Scotland In Profile

Geographic Features

Scotland has some 790 islands ranging from large rocks to land several hundred square miles in area. Of these, the largest and best know are the groups of Shetland and Orkney in the north-east; Lewis, Harris, Skye, Mull and Islay in the Hebrides – the string of islands which lies off the west coast of Scotland – and the islands of Bute and Arran in the Firth of Clyde. About 130 of the Scottish islands are inhabited.

The comparatively modest dimensions of mainland Scotland are revealed in the fact that the greatest distance from north to south is only 275 miles (440 kilometres) while the maximum width is 154 miles (248 kilometres); the width, in the country’s central belt between the Firths of Clyde and Forth, is only 25 miles (41 kilometres). However, so rugged and indented is the coastline of Scotland that its aggregate length is estimated at 2,300 miles (3,680). Yet few parts of the country are more than 40 miles (64 kilometres) from salt water.

By British standards, Scotland is a mountainous country, having the highest peak in the United Kingdom (Ben Nevis 4,406 feet or 1,356 metres) as well as five other mountains of more than 4,000 feet. Such heights are, of course, modest by European standards but the Scottish Mountains have a beauty and colour rarely matched elsewhere.

Scotland consists broadly of three main geographic regions. These are the Highlands, the Central Lowlands, and the Southern Uplands. The Highlands in the north, including the Hebridean islands, account for somewhat more than half the total area of Scotland.

The Central Lowlands fall roughly between a line from Dumbarton to Stonehaven in the north and another from Girvan to Dunbar in the south. The term "Lowlands" is something of a misnomer, however, for the region includes a number of hill ranges as well as an abundance of beauty spots and rich, undulating farmland.

In the Southern Uplands, likewise, magnificent scenery abounds, though as a rule gentler than that in the Highlands. Seven major hill ranges are in the region, but the highest peak – Merrick, in the Galloway Hills – attains a height of only 2,764 feet (815 metres). In this region, too, lies Scotland’s Borderland, rich in story and legend as well as in beauty and fertility of soil. It is the land of Sir Walter Scott, probably Scotland’s greatest novelist and one of the major figures in European literature as a whole.

Scotland is an ideal centre for communications with Europe and North America thanks to its geographical situation. It is served by four modern international airports and has regular air services to Western Europe (including Scandinavia) and to North America. Scotland is linked to the rest of Britain by modern road and rail systems and by scheduled air services. The largest heliport in Europe is in Aberdeen.

Despite its northern latitudes, the climate in Scotland is remarkably temperate, one of the main reasons being that it lies athwart of the warming Gulf Stream from the South Atlantic. True, its mean air temperature is 2°F (1.25°C) below that of England, while average rainfall is 15 inches higher in any year. On the other hand, there is no month in which average temperatures in Scotland fall below freezing point, while the difference between summer temperatures in the north and south is usually negligible.

The average rainfall in Scotland ranges from 22 inches (560mm) to 40 inches (1,015mm) a year. There are marked variations within the country, the west, particularly the West Highlands, tending to have higher rainfall than the east. In comparison with Europe, the capital of Scotland, Edinburgh, has the same average rainfall as Dieppe – namely 27 inches or 685mm, while Inverness has the same figures as Nancy – 28 inches or 710mm; this is not much more than the average rainfall for the main centres of population in Denmark and Sweden. Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth have the same average rainfall as Lille (31 inches or 785mm) and Gothenburg (30 inches or 775mm).

The range of temperature in major towns and cities of Scotland is, as a rule, much less than in cities such as Stockholm or Copenhagen for example. Winters in the main towns and cities of Scotland are much less severe than in southern Sweden or Denmark. They are similar to winters in northern France, although Scottish summers are cooler.

History

Recorded history in Scotland can be said to start in the years AD 79-80 when a Roman army and fleet led by Agricola ventured as far north as the Firth of Tay to weigh up the prospects of subduing the wild and troublesome Caledonii, the Pictish tribes north of the Highland line. This part of the island, which had neither been conquered nor occupied by the roman legions, was called ‘Caledonia’ by the Romans, a name, which is used to this day as a poetic name for Scotland. Sir Walter Scott referred in one of his poems to ‘Caledonia, stern and wild’ and this certainly was the verdict of the Romans as well.

Over the centuries that followed the Caledonii and their allies – mainly another northern tribe known as the Maeatae – remained a very real threat.

To contain them, the Romans built two fortified walls manned by troops at selected points along their length. The first of these, completed in AD 127 was known as Hadrian’s Wall; it ran across the north of England like a chain of stone not far from the present border with Scotland. The second structure, known as the Antonine Wall, was built in AD 143 on a 35-mile link spanning the waist of Scotland from the estuary of the Forth to that of the Clyde. It was a construction of earth and turf interspersed with fortresses each large enough to maintain a cohort of soldiers supported by cavalry.

