Fife coal-owners owned their workers houses and controlled the processes of housing provision and allocation. They were both employers and landlords. As a result the spheres of home and work were inextricably linked. This thesis examines the nature of the social relations arising from this "tied" relationship in the light of both local and national, political, economic and social developments, between 1870 and 1930. The themes of deference, paternalism, community, socialisation and social control, and the residual effects of pre-existing social relations, particularly pre-industrial relations of production, are explored. The empirical research concentrates upon the analysis of two coal companies in particular; the Fife Coal Company Ltd. and the Wemyss Coal Company. These companies operated coal mines in contrasting geographical locations; the former throughout inland west Fife and the latter along coastal south-east Fife. Each company built rows of colliers' houses in close proximity to the mines. At the beginning of the period housing for coal-miners was provided, not by speculative builders on the open market, but, by the coal-owners through their company architects and sub-contractors. Houses were provided as part of the employment contract as a means of attracting and maintaining the workforce. By the end of the period, the State, through the agency of local authorities, was the principal provider of working class housing in mining communities; coal companies had withdrawn from the housing market. The thesis attempts to explain this process in terms of changing social relations of production.

This thesis traces the development of the Scottish railway system from the horse-drawn waggonways of the eighteenth century to the eve of the railway mania of the mid-1840s. It includes discussion of most aspect, of railway history in the period, but concentrates on the planning and formation of the various companies, the problems and achievements associated with the construction of the railways, and their financial record up to 1844, The first chapter considers the waggonways created between 1722 and 1824, generally by mineral proprietors, for the conveyance of coal either to water transport or to ironworks. From the limited available evidence an attempt is made to analyse their impact on coal traffic, particularly: to the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and to estimate their costs of construction. More detailed examination is then made of the abortive early nineteenth century plans for long distance waggonways not entirely dependent on mineral traffic. In the 1820s the advent of the locomotive, the greater length of most lines, a substantial increase in traffic volumes, and a consequent increase in costs led to greater capital requirements, wider share ownership, and the need for parliamentary authorisation and compulsory powers for land purchase. The result was the coal railways, concentrated principally in north Lanarkshire and for the first time offering a direct challenge to the canals, which are discussed in chapter 2. Chapters 3 and 4 concentrate on the inter-urban lines authorised after 1835 the central belt and in Angus. These lines, influenced by the example of the Liverpool & Manchester, moved away from the earlier concentration on minerals to a more varied freight traffic and in particular to catering for large numbers of passengers. Chapter 3 discussed the projectors of the lines, the problems of promotion up to the time of parliamentary authorisation and, by examination of company subscription contracts, the sources of finance. Chapter 4, based on a detailed analysis of company accounts, examines the wide discrepancies between original estimates and eventual costs by considering the various subsections of constructional expenditure - parliamentary costs, land, engineering, works, rolling stock and so on. Also examined is the record after opening on current account, with reference in particular to the level of working expenditure and to the boom in passenger traffic; comment is also made on difficulties caused by government taxation policy, by Sabbatarian pressures, and by inter-action with road and water transport. The various projects to link Scotland and England by rail are discussed in chapter 5. The obvious desire for a trans-border line was complicated by uncertainties over routes, engineering difficulties, limited traffic prospects, and the common belief that not more than one such line could be made to pay. Even so three lines had been authorised by 1846, and in this chapter the chronological bounds of the study have been slightly extended to include the creation of the Caledonian and the Glasgow Dumfries & Carlisle. The final chapter ties together the main threads of the argument, briefly examines the effect of English influences and the limited economic impact of these early lines, and looks forward to the railway mania.

