A New Look at the Scottish Improvers

2012 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. Smout
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Agricultural Change ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Look

Scotland in 1700 was, in European terms, backward in the study of agronomy, but in the course of the eighteenth century the ‘improvers’ became a leading force in the study and practice of agricultural change. Nevertheless, over the course of the century they changed significantly: the early Honourable Society of Improvers, aristocrat-led and amateurish, gave way to a broader-based movement incorporating the rural middle-class, especially clergy and successful farmers, diffusing information through locally-based reports, magazines and societies. While unable to influence the course of agrarian change in the adverse demand circumstances before 1760, the improvers arguably had a profound impact on the response of the supply side between 1760 and 1820. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the growth of literature on agricultural improvement in the long eighteenth century, to look at its changing character, to form a judgement as to whom the improvers were, and to assess their impact.

A New Look at Gentrification: 2. A Model of Gentrification

1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1335-1354 ◽  
Author(s):  
P A Redfern
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Housing Services ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
New Look

In this paper I propose a model of gentrification based on the notion that gentrification closes a gap between the flow of housing services fixed in a particular vintage of the housing stock and those available from the most modern properties. This gap is not a rent gap, therefore, but an investment gap. Modelled in this manner, gentrification appears as a problem of maximization under constraint and a subsubset of general home improvements. It is a transient and historically unique (noncyclical) phenomenon. Similarly, these constraints and the opportunities currently available to overcome them exist only in a particular historical context, the peculiarities of which must also be taken into account if gentrification is fully to be explained. In particular, these include the development of domestic technologies and the 19th-century conditions of supply of the housing available currently for gentrifying. I concentrate on the supply-side issues in gentrification, but deny that the demand-side issues can be handled via explanations based on postindustrialism, postmodernity, or the rise of a new middle class.

A Long Eighteenth Century? What Eighteenth Century?

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Dejean
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
English Studies ◽  
The Many ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Way ◽  
New Look

When i agreed to contribute to this issue, i wanted to focus a debate about periodization for once solely on foreign languages and not, as is usually the case, on a single foreign language in comparison with English. To do this, I intended to take a new look at one of the most successful examples of the new periodization: the long eighteenth century. The concept first came to the fore and gained wide critical currency in English studies and in history. In these fields, a number of differently long eighteenth centuries have been proposed and practiced—an eighteenth century that begins as early as 1660, for example, and one that ends as late as 1832. Among the many consequences of the various choices of chronological limits for the long eighteenth century, probably the most significant is the way in which the Enlightenment's role is heightened or diminished in each version of the period. Since in intellectual and literary terms the Enlightenment's impact was felt all over western Europe in the 1700s, I decided that this should be one issue of periodization whose presence would be by now visible in most if not all modern foreign languages. As it turned out, I could not have been more wrong. And what I learned on the way to that realization caused me to shift course radically.

Military Scotland in the Age of Proto-globalisation, c. 1690 to c. 1815

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Mackillop
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Military Service ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Class A ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

This chapter considers the way in which military service acted as an agent of mobility and a means of extending global networks. In the long eighteenth century. The so-called military economy allowed Scots, who were over-represented in the British officer corps, to use existing regional and kinship connections to extend a form of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’. Service in the armies of the East India Company provided Scots from the emerging middle class a means for social mobility. The creation of these networks allowed Scottish localities to connect directly to the remotest areas of the British empire.

Honour and duty at sea, 1660–1815

2002 ◽  
Vol 75 (190) ◽  
pp. 425-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. A. M. Rodger
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract This article looks at the changing meaning of the concepts of honour and duty among sea officers over the ‘long eighteenth century’. As gentlemen and as fighting men, sea officers felt particularly close to the concept of honour; but as members of a skilled, semi–bourgeois profession which was substantially open to talent, they were seen by others as being on the margins of gentility. The rise of the middle–class virtues of duty and service in public esteem at the end of the century, benefited the sea officers by making their long–standing combination of honour and duty fashionable.

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’.

scholarly journals Popular Luxury in Southeastern Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Case-Study of Italian Ceramics and Ottoman Greek Clients

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 407-429
Author(s):  
Artemis Yagou
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Northwestern Greece

Abstract In late eighteenth-century Ottoman Epirus (today northwestern Greece), novel and pleasurable objects expressed on a material level the rise of new mentalities. We discuss specifically the ceramic trefoil jugs with Greek verses manufactured in Pesaro, Italy, by the firm of Casali and Callegari and its successors. These wine jugs follow a pre-existing formal typology and bear painted decoration; their particularity is that they are also inscribed with verses written in Greek, as they were produced following commissions by merchants from Epirus. This region boasted centers of commerce, wealth, and education of an emerging middle class; the economic power of this rising Greek bourgeoisie was combined with deepening ties with Europe, intellectual growth, and the strengthening of a distinct identity. We argue that these jugs are examples of popular luxury and the commissioning individuals were knowledgeable and proactive consumers exhibiting a growing confidence and indeed a new awareness with political connotations.

Liberty, Property and Popular Politics

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
British History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Parliamentary History ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
The University

Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.

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