Series 4 > Scottish industrial history

VU1
SCOTTISH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
tion of the nature of the transformation, of why Scotland changed
in a century and a half from an agrarian economy to an acknowledged
industrial leader, and also why Scotland failed to maintain the lead.
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Industrial enterprises were not uncommon in Scotland before the
birth of the modern industrial structure in the later eighteenth
century, but the influence of many was limited, and restricted by
isolation to local, frequently closely knit communities. Subordina¬
tion to agricultural or commercial enterprises with which they were
closely integrated restricted the influence even of wider industrial
progress, as with industrial projects of enterprising landowners,
whose activities have to be viewed as one aspect of plans to exploit
the full resources of their estates, and as with early industrial
concerns brought into being in Glasgow to supply the needs of the
city’s growing overseas trade. Such isolated and subordinate
ventures, however successful individually, did not represent the
industrial society which Scotland was to become. Increased
specialisation was a necessary prelude for industrial transformation
and with it the isolated nature of many enterprises gave way to an
integrated industrial economy which affected all Scottish society.
Population grew and its distribution was altered. The balance
between agriculture and industry changed. As industry came to
depend on world markets, and the standard of living on the imports
paid for by the exports, Scottish economic life was part of a world¬
wide mechanism of trade and industry. In these conditions the
typical Scot was not a rural but an urban worker, often of non-
Scottish birth or descent, his life moulded by industry in a pattern
shared with those in industrial areas elsewhere in Britain.
The foundations for industrial growth were formed over many
years; its acceleration was more rapid, but precise dating is a matter
of controversy. ‘For those who like to be precise in such matters’
the date of the lighting of the first blast furnace at Carron has been
suggested as the beginning of the industrial revolution in Scotland,1
but even those who do not seek such precision do not make a
1 T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1948), 65. Ashton gives the date
as 1 January 1760. It was 26 December 1759.