Each wall, in its own way, proved to be a most effective barrier, a psychological as well as physical block to the Caledonian tribes, until the Roman Empire itself began to show signs of collapse in about AD 350.

By AD 500, however, a clear ethnic pattern had become more or less established in the country that is now Scotland. North of the Highland line, occupying about half the total area of the territory, were the warlike and suspicious Picts. In Argyll, on the West Coast, were the Scots and one or two Celts from other tribes, all of them speaking the Goedelic (Irish) form of Gaelic. To the South, in Strathclyde and Galloway, were the Britons, who spoke a Brythonic (Welsh) form of Gaelic. In Galloway also, where St Ninian had established a Christian church late in the fourth century, was a pocket of Picts. Lastly, in the Southeast sector of what is now Scotland, but known as ‘Lothian’, were the Angles. Lothian (named after a Pictish King, Loth) at that time formed the northern part of the Kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched from the river Humber in England to the River Forth in Scotland.

At the time the Scots and Britons were Christian. Later, in about AD 580, St Columba set out to convert the King of the Picts, in which task he met with a surpris8ing degree of success. Next for convers8ion were the Anglian tribes of Northumbria, a process which began early in the seventh century with a visit to Iona for advice and instruction by Oswald, nephew of King Edward of Northumbria.

Such spiritual progress in the Pictish and Northumbrian Kingdoms did not do much, however, to create brotherly love between them on a more temporal plane, and their anmity finally came to a head in 685 when the two sides met in a large and bloody battle at Nechtansmere, near Forfar in Angus, lying to the north of the River Tay. The Picts won the battle decisively and this was to have two very important consequences. First, Northumbria’s hold over Lothian was gravely weakened, secondly the centre of power in England shifted from Northumbria to the south of the country. Thus a victory achieved 1,300 years ago by a remote Scottish tribe, whose very language has vanished practically without trace, changed the course of history in these islands.

In the 150 years following the Battle of Nechtansmere the dominant activity in Scotland was one of tribal warfare between Pict and Scot, with the Vikings joining in whenever they felt inclined. At last the Picts managed to subdue the Vikings, except in the Hebrides, but became so weakened in the process that in turn, the Scots were able to subdue the Picts. All this time, moreover, there had been a considerable amount of inter-marriage between the various peoples in Scotland so that it came as no surprise when, in 844, Kenneth MacAlpin, King of Scots, was proclaimed King of Picts and Scots. MacAlpin was in fact of Pictish blood on his mother’s side.

Soon after his new coronation MacAlpin formed an alliance with the Britons of Strathclyde and was able to extend his rule (in de facto sense) over Lothian, thus paving the way to the union of all Scotland. It was not until 1025, however, after the battle of Carham in the Border country, which ended in total victory for the Scottish King, Malcolm II, that Nort6humbria formally ceded Lothian to Scotland.

Sovereign Scotland (844-1707)

Certain dominant themes keep recurring in this rich and complicated story.

First and foremost is the mistrust between Scotland and England that manifested itself in some 700 years of intermittent warfare. The declaration of Arbroath and the defeat of the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in the early 14^th century reflected a growing sense of Scottish nationhood, which despite the pendulums of the continuing struggle was never extinguished.

Secondly, in the 16^th century there began a lengthy religious struggle. While with the Reformation the Presbyterians gained the ascendancy over the Roman Catholics, continuing struggle took place between the former and the Episcopalians (largely backed by the Crown). The (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland’s position as the established church was, however, secured under the settlement of 1688.

Third, were the links forged between Scotland and Europe in matters of culture, commerce, war and politics, the most notable of these ties having been the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, dated from 1296, when the Scots sought French help against an English invasion. In the centuries that followed, the alliance by no means always benefited both countries, but it lasted because neither Scotland nor France wanted England to become too dominant.

It is often alleged that the ‘Auld Alliance’ was a cynical marriage of convenience, and so it was in many respects, but there was much more to it than that. The French and Scots usually got on well with each other, certainly French influence on Scottish life and language was considerable. The celebrated Scottish dish of haggis, for example, derives from the French ‘hachis’ (meaning minced beef).

But Scottish links with the Continent go back further than the ‘Auld Alliance’. From the 12^th Century, and probably earlier, there was a flourishing trade between the Scottish East Coast ports and those of the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Baltic. So much importance did the Dutch attach to this trade that they encouraged the settlement of a Scots colony in and around the port of Veere on the Island of Walcheren. This little community had its own church and administered its own Scottish law.

Another link with Holland was established in the 15^th Century when (reputedly) Scots soldiers returning from the Hundred Years War brought back a game played with a stick and ball which was very popular among the Dutch and known as ‘het kolf’. An improved version of it was in time developed on the grassy dunes surrounding the town of St Andrews in Fife. It was, of course, golf, a game which Scotland has exported to the world at large.

