Visiting Arts
Scotland Cultural Profiles ProjectCultural Profile
 
                                                                               
 
 
Introduction to Scotland:
19th century Scotland
Queen VictoriaThe period taking in the 19th century, and extending more or less up to the end of World War I, is generally characterised as one where Scottish national sentiments, as far as they existed, did so broadly in harmony with a sense of Britishness. The Napoleonic Wars of 1795-1815 reinforced a sense of patriotic common cause throughout the United Kingdom, as did the growth of the British Empire under Queen Victoria (1837-1901) – whose own marked affection for Scotland did much to reinforce its allegiance. The Empire also provided a market for many products of industrialisation – it was during this time that Glasgow became known as the 'workshop of the world' – with both these factors creating employment opportunities that enabled many enterprising Scots to ascend the career and social ladder.
Industry, and increasingly heavy industry, overtook agriculture as Scotland’s dominant occupation in the early decades of the century. Coal and iron production increased rapidly with the introduction of new processes, while a fast-expanding railway and canal network improved communications, and shipbuilding on the Clyde became a major source of national pride.
While these developments brought great prosperity to some, the effects of urbanisation – exacerbated by hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants – created appalling slum conditions and overcrowding in many industrial centres, notably again in Glasgow.
Highlands (VisitScotland)Poverty also continued to stalk the Highlands. Overpopulation, the collapse of the kelp industry, mid-century crop failures and the widespread supplanting of crofting by sheep-farming and deer forests, to boost landlords’ incomes, saw much of the population departing, whether voluntarily or by forced displacement, for the cities or the New World. Though there is no disputing the innumerable personal tragedies arising from the Highland Clearances, as they have come to be known, nor that some landowners and their agents were especially brutal in their dealings with crofters, long-term economic, social and environmental factors played at least an equal role to that of human greed in the Highlanders’ sufferings.
Radical energies during the 19th century tended to be channelled into campaigns for electoral and other political reforms, with the Edinburgh Review, founded in 1802, playing a prominent role in promoting such causes. Successive Reform Acts in 1832, 1867 and 1884 steadily extended the franchise firstly to middle-class, then increasingly to working-class voters, paving the way for universal male suffrage in 1918.
Crofter family, Poolewe, ©Am BaileLand-rights agitation in the Highlands, led by the Highland Land League, erupted into violence in the so-called 'Crofters’ Wars' of the 1880s, and with crofters voting for the first time in 1885, an act was passed the following year providing for security of tenure and fair rents.
In the cities, the parallel expansion and increasing political sophistication of industrial trade unions led to the formation of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888, which became the UK-wide Independent Labour Party in 1893, to challenge the dominant Whig (Liberal) and Tory (Conservative) parties.
 
ArtsJobFinder the ArtsProfessional Careers Service
The Scotland Cultural Profile was created in partnership with the Scottish Government and the British Council Scotland
Date updated: 21 May 2007
 
The website is powered by a Content Management System developed by Visiting Arts and UK software company Librios Ltd   http://www.librios.com