Transformation of Rural Scotland

In the eighteenth century the old peasant society of lowland Scotland disappeared to be replaced by a new order of capitalist farmers and landless labourers. It was one of the most fundamental changes in modern Scottish history, but has never before been studied in detail.
In this groundbreaking book, T. M. Devine uses original and extensive archive material from four representative counties to explore this social revolution - a revolution unparalleled in Western Europe for its speed and scale. He compares developments in the Highlands of Scotland and in agrarian England, and covers a wide range of issues, including: the seventeenth-century rural social structure; the eighteenth-century agrarian economy; landlordism and improvement; the evolution of the tenant farming class; and the dispossession of the cottar class. It is an important and controversial book on a subject which has received inadequate study in the past.