One way and another and certainly from 1350 to 1600, Scotland was more closely associated with Europe than with England during this phase of its history. Trade with Europe took root and flourished; Scottish fashions in dress and architecture borrowed more from France than from England; her soldier mercenaries fought in every corner of the Continent and for generations the Kings of France recruited their bodyguards from among Scotsmen of good family.

Cultural and intellectual contacts with Europe also flourished. Scots professors occupied Chairs at some of the leading European seats of learning. Among these were universities and colleges in Paris, Bordeaux, Saumur and Sedan. In turn, Scottish nobles and clan chieftains sent their sons to be educated in France and Italy; the sons of the Scots King, James IV, for example, were tutored in Italy by Erasmus, the leading European educationalist of this day.

But perhaps the most famous of all Scots to come under the seminal influence of Europe was the formidable John Knox (1505-72). Knox, originally a Catholic priest, became a dynamic reformer and for a time worked out his ideas with the help of Calvin of Geneva.

Knox is sometimes blamed for the violence with which Scotland repudiated the old religion, but he also played a leading part in making it the most education-minded country in the world. In the words of the Scottish author and journalist, James McMillan, ‘Knox had a glowing regard for talent, and in his writing he laid down the precepts of Scottish education, comprehensive, compulsory, democratic and free, not merely for poor children but for all with ability. Merit was to be the determinant.’

Knox’s views profoundly influenced The First Book of Discipline, which appeared in 1560, and which said: ‘The children of the poor must be supported and sustained on the charge of the Kirk, trial being taken whether the spirit of docility be in them found or not. If they be found apt to learning and letters, then may they not – we mean, neither the sons of the rich nor yet of the poor – be permitted to reject learning, but must be charged to continue their study, so that the commonwealth may have some comfort in them’.

A New Era

After the Jacobite rebellions the Scots turned their talents to the ways of peace with truly remarkable results for a country which was both small and poor. From medieval times, Scotland had shown itself to be in no way lacking men of talent and intellectual distinction, among them John Napier of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms, and poets such as Dunbar, Ferguson and Henryson. After 1750, however, Scottish genius seemed not so much to flower as to erupt. Philosophers, writers, inventors, architects, engineers and men of science and medicine all seemed to reach the height of their powers in a brief span of two or three decades. Among the philosophers were David Hume, whose work aroused Kant ‘from his dogmatic slumbers’, and Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was a major landmark in the development of economic thought. He writers included Scotland’s greatest poet, Robert Burns, and probably her greatest novelist, Sir Walter Scott, as well as men of letters such as novelist and historian Tobias Smollett and biographer James Boswell. Robert Adam’s work graced the field of architecture and interior design, while John Hunter was laying the foundations of scientific surgery.

Scottish industry, likewise, abounded with creative talent, including four men of engineering genius who played a major role in providing the world with steam power. First of them was James Watt who revolutionised the steam engine by inventing the governor, the condenser and the crank, thus preparing it for traction as well as production. Then there was William Symington who built the engine for the world’s first steamboat The Charlotte Dundas. In 1811 a third Scot designed and built a steamboat, which made history. He was Henry Bell and his boat, The Comet, which operated on the River Clyde, won yet another ‘first’ for Scotland. He fourth member of this remarkable quartet was William Murdoch, known as ‘the father of the steamless carriage’, who also discovered how to use coal gas for street lighting.

The work of these and other gifted men had a radical impact on the Scottish economy, which until then had relied mainly on agricultural and fishing, with coalmining and the production of textiles supplying a little variety.

What might be done through a combination of brains and capital, however, had already been demonstrated as early as 1681 when a factory for the weaving of fine cloth was opened with the help of government money at New Mills in East Lothian. The venture soon proved a commercial success. Later, in the first half of the 18^th Century, work began on the systematic improvement of Scottish agriculture. Other activities begun about this time include the mechanism of textile production and the opening up of a prosperous trade in tobacco and cotton with the American colonies.

Banking was another activity in which Scotland built up an eminent reputation, thanks mainly to the achievements of a remarkable Scot, John Law, who in 1717 became Director-General of the Bank of France which he founded, and who succeeded in discharging the whole National Debt of France. Yet another Scot, William Patterson, took a leading part in establishing the Bank of England in 1694.

From about 1750 onward, it was mainly the turn of industry to profit from the new creative spirit abroad in Scotland. Ironworks and factories were built, new coalmines sunk and new shipyards opened. Scotland’s ‘merchant navy’, for instance, grew from an estimated 100 ships in 1700 to more than 2,000 in 1800. In 1779, the country’s first cotton mill was opened, yet by the end of the century cotton spinning had become one of the country’s leading industries.

Economic change was accompanied by changes in the social structure. The population itself increased from an estimated 1,100,000 at the time of the Treaty of Union to more than 1,600,000 by 1800. Art, literature, publishing and architecture flourished. Glasgow and Edinburgh each with a population of around 80,000 became two of the most attractive cities in the United Kingdom, distinguished by elegant squares, streets and terraces, by stately civic buildings and extensive parks. Clubs, debating societies and coffee houses contributed to the new ‘sophistication’ and it was not long before Edinburgh was dubbed the ‘Athens of the North’.

The process, which began with such promise in the 18th Century, continued at an accelerating pace throughout the 100 years following. Gradually, Scotland lost its supremacy in cotton to Lancashire, but achieved really spectacular advances in other fields, notably coalmining, iron and steel production and heavy engineering and shipbuilding. Here, once again, she was helped greatly by a flow of discovery and invention.

But this was also the century of Scots such as David and Robert Napier, founders of marine engineering, who also started the shipbuilding industry on the Clyde; of James Nasmyth, inventor of the steam hammer; John McAdam, pioneer of new road-surfacing techniques; of the great mathematician and physicist, Lord Kelvin; of James Clerk Maxwell, discoverer of electromagnetic theory of radiation; of the chemist, William Ramsey, who discovered argon, helium and neon gases; and of the physicist, James Dewar, who invented methods of liquefying hydrogen and solidifying air and who, for good measure, invented the vacuum flask. As if they were not enough, there were also Charles MacIntosh, the chemist who invented the waterproof ‘mac’, Kirkpatrick MacMillan, inventory of the bicycle, and John Boyd Dunlop, pioneer of the pneumatic rubber tyre. Moving to the field of communication, we find Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), the Scottish speech therapist who invented and developed the telephone in the USA. Later came John Logie Baird (1888-1946) pioneer and inventor of television.

Scotland in the 19^th Century had to adjust to an almost breathtaking pace of advance, and there seemed no end to native inventiveness. For example, Barclay Curle, a well-known shipbuilding firm on the Clyde, developed 12 different types of marine engine in 20 years.

A similar if less spectacular story was developing in other fields. In agriculture, despite changing economic fortunes, great progress was made. Land was reclaimed and drained, improved steadings were erected, yields were enhanced by the use of artificial fertilisers, labour-saving machinery was introduced and Scotland’s livestock breeds were developed and improved. About this time too, in the second half of the century, the excellence of Scotch whisky started to command the notice of others besides the Scots themselves, beginning with the London clubmen of the period.

Meanwhile, Scotland continued with its outstanding contribution to medicine, science, accountancy, banking and commerce generally, while in education the world at large was beginning to appreciate its example. In the late 19^th century, only one child in 1,300 in England was receiving a secondary education; the corresponding figure for Scotland was one in 200, a ratio which only Prussia could so much as approach. But Scotland was educating her young people beyond the capacity of the country to provide enough careers for their training and skills. As a result, thousands went off to various parts of the British Empire, then at its zenith (playing a major role both in government and in commerce) or to other overseas lands.

The population statistics reflect the pace of advance, rising by 170 per cent between 1800 and 1900, from, 1,608,000 to 4,472,000. Out of a working population of about 1,700,000 at the turn of the century, no fewer than 100,000 were employed in coalmining, a figure that tells its own story of the demand at that time for the products of Scotland’s heavy industry.

The pace of advance did not slacken until the end of the First World War when a brief spell of prosperity was follow3d by almost total economic collapse in the heavy industrial sector. In 1933, for example, only 56,000 tons of shipping was built on the Clyde compared with 750,000 tons in 1900. Mass unemployment and social decay spread like a plague across the Central Lowlands. For a time, Scotland lost faith in itself.

Economic Progress

The Scottish economy of today is broadly based, with most industries well represented. Some of the regional policy measures which helped the Scottish economy to diversify and recover were taken as early as the 1930s, although it was in the 1950s and 1960s that substantial investments of money and expertise which were channelled into Scotland began to yield tangible results in terms of altering the balance of activity within the economy.

This period witnessed a fundamental change in the nature of the Scottish economy with the severe rundown of its traditional industries mitigated only by a massive effort to attract new firms and employment to Scotland and by the expansion of the service sector. As a result of these changes the Scottish economy entered the 1970s with an economic structure less prone to decline and very similar to that in the UK overall. Indeed, the pattern of employment in Scotland approximated the national average much more closely than that in any of the other UK economic planning regions.

Since the end of the Second World War, Scotland has been successful in attracting a large measure of overseas investment. North America has been the dominant source of inward investment in Scotland. But Europe has been growing in importance, and recently Japanese inward investment has become much more significant. Inward investment has been particularly important for the engineering industries, including electronics. The electronics industry