Harriet Cornell & Julian Goodare 
Agriculture, Economy and Society in Early Modern Scotland 

Showcases the latest research on Scotland’s rural economy and society.


Early modern Scotland was predominantly rural. Agriculture was the main occupation of most people at the time, so what happened in the countryside was crucial: economically, socially and culturally. The essays collected here focus on the years between around 1500 and 1750. This period, although before the main era of agricultural ‘improvement’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was nevertheless far from static in terms of agrarian development. Specific topics addressed include everyday farming practices; investment; landlords, tenants and estate management; and the cultural context within which agriculture was ‘imagined’. The disastrous famine of 1622-23 is analysed in detail. The volume is completed by a comprehensive survey of recent historiography, setting agricultural history in its broader context.

Table of Content

Introduction: Exploring Scotland’s Agricultural History –
Harriet Cornell, Julian Goodare and Alan R. Mac Donald

1. Imagining Scottish Agriculture Before the Improvers –
Julian Goodare

2. The Use of Dykes in Scottish Farming 1500-1700 –
Briony Kincaid

3. The Famine of 1622-23 in Scotland –
Kevin Hall

4. Weather and Farming through the Eyes of a Sixteenth-Century Highland Peasant –
Julian Goodare

5. Stock, Fermes, Mails and Duties in a Midlothian Barony 1587-89 –
Norah Carlin

6. The Roots of Improvement: Early Seventeenth-Century Agriculture on the Mains of Dundas, Linlithgowshire –
Alan R. Mac Donald

7. ‘God Knowis my Sleipisar Short and Unsound’: Andro Smyth’s Collection of Rent, Tax, Teind and Tolls in Shetland c.1640 –
Brian Smith

8. Farming in the Stirling Area 1560-1750 –
John G. Harrison

9. What Were the Fiars Prices Used For? –
T. C. Smout

10. Agriculture and Banking in Eighteenth-Century Scotland 1695-1750 –
Gains Murdoch

11. Capitalism’s Cradle? Ideas, Policies, and the Rise of the Scottish Economy in the Mercantilist Age 1600-1800 –
Philipp Robinson Rössner

Conclusion: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Overview –
R. A. Houston

Index

About the author

ALAN R. Mac DONALD is Senior Lecturer in History, University of Dundee.