This is the first full-length history of the Scottish cotton industry, from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century to its premature decline in the years leading up to the First World War. The book examines the industry chronologically and through themes such as precursors, technology, capital and employers, markets, labor and work, placed within their broader economic and scoial contexts. Its account of the cotton industry is set within important historiographical debates such as proto-industrialization, the speed of industrial change, the diffusion of technology, the labor process, paternalism, workplace control, entrepreneurship and theories of industrial decline. Cotton was Scotland's premier industry during the Industrial Revolution and this book will be welcomed by specialists, students and interested readers alike.

Places the British Industrial Revolution in global context, providing a fresh perspective on the relationship between technology and society.

This book links the world of finance directly to the fate of the cotton and textile industry, long a metaphor for the rise and fall of Britain as a manufacturing economy, for the first time.

A sweeping study of how capitalism first promoted fossil fuels with the rise of steam power—and contributed to the worsening climate crisis The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess? In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began in Britain with the rise of steam power. But why did manufacturers turn from traditional sources of power, notably water mills, to an engine fired by coal? Contrary to established views, steam offered neither cheaper nor more abundant energy—but rather superior control of subordinate labor. Animated by fossil fuels, capital could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours, as it continues to do today. Sweeping from nineteenth-century Manchester to the emissions explosion in China, from the original triumph of coal to the stalled shift to renewables, this study hones in on the burning heart of capital and demonstrates, in unprecedented depth, that turning down the heat will mean a radical overthrow of the current economic order. “The definitive deep history on how our economic system created the climate crisis. Superb, essential reading from one of the most original thinkers on the subject.” —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

The first applied research volume in Scottish Romanticism, this collection foregrounds the concept of progress as 'improvement' as a constitutive theme of Scottish writing during the long eighteenth century. It explores improvement as the animating principle behind Scotland’s post-1707 project of modernization, a narrative both shaped and reflected in the literary sphere. It represents a vital moment in Romantic studies, as a 'four-nations' interrogation of the British context reaches maturity. Equally, the volume contributes to a central concern in the study of Scottish culture, amplifying a critical synthesis of Romanticism and Enlightenment. The conceptual motif of improvement allows an illumination of the boundaries (and beyond) of conventional notions of Romanticism, tracing its long, evolving imbrication with Enlightenment in Scotland. Exploring the holistic treatment of improvement in Scottish literature, chapter-studies include work on agricultural improvement and processes of commercialization, polite cultural renewal and the cotton trade, an expanding print culture and spirituality in death rituals. Taken as a whole, this amounts to an interdisciplinary re-consideration of the central role of improvement in Scottish cultural history of the long eighteenth century, of interest to a wide range of scholars, reflecting the vitality of the exchange between Enlightenment and Romanticism in Scotland.

This lively and erudite cultural history examines how Scottish identity was experienced and represented in novel ways.

This book examines continuity and change in the functions of Scottish drinking places.