkney and Shetland, as the islands’ local authorities spearheaded unsuccessful campaigns to retain local control over police and water services. Largely neglected by historians, this article argues that the protests played a key role in mobilising the islands’ communities and local authorities against a perceived external threat to their social, economic, and political sustainability. Although the central arguments against amalgamations were based on geography and logistics, councillors and protesters utilised Orkney and Shetland’s distinct identity and heritage as rhetorical devices to oppose the proposals. Rather than literal displays of Norse nostalgia or Scandinavian affinity, this politicisation of identity offered strategic opportunities for maximising external attention towards the campaign. However, this element to the campaign also reflected sincere commitments to the principles of local control and self-sufficiency, fostering the development of distinct political identities in each archipelago. As a result, the anti-amalgamation protests can be considered an early manifestation of political regionalism in the Northern Isles and an important antecedent in understanding the emergence of autonomy movements in Orkney and Shetland in subsequent decades.
{"title":"The Utilisation of Identity and Heritage in Protests Against Police and Water Mergers in Orkney and Shetland, 1966–9","authors":"Mathew Nicolson","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0306","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1966 and 1969, Scotland’s police forces and water services were amalgamated into larger regional bodies. The mergers provoked significant protest in Orkney and Shetland, as the islands’ local authorities spearheaded unsuccessful campaigns to retain local control over police and water services. Largely neglected by historians, this article argues that the protests played a key role in mobilising the islands’ communities and local authorities against a perceived external threat to their social, economic, and political sustainability. Although the central arguments against amalgamations were based on geography and logistics, councillors and protesters utilised Orkney and Shetland’s distinct identity and heritage as rhetorical devices to oppose the proposals. Rather than literal displays of Norse nostalgia or Scandinavian affinity, this politicisation of identity offered strategic opportunities for maximising external attention towards the campaign. However, this element to the campaign also reflected sincere commitments to the principles of local control and self-sufficiency, fostering the development of distinct political identities in each archipelago. As a result, the anti-amalgamation protests can be considered an early manifestation of political regionalism in the Northern Isles and an important antecedent in understanding the emergence of autonomy movements in Orkney and Shetland in subsequent decades.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141040871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A first-person account of a missionary's return transatlantic voyage linking the Scottish Highlands and Upper Canada in the 1850s offers a valuable insight into church operations and migrant networks as well as the realities of travel at a time of profound societal change. By considering the journal in its local contemporary situations, and by drawing on modern scholarship, this article considers the motivations for keeping the journal, push and pull factors related to religious and socioeconomic influences and observes that previous scholars have been correct in identifying an ongoing trend of episodic or temporary emigration for Highlanders and Scots in the mid-nineteenth century.
{"title":"‘There sails the ships; there is the Leveathon’: A Transatlantic Missionary's Journeys","authors":"Gordon Cameron","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0303","url":null,"abstract":"A first-person account of a missionary's return transatlantic voyage linking the Scottish Highlands and Upper Canada in the 1850s offers a valuable insight into church operations and migrant networks as well as the realities of travel at a time of profound societal change. By considering the journal in its local contemporary situations, and by drawing on modern scholarship, this article considers the motivations for keeping the journal, push and pull factors related to religious and socioeconomic influences and observes that previous scholars have been correct in identifying an ongoing trend of episodic or temporary emigration for Highlanders and Scots in the mid-nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141052313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lindy Brady, The Origin Legends of Early Medieval Britain and Ireland","authors":"Simon Egan","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0307","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141035213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper examines a neglected facet of the life of the poet and colonial agent James Macpherson (1736–1796). Better known today as the ‘translator’ of Ossian, James Macpherson was also a political writer and MP who enjoyed a long association with the East India Company (EIC). In the 1780s, James returned to his native Badenoch, bought an estate, and played a decisive role in the reconfiguration of the area through military recruitments, land arbitration and new strategies of landownership and improvements. Studying James Macpherson's relation to land and kinship reveals a more complex and ambivalent man than previously acknowledged in existing literature. Drawing from official and private records, as well as Gaelic material, this paper uncovers the extent to which his reestablishment was the product of his imperial activities, as was visible in the reinjection of external capital in land. James's political connections in London were instrumental in assisting Duncan Macpherson (later of Cluny), son of the exiled Macpherson clan chief, in recovering the forfeited estates. Enjoying popularity with his tenants, James was reluctant to impose purely commercial improvements: his considerable East Indian profits provided him with financial emancipation from unpredictable land revenues and the ability to preserve his image of a paternalist landowner locally. However, this paper also engages with James Macpherson's ideology and recreation of a mythical past serving his own interests. Offering valuable help to the entrepreneurial Macpherson gentry also involved in India and America, James took a decisive role in offering advise and support to large-scale improvement projects. His adoption of a lavish lifestyle and conscious use of entertainment, made possible by the influx of colonial wealth, enabled him to challenge the old social order, juxtapose himself with the Cluny Macpherson and recreate a post-clanship culture serving the interests of the colonial gentry. The controversial perception of James Macpherson, whose role oscillated between that of nouveau riche and ‘clan champion’, sheds a new light on the impact of the British Empire on Badenoch, and the Highlands at large. A closer look at his reestablishment in Badenoch, a county traditionally seen by historians as an example of effective management without mass depopulation, provides new perspectives on the intersection of late-eighteenth century empire, improvement, and clanship.
{"title":"The Return of the Native: James MacPherson, Improving Strategies and Clanship Imagination in Late Eighteenth-century Badenoch","authors":"Thomas Archambaud","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0302","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines a neglected facet of the life of the poet and colonial agent James Macpherson (1736–1796). Better known today as the ‘translator’ of Ossian, James Macpherson was also a political writer and MP who enjoyed a long association with the East India Company (EIC). In the 1780s, James returned to his native Badenoch, bought an estate, and played a decisive role in the reconfiguration of the area through military recruitments, land arbitration and new strategies of landownership and improvements. Studying James Macpherson's relation to land and kinship reveals a more complex and ambivalent man than previously acknowledged in existing literature. Drawing from official and private records, as well as Gaelic material, this paper uncovers the extent to which his reestablishment was the product of his imperial activities, as was visible in the reinjection of external capital in land. James's political connections in London were instrumental in assisting Duncan Macpherson (later of Cluny), son of the exiled Macpherson clan chief, in recovering the forfeited estates. Enjoying popularity with his tenants, James was reluctant to impose purely commercial improvements: his considerable East Indian profits provided him with financial emancipation from unpredictable land revenues and the ability to preserve his image of a paternalist landowner locally. However, this paper also engages with James Macpherson's ideology and recreation of a mythical past serving his own interests. Offering valuable help to the entrepreneurial Macpherson gentry also involved in India and America, James took a decisive role in offering advise and support to large-scale improvement projects. His adoption of a lavish lifestyle and conscious use of entertainment, made possible by the influx of colonial wealth, enabled him to challenge the old social order, juxtapose himself with the Cluny Macpherson and recreate a post-clanship culture serving the interests of the colonial gentry. The controversial perception of James Macpherson, whose role oscillated between that of nouveau riche and ‘clan champion’, sheds a new light on the impact of the British Empire on Badenoch, and the Highlands at large. A closer look at his reestablishment in Badenoch, a county traditionally seen by historians as an example of effective management without mass depopulation, provides new perspectives on the intersection of late-eighteenth century empire, improvement, and clanship.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141030077","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores some of the ways in which access to the census enumerators books for later nineteenth century censuses, now digitised by the ‘Integrated Census Microdata’ project, can throw new light on a range of socio-demographic developments in the ‘Crofting Counties’ between the early 1850s and the early 1880s. Collating and mapping occupational titles by parish reveals major changes in the titles recorded for those farming small land parcels and in the spatial distributions and age profiles or those heading such households. The numbers of household heads reported as ‘Crofter’ markedly increased between 1851 and 1881 (including outside the ‘Crofting Counties’), as use of terms like ‘Tenant’ and ‘Lotter’ declined. ‘Cottar’, even in 1851 used in very small numbers in most places, was reported in 1881 in very limited areas, even where the estates still used it extensively. The number of households headed by ‘Fishermen’ increased greatly in some areas, notably in Lewis. At the same time, the numbers of men becoming heads of small agriculturalist households at younger ages fell markedly, while rising numbers headed households as ‘Fishermen’. Comparative analysis of four case study areas suggests that, when fishing and other incomes fell markedly in the early 1880s, inter-generational differences in access to headship of a croft may have been a significant stimulus to localised outbreaks of disturbance pressing for land reform.
{"title":"Counting Crofters: Digitised Census Enumerators Books as a New Source for the Later Nineteenth Century","authors":"Corinne Roughley, Michael Anderson","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0304","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores some of the ways in which access to the census enumerators books for later nineteenth century censuses, now digitised by the ‘Integrated Census Microdata’ project, can throw new light on a range of socio-demographic developments in the ‘Crofting Counties’ between the early 1850s and the early 1880s. Collating and mapping occupational titles by parish reveals major changes in the titles recorded for those farming small land parcels and in the spatial distributions and age profiles or those heading such households. The numbers of household heads reported as ‘Crofter’ markedly increased between 1851 and 1881 (including outside the ‘Crofting Counties’), as use of terms like ‘Tenant’ and ‘Lotter’ declined. ‘Cottar’, even in 1851 used in very small numbers in most places, was reported in 1881 in very limited areas, even where the estates still used it extensively. The number of households headed by ‘Fishermen’ increased greatly in some areas, notably in Lewis. At the same time, the numbers of men becoming heads of small agriculturalist households at younger ages fell markedly, while rising numbers headed households as ‘Fishermen’. Comparative analysis of four case study areas suggests that, when fishing and other incomes fell markedly in the early 1880s, inter-generational differences in access to headship of a croft may have been a significant stimulus to localised outbreaks of disturbance pressing for land reform.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141030786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jim Phillips, Valerie Wright and Jim Tomlinson, Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland Since 1955","authors":"Mathew Nicolson","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0309","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141038195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Caroline McCracken-Flesher and Matthew Wickman (eds), Walter Scott at 250: Looking Forward","authors":"Nadia Faconti-Christodoulou","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0308","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141049654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn (edited by Iain MacDhòmhnaill and Moray Watson) Na Sgeulachdan Gàidhlig","authors":"Alasdair C. Whyte","doi":"10.3366/nor.2024.0310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2024.0310","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141050325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lord Seaforth’s heir as proprietor of his Ross-shire estates was his eldest daughter Mary. In 1817 she married a Wigtonshire landowner J.A. Stewart. Joseph Mitchell of the Highlands Roads and Bridges Commission believed that ‘no two people were more anxious for the welfare of their tenants’, but heard some complain of their ‘folly and unkindness’. In Wester Ross they owned three properties – Kintail, the original homeland of the family, and two purchased in the 1820s, Kernsary and Torridon. Seeking to follow the approach of Eric Richards, this article will assess how far their policies reflected Mitchell’s comments in the period to 1837 (when they left for Ceylon for Stewart to become governor). This will be placed in the context of the economic and financial problems they faced. It will be argued that they adopted differentiated policies for the three properties, the reasons for which and the results will be analysed. It will be shown that differing forms of resistance were aroused. The article concludes that the Stewart Mackenzies were unable to find solutions for the problems they faced and made a muddled response, demonstrating a lack of business competence, but also of the degree of ruthlessness which would have been required to prosper in that environment.
{"title":"The Stewart Mackenzies and their Management of their Wester Ross Estates, 1817–1837","authors":"Finlay Mckichan","doi":"10.3366/nor.2023.0294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2023.0294","url":null,"abstract":"Lord Seaforth’s heir as proprietor of his Ross-shire estates was his eldest daughter Mary. In 1817 she married a Wigtonshire landowner J.A. Stewart. Joseph Mitchell of the Highlands Roads and Bridges Commission believed that ‘no two people were more anxious for the welfare of their tenants’, but heard some complain of their ‘folly and unkindness’. In Wester Ross they owned three properties – Kintail, the original homeland of the family, and two purchased in the 1820s, Kernsary and Torridon. Seeking to follow the approach of Eric Richards, this article will assess how far their policies reflected Mitchell’s comments in the period to 1837 (when they left for Ceylon for Stewart to become governor). This will be placed in the context of the economic and financial problems they faced. It will be argued that they adopted differentiated policies for the three properties, the reasons for which and the results will be analysed. It will be shown that differing forms of resistance were aroused. The article concludes that the Stewart Mackenzies were unable to find solutions for the problems they faced and made a muddled response, demonstrating a lack of business competence, but also of the degree of ruthlessness which would have been required to prosper in that environment.","PeriodicalId":40928,"journal":{"name":"Northern Scotland","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135614825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：