The Scottish Enlightenment 18th and 19th centuries
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The Lowland aristocracy drifted south, seduced by London, leaving room for a burgeoning middle class. Unfettered by the inhibitions of social mores, without the blinkered vision and moribund minds of a nobility who had grown complacent, a new intelligentsia emerged in a surge of genius to dazzle the world. |
Egalitarian social clubs became centres for debate and the free exchange of views. Philosophy and literature flourished. David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Carlyle were but a few of the great names that contributed to the Enlightenment. Sydney Smith, though not a Scot, taught in Edinburgh and helped to found the Edinburgh Review. Allan Ramsay the poet lived long enough to see the birth of the Enlightenment. Robert Burns was a product of the period; Sir Walter Scott was a leading influence. Others were: James Thomson the poet, Tobias Smollett the writer, James Boswell, biographer of Dr Johnson, James Watt the physicist who invented the steam engine. These remarkable men, and many more, achieved an astonishing record of success in all fields of human accomplishment. Scottish physicians, engineers and inventors led the world.
The Enlightenment spanned about a century, from after Culloden until Queen Victoria discovered Scotland in the mid-19th century and herds of nobility stampeded north to smother the piercing blasts of innovation with cosy convention.
A flourishing cotton industry collapsed in the 1860s when the American Civil War cut off supplies of raw cotton and heavy industry developed instead. Glasgow, once the biggest tobacco importer in Britain, led the world in shipbuilding. Expanding industries meant expanding labour forces; there were concentrations of population in industrial areas, fed by refugee Highlanders and Irish.
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