This thesis examines past and present day processes responsible for the morphological development of St Andrews Bay in eastern Scotland. Quaternary glacial events have contributed large volumes of sediment from the Scottish Mainland to the North Sea Basin over the last 3 million years. Since the most recent glacial event, the Late Devensian, which terminated some 14,000 years ago in Scotland, the sediments of the coastal areas have been redistributed by wave and tidal activity. Thus the bathymetry and platform of St Andrews Bay has evolved since that time, although some elements of the morphology appear to predate the last glaciation. The grain size distributions of the bed sediments of the bay show a narrow range of mean sizes between fine and very fine sand. These are indicative of a low energy tidal environment although Quartile Deviation - Median Diameter plots suggest the importance of wave activity in determining their distribution. Current measurements in the bay confirm that the hydrodynamic environment is of low energy with average current speeds rarely exceeding 15 cm s −1 one metre above the bed. Progressive vector plots show closed ellipses during calm weather but meteorological forcing and wave activity generate residual currents predominantly in the direction of wave propagation or down wind. Application of a transfer function to the current data predicts low rates of bedload transport, the residual of which generally accords with the recent pattern of sedimentation at the head of the bay. The rocky platforms of the southern margins of the bay cannot easily be sub-divided into features at different elevations. No firm evidence is presented for a pre-Late Devensian origin of the platform but it is argued that such a chronology explains the morphology of the platform. Offshore sedimentary sequences, up to 30 metres in thickness, are reported from geophysical surveys which have been laid down since the last glaciation. The units identified reflect changing environments of deposition associated with climatic and sea level changes over the last 14,000 years.

This thesis sets out to examine and explain the use of India patronage in the government of Scotland from 1720 to 1774. The 1707 Act of Union created a complex and uncertain Scottish political world. Widespread resentment at the 1707 'betrayal' was kept simmering by pro-Jacobite sentiments and frustrations due to economic stagnation. To the Whig ministries in London the 1715 rebellion on top of all the other danger signals was alarming. The turmoil in Scotland seemed to threaten the stability and security of the fragile British state. Walpole believed the danger sufficient to warrant the strongest political management system possible there, using all the patronage that could be brought to bear. Through John Drummond, a Scottish East India Company Director, he was able to procure patronage from the Company and its Shipping interest. In Scotland these India posts were devoted to obtaining electoral support for Walpole's Argathelian backers. John Drummond and Lord Milton, as agents of the Duke of Argyll and his brother Islay, were instrumental in this. Walpole's successors at Westminster and the Argathelians in Scotland conspired to further the use of available India patronage. The flood of India favours continued until 1765 and beyond, pausing only with the implementation in 1774 of North's Regulating Act. The thesis breaks new ground in showing the existence and importance of this India patronage so early in the eighteenth century. Also, by examining the role of the Scots engrossed in the East India Company and its politics in the 1760s and early 1770s their importance as a group is uncovered. They were caught up in the struggle for power and for control of patronage within the Company, as well as that between Parliament and the Company for control of Indian territorial acquisitions.

This thesis examines the political role of the three estates in the Scottish parliament and general council between 1424 and 1488. Previous histories of the Scottish parliament have judged it to be weak and constitutionally defective. By placing each meeting of the estates within the context of political events, examining the frequency of meetings, identifying previously unknown parliaments, and studying those who attended and sat on its committees, a more detailed picture of parliament's role and influence has been created. A broadly chronological approach has been used in order to place parliaments in the context of the time in which they sat. Chapters 1 and 2 examine parliament between the return of James I from England in 1424 and 1435 and show the opposition he faced regarding taxation and the developing noble and clerical resentment to attempts to extend royal authority in the secular and ecclesiastical spheres. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the crisis in parliament and general council between 1436 and James I's death, its role in the establishment of a new minority government, and the interaction between the Crichton, Livingston and Douglas families between 1437 and 1449. Chapter 5 examines James II's use of parliament as a tool against the Black Douglases between 1450 and 1455, while Chapter 6 shows parliament's ability to exert influence over royal lands and possessions and to criticise royal behaviour from 1455 to 1460. Chapter 7 shows the role of factions in parliament in the minority of James III, and their ability to undermine the government. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 discuss the campaign of criticism against James III in the 1470s, the parliamentary crisis that faced him in 1479-82, and the greater royal control exerted in the 1480s. Chapter 11 examines the lords of the articles between 1424 and 1485 and concludes that the committee was not, as has formerly been suggested, a royal board of control. In conclusion the Scottish parliament is judged to have played a leading role in political affairs, providing a forum in which the estates were able to criticise, oppose and defeat the crown over a broad range of issues.

