CULTURAL CHANGE IN PROVINCIAL SCOTTISH TOWNS, c. 1700–1820

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
BOB HARRIS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACTIn the decades which immediately followed the union of 1707, most Scottish towns saw limited economic and cultural change. The middle of the eighteenth century, however, marked the beginnings of a new provincial urban dynamism in Scotland, which, from the 1780s or so onwards, was accompanied by far-reaching and rapid cultural change. This article seeks first to establish the scope, nature, and geography of this cultural transformation before discussing its wider historical significance, not only for our view of modern Scottish urbanization but in terms of patterns of urban change within the British Isles in the long eighteenth century. It is a story in part of convergence on Anglo-British cultural norms, but more saliently of the emergence of an increasingly British cultural synthesis, albeit one with distinctively Scottish elements. Another underlying purpose of the article is to re-direct views of Scottish urbanization away from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen and on to a group of towns which hitherto have barely featured in discussions of British urbanization in this period.

scholarly journals Inns And Elite Mobility In Late Georgian Britain*

2020 ◽  
Vol 247 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-76
Author(s):  
Daniel Maudlin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
British Isles ◽  
National Network ◽  
Building Technology ◽  
Interior Spaces ◽  
Good Taste ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Reality

Abstract This paper considers the significance of the spaces and material culture of the ‘principal inn’ as the centre of a distinct world of elite mobility in eighteenth-century Britain. Inns were central to the expansion and improvement of the travel network that brought the British Isles closer together through the long eighteenth century. The turnpike system introduced improved surfaces to old and new roads while new coach-building technology allowed faster movement on those roads. However, it was the national network of inns, regularly and reliably punctuating Britain's roads, that made fast and efficient travel a practical, everyday reality from London to York, Bristol to Holyhead, Edinburgh to Inverness. On arrival the inn provided food and accommodation for travellers, hay and stables for horses and grease for carriage axles. From cross-country travel to crossing the inn-yard, finding a table in the parlour or climbing the stairs to bed, the inn served the traveller across different scales of space and mobility. Moreover, for the elite traveller, inns were not simply blank containers for travel-related activities; they were material constructs that gave those activities form and meaning. Within the principal inn refined interior spaces and well-made, fashionable things placed the elite traveller in a reassuringly familiar cultural space, a bubble of comfort, luxury and good taste which they did not leave from one inn to the next.

“Men of the World”: British Mariners, Consumer Practice, and Material Culture in an Era of Global Trade, c. 1660–1800

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beverly Lemire
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Global Trade ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Practice ◽  
Transnational Exchange ◽  
Rhetorical Authority ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

AbstractGrowing numbers of sailors powered British fleets during the long eighteenth century. By exploring mariners' habits, dress, and material practice when in port, this article uncovers their roles as agents of cultural change. These men complicated material hierarchies, with a broad impact on developing western consumer societies, devising a distinctive material practice. They shaped important systems of transnational exchange and redefined networks of plebeian material culture. Mariners were also endowed with a growing rhetorical authority over the long eighteenth century, embodying new plebeian cosmopolitanism, while expressing facets of a dawning imperial masculinity. Marcus Rediker described eighteenth-century Anglo-American mariners as plain dealers, wageworkers, and pirates, as well as “men of the world.” This international contingent mediated between world communities, while demonstrating new tastes and new fashions. They also personified the manly traits celebrated in Britain's burgeoning imperial age.

scholarly journals Towns, government, legislation and the ‘police’ in Jamaica and the British Atlantic, 1770–1805

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Aaron Graham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Alternative Pathway ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Urban Modernity ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Slave Society ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Government Legislation

AbstractUrban renewal in the British Isles in the long eighteenth century was based on new municipal powers made possible by parliament. Focusing on Jamaica between 1770 and 1805, which passed legislation for the ‘policing’ – in the broader Scottish sense – of its towns, demonstrates that it was a global phenomenon common to the whole British Atlantic. However, the solutions it produced were also specific to local circumstances. Jamaican elites feared invasion, revolt and the dissolution of the slave society. Their police acts reflected these concerns, and demonstrate the alternative pathway that urban modernity took in this part of the British Atlantic.

scholarly journals Fleeting gestures and changing styles of greeting: researching daily life in British towns in the long eighteenth century

Urban History ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Penelope J. Corfield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Clear Signal ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Different Sources

Abstract Researching the history of daily greetings is challenging, because references are casual and scattered through many sources. Nonetheless, some broad trends are apparent. In eighteenth-century Britain, the old tradition of deep bowing and curtseying was slowly attenuating into a brisker touching of the cap or head (for men) and a quick bob (for women). Yet that transition was not the whole story. Simultaneously, a new form of urban greeting, in the form of the handshake, was emerging. The strengths and weaknesses of many different sources are here assessed, including novels, plays, letters, diaries, etiquette books, travelogues and legal depositions, as well as artwork. Strategies for analysis are identified, with a warning against generalizing from single references in single sources. Finally, the emergence of the handshake among the middle class in Britain's eighteenth-century towns gives a clear signal that socio-cultural change does not invariably start at the ‘top’ and ‘trickle down’.

Transatlantic geographies of faith in the long eighteenth century

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Juliette Paul
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
British Isles ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Early American ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Impact

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Noting the thousands of books that American colonists imported from the British Isles, scholars have imagined America as a satellite of British literary culture in the long eighteenth century. However, we have yet to consider the impact colonial books made on British culture. This dissertation studies colonial accounts, many published in the British Isles, to discover the British response to the unique spiritual and material situations of colonial life. Placing these books alongside some of the most innovative works of British fiction, poetry, and prose of the eighteenth century illuminates how early American devotion deeply influenced the development of British religious literary culture. In chapters devoted to the novels, poems, and correspondence of four British writers, I uncover their substantial references to colonial books and accounts. In her novel, Oroonoko, Aphra Behn draws on West Indian beliefs about slave baptism, while Christopher Smart, in his poem, Jubilate Agno, creates a space for English prayer akin to missionary depictions of Christian Indian conversion. Similarly, Samuel Richardson identifies his fiction, Clarissa, with colonial forms of practical devotion, as Mary Wollstonecraft reforms the English language of romantic love in response to the American topography of her lover, Gilbert Imlay. I argue that because many colonists had separated from the Church of England, accounts of colonial faith represented narratives capable of revising English devotion at a remove from Anglican authority, in fiction, poems, and letters. These works, considered part of the rise of secularism in English culture, participated in a devotional reform continuous with the Protestant Reformation.

PROTESTANTISM, NATIONALISM, AND NATIONAL IDENTITY, 1660–1832

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. D. CLARK
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
British History ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

National identity, nationalism, patriotism, state formation, and their present-day policy implications now constitute one of the most vital areas of scholarship on British history. In no other period is the debate currently as focused as it is in the long eighteenth century, that crucially contested territory in which older assumptions about a fundamental transition between pre-modernity and modernity have now been called in doubt. This article offers an overview of recent work. It argues that much writing on these years has framed misleading models both of state formation and of national identity. It adds that this period is nevertheless a key one in revealing that the processes at work in sustaining collective identities in the British Isles did not originate with ‘nationalism’ in its historically correct meaning, and need not follow its trajectory.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document