18th Century
Scotland was a poor rural, agricultural society with a population of 1.3 million in 1755. Its transformation into a rich leader of modern industry came suddenly and unexpectedly in the next 150 years, following its union with Britain in 1707 and its integration with the advanced English and imperial economies. The transformation was led by two cities that grew rapidly after 1770. Glasgow, on the river Clyde, was the base for the tobacco and sugar trade with an emerging textile industry. Edinburgh was the administrative and intellectual centre where the Scottish Enlightenment was chiefly based.
Read more about this topic: History Of Scotland
Famous quotes containing the word century:
“F.R. Leavis’s “eat up your broccoli” approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel—for the eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions—did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)