The history and culture of Scotland has been shaped by its relationships with other cultures across Northern Europe, in particular with continental Europe and Scandinavia. Using the concept of entangled histories, this thesis examines intercultural encounters evident in the historical, material and literary cultures of coastal communities in Scotland and Norway. An interdisciplinary methodology applies methods and perspectives from both history and cultural studies, in order to investigate the relationship between culture and history. The main aim of the research was to establish how transnational cultural regions are created and maintained between Scotland and Norway after 1700. Using case studies from local history, the research aims to capture intercultural histories and diffuse socio-cultural dynamics, and set them in the context of nation- and region-building during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The analysis has therefore focused both on historical and socio-political conditions, but also the everyday experience (Alltagsgeschichte) of people living in regional communities, and how they participate in the construction of transnational memories. Having examined how intercultural narratives are created and adapted in order to renegotiate national and regional identities over time, the research points to the important role played by transnational frameworks and entangled histories. As such, this thesis makes a significant contribution to the fields of British Studies, cultural transfer studies, social history, but also human geography and literature, and other areas of cultural production that create intercultural affinities, identification and belonging in Northern Europe.

This thesis examines the struggles for moral, cultural and political control of the Scottish Highlands during the period, c.1918-1945. Using library and archival material it demonstrates how a range of contesting landscape narratives, each based on an amalgam of myth, ideal and reality, were constructed for a region holding a peculiarly intense significance in the Scottish and British consciousness. By dissecting four inter-related debates about where, and to whom, the Highlands belonged, the thesis considers several overarching themes; questions of nationhood, citizenship, tradition, modernity and the division of power in society are all addressed. Firstly, it examines the creation of a sophisticated landowning mythology to counter increasingly vociferous public opposition to the elite sporting industry. Secondly, it explores how this landowning hegemony was threatened by the rise of a populist outdoor movement, and asserts that only through steady institutionalisation and the discrete involvement of reactionary interests was the vibrant recreative community emasculated. Thirdly, it analyses conflicts over the conceptualisation of the Highlands as a location suitable for modern industry, infrastuctural improvement and economic development. Examples of proposed hydro-electric power schemes are used to frame key arguments of opposition and promotion. Fourthly, it investigates the campaign mounted to re-appropriate the Highland land resource as a means to inspire agrarian and cultural revival. The role of Scotland's nationalist literary community is determined as crucial to the creation of a sophisticated, if ultimately idealistic, ruralist mythology. Despite the emergence of these oppositional narratives the thesis contends that the persistence of a feudal, sporting tradition in the Highlands reflected both the immutability and ingenuity of the established landowning hegemony. Significantly, dominant cultural constructions of Highland landscape and identity originating during the inter-war period retain much of their power to the present day.

Despite considerable active research in the realm of Quaternary studies in Scotland, some parts of the Scottish Highlands remain largely uninvestigated in terms of both glacial and environmental history. For many areas of Scotland the glacial history has been examined: researchers have ascertained aspects of the nature of the Late Devensian (Weichselian) ice sheet that covered most of Scotland and subsequent readvances, chiefly the Loch Lomond Readvance. In a 1979 review of the Loch Lomond Readvance in the British Isles, Sissons published a map of the glacial limits relating to this latest period of glacial activity in Scotland (Figure 1.1). Since then this map has been only slightly modified with certain limits having been established in the western Grampians. For the area further north, little accurate information has been added to this picture. One of the most noticeable omissions in relation to the Loch Lomond Readvance is in the area between Glen Carron and Glen Shiel in southern Ross-shire. Published research regarding the earlier Late Devensian ice sheet is also sparse. Information regarding other aspects of the Quaternary such as those detailed in other parts of the Scottish Highlands are similarly lacking for this area. There are no published accounts of the vegetation history of the area nor of Late Quaternary sea-level changes. This study seeks to fill in some of these gaps with specific reference to the Late Devensian glaciation and aims to relate the patterns of glaciation with other contemporaneous environmental changes through to the establishing of interglacial conditions in the early Flandrian period. Recent studies have demonstrated that aspects of the Late Quaternary environment can usefully be related and this study attempts to follow a similar procedure.

This thesis engages with the social worlds of Shetlanders through active personal participation in the local music scene. I explore how locals articulate personal and social perspectives on the distinctiveness of Shetland's music scene by reflecting on their own social experiences. The spree is explored ethnographically as the key local practice that manifests the principles of an epistemological tradition – a way of knowing and being that is shared across multiple generations. I explore the evidence for existing interconnected epistemological principles, including horizontality (supporting people of all ages, genders, socioeconomic classes, cultural backgrounds and musical skill level), interpersonal and intergenerational knowledge, resourcefulness and nuance of character appreciation. Individuals know, describe and manifest these principles in their own characteristic, personal and changing ways. The appreciation of individual idiosyncrasies, life stories and skills in Shetland is not necessarily aligned with a model of competitive individualism of neoliberal capitalism, but with a local principle of equality and horizontality, founded on spree practices. Based on open principles, this epistemological tradition supports engagement with past, current and novel forms of musical expression, remaining open to outside influences. As a fluid, living form, understanding it requires a leap beyond static models of tradition that seek the preservation of idealised authentic forms, canonical-aesthetic orthodoxies, and social boundaries. The spree remains stable and resilient as a principled way of being, providing a model for interactions with locals and outsiders, and affording the growth of a closely-knit social support network.

This study explores the moral characteristics of late eighteenth-century Scottish culture in order to ascertain both its specific nature and its contribution to modern consciousness. It argues that, while the language of moral discourse in that socio-economic environment remained in large part traditional, containing aspects from both neo-Stoicism and classical humanism, it also incorporated and helped to develop an explicitly modern conceptual network. The language of sensibility as discussed by Adam Smith and adapted by practical Scottish moralists, played a key role in the Scottish assessment of appropriate ethical behaviour In a complex society. The contribution of enlightened Scottish moralists to the language and literature of sensibility has been virtually overlooked, with a corresponding impoverishment of our understanding of some of the most important eighteenth-century social and cultural developments. Both literary scholars and social historians have made the mistake of equating eighteenth century sensibility with the growth of individualism and romanticism. The Scottish contribution to sensibility cannot be appreciated in such terms, but needs to be examined in relation to the stress that its practitioners placed upon man's social nature and the integrity of the moral community. Scottish moralists believed that their traditional ethical community was threatened by the increased selfishness, disparateness, and mobility of an imperial and commercial British society. They turned to the cultivation of the moral sentiments as a primary mechanism for moral preservation and regeneration in a cold and indifferent modern world. What is more their discussion of this cultivation related in significant ways to the development of new perspectives on adolescence, private and domestic life, the concept of the feminine and the literary form of the novel. Scottish moralists made a contribution to sentimental discourse which has been almost completely overlooked. Henry Mackenzie, Hugh Blair and James Fordyce were among the most popular authors of the century and their discussion of the family, the community, education, the young and the conjugal relationship was not only influential per se but also reflected a particularly Scottish moral discourse which stressed the concept of sociability and evidenced concern about the survival of the moral community in a modern society. To the extent that literary scholars and historians have ignored or misread their works, they have obscured rather than enlightened eighteenth-century culture and its relationship with the social base. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate