Little History of Glasgow (eBook)

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THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
AND THE COMING OF THE
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT

So said the great writer Voltaire in 1762, one of many qualified minds that was impressed with this new Scottish intellectual outlook. For the eighteenth century saw an explosion of talent come to the fore across the nation, with impacts and legacies that touched the whole world. Philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith were joined by engineers and architectural titans of the time like James Watt and Robert Adam, medical pioneers such as William Cullen, literary giants including Sir Walter Scott and, of course, numerous poets, among them arguably Scotland’s most famous son, Robert Burns. The latter’s all-too-short life spanned the second half of the century and saw him pen some of the most immortal words ever written. To this day – and I know as I was very enthusiastically one of them – schoolchildren compete in recitals of his works from ‘To a Haggis’ to ‘Tam o’Shanter’ and statues, plaques and tributes to him are dotted around across the planet. Burns’s home turf was the south-west of Scotland, Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire, but he is known to have visited Glasgow several times. His superbly maintained childhood home in the village of Alloway can be reached in under an hour’s drive from the city.

With the new century began a new wave of academic and creative thinking. Scots were considering their place in this new world – a world that, to a large extent, they were at the centre of. Usually spoken in the same breath as how we stopped the Romans, Scots of today like to think we invented pretty much everything. Television, telephones, penicillin, football, the refrigerator, the flushing toilet … they’d have you believe that these and countless other life-changing inventions can all be traced back to little old Scotland. Astonishingly, they’re not wrong. But, as with most things up to this point in time, Edinburgh gathered in the majority of the plaudits. The growing university did, however, start the noise around Glasgow’s intellectual potential and would eventually have back-up in 1796 with the Andersonian Institute, which would go on to become the separate Strathclyde University.

In 1737 ‘The Father of Modern Economics’, Adam Smith, enrolled at Glasgow University as a teenager. He would go on to create the foundations for free market economic theory, and received his professorship there in 1751. Droves of students from across Europe came to learn under him, with morality and empathy joining wider economic theory at the heart of his lectures. James Watt, who would become fundamental to the advancement of the steam engine among many other things, worked there as an instrument maker and repairer in the mid-1700s. By the 1770s, his engines were dramatically improving the efficiency of steam power and this would have a lasting impact on industry worldwide. Watt’s friend and fellow lecturer Joseph Black was a pioneer in experimentation with oxygen, hydrogen and carbon dioxide and another of the university’s great contributors. William Hunter became a world leader in chemistry and physics – his legacy being the Hunterian Museum that still resides within the university and was Scotland’s first public museum in 1807, showcasing his personal collection of books, art, artefacts, medals and more. It was all go.

THE JACOBITES AND THE UNION

We have already touched on the Union of the Crowns, the rise of Protestantism and the downfall of the Stuart monarchs. What we haven’t covered yet is the historic 1707 Treaty of Union, in effect the formation of the relationship that still endures between Scotland and England. Scotland joined with England and Wales to form the new kingdom of Great Britain. Unlike more recent processes regarding the Union, this decision was not one made by the people, by referendum, but by a handful of governing ‘commissioners’ who had become fed up with Scotland’s enforced isolation from the lucrative markets of the Empire, not to mention the embarrassment of the Darien Scheme. While this pact presented great economic opportunity for the kingdoms involved, political and religious resentment continued to simmer in Scotland throughout these soon-to-be-enlightened times. Outrage at the permanency of a decision that affected so many being made by so few resulted in angry demonstrations across the nation, and I’ll return to the delicate subject of the Union when we can delve deeper into the world of Scottish politics.

Surrounding these constitutional changes there had inevitably been conflict. James II of England and VII of Scotland had been sent off to France in exile in late 1688, but still held significant support – largely among those of a Catholic persuasion – amongst Britons who felt monarchs could not be removed and held a divine right to the throne based on their family line. His claim also had significant backing from across Europe, particularly France. In addition to the issue of Scottish independence and the Union, this separate anger spilled into the eighteenth century and culminated in large-scale battles at Sherrifmuir and Preston (1715) and, much later, Culloden (1745). The latter brought a savagely definitive conclusion to the Jacobite cause.

James III took on his father’s claim after his passing in 1701, leading the ill-fated 1715 Jacobite campaign in Scotland and northern England. Prince Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of the originally exiled James, continued yet further with another major uprising in 1745. Rallying support from his primary base in the north of Scotland, his Jacobite forces certainly passed through Glasgow on their increasingly optimistic marches. A warm welcome is not thought to have been forthcoming, with the Lord Provost at the time, the no-nonsense Andrew Cochrane, refusing to fund or support the campaign from the city’s coffers. In the end he had to give in, as the buoyant army would have been almost literally battering down his door, but it was a grudging bare minimum that was offered up (which Cochrane made sure to get back with interest from the British government after the campaign collapsed). For the ‘Bonnie’ Prince soon lost his promising early momentum and found his wearied and increasingly beleaguered army forced to engage at Culloden Moor just outside Inverness. The British forces under the Duke of Cumberland soundly defeated the shattered Jacobites in what remains the last major land battle fought on British soil. In the merciless aftermath, surviving Highlanders and prominent Jacobite supporters were stripped of their land, with many forced to leave Scotland altogether in what became known, infamously, as the Highland Clearances. Evicted from their land and homes by profit-seeking landowners, whole settlements were abandoned and replaced by large-scale sheep grazing, decisively depopulating the Highlands to a level that it has never recovered from.

This, combined with the Lowland Clearances stemming from changes in agricultural practices and land commercialisation, created an unprecedented movement of families seeking employment throughout much of the second half of the eighteenth century. Many made the bold choice (for some it was not optional) to try their luck in America and the British colonies, while others headed to swelling urban areas, including Glasgow. And this surge necessitated the beginnings of town planning in the 1770s, under the eye of surveyor James Barrie. A new grid system of streets stretched away from Ingram Street and westwards towards Blythswood Square. Garden boundary limits for residents and newly paved streets brought practicality and structure to what must previously have been a free-for-all. The sprinkling of villages around the High Street slowly merged into one and Glasgow became more and more appealing as a place to live and work. At this time, the mills and linen industry were the destiny of many.

LINEN

While Glasgow would go on to command a world lead in heavy industry production, it was linen that first sparked large-scale economic activity and possibility. At its peak the industry was an employer of tens of thousands of workers across the nation, and this at a time when Glasgow’s own population was scarcely in five figures.

The sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries had seen some tentative industrial activity in fields including pottery, a soap works and paper manufacturing. The Delftfield Pottery was Glasgow’s, and Scotland’s, first large-scale manufacturer, being established in the 1740s and producing a wide range of products for local and international buyers. The ‘soaperie’ was an interesting case. Whale oil was among the key ingredients used in the manufacture, although grand plans for an associated Glasgow-based whaling fleet never came to fruition. The soaperie itself would go on to moderate success over several decades, despite not being a large-scale employer. It burned down in 1777, effectively killing the business… and presumably sending hygiene standards spiralling. John Smith & Son booksellers was another. Founded in 1751, it is probably the oldest independent bookseller in the world. Largely a supplier of academic reading material for universities, it still exists within numerous university campuses. And we can’t forget the pioneering chemical experiments of Charles Tennant and Charles Mackintosh in the 1790s, which would ultimately result in the creation of, among other things, the waterproof jacket, or...