“She was convinced the country was about to succumb to revolutionary socialism. Her own circumstances encouraged this belief: just on the edge of the really rich country set, she shared their views and opinions but lacked the financial and architechtural insulation from real or imagined political troubles. She found crushed larger cans and cigarette packets in her front garden and interpreted these as menacing signals from the Perthshire proletariat. Every flicker and dim of electric light was a portent of class war.” FunnySocialismScotlandClass WarScottish FictionPerthshireScottish History Book:And the Land Lay Still Source: And the Land Lay Still
“But I do like Scotland. I like the miserable weather. I like the miserable people, the fatalism, the negativity, the violence that's always just below the surface. And I like the way you deal with religion. One century you're up to your lugs in it, the next you're trading the whole apparatus in for Sunday superstores. Praise the Lord and thrash the bairns. Ask and ye shall have the door shut in your face. Blessed are they that shop on the Sabbath, for they shall get the best bargains. Oh yes, this is a very fine country.” ReligionDevilScotlandCalvinism Author:James Robertson
“Scotland's passage from a mainly pastoral and agrarian society to a commercial and industrial one was brutal, rapid and relentless. In that transition, an entire peasant class, the cottars - perhaps as much as half of the rural population - was lost forever. They and tens of thousands of even poorer people were forced off the land across the Lowlands, Highlands and islands. They ended up in towns, cities and planned villages, they worked in mills, mines, quarries and iron works, or they emigrated to other parts of the world, or became soldiers, sailors, engineers, administrators and merchants in the service of the British Empire or the companies that thrived under its bellicose protection. Many prospered, many did not.” CommerceScotlandBritish EmpireClearancePastoralIndustrialisationAgrarianHighland ClearancesUrbanisation Book:Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland Source: Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland
“Returning to Jamaica, he had the sense of re-entering a place much less likely to alter in the coming years. Year in, year out, the cane fields produced their riches, the gangs swung their way through them, slaves were brought, seasoned, used up, replaced. Planters would go on making improvements to their great houses, to methods of production, and yes, to the conditions in which their slaves lived and worked, because it was in their interest to do so. But fundamentally the structure of life and of society did not change.” SlaveryCommerceScotlandJamaicaPlantationsThe Caribbean Book:Joseph Knight Source: Joseph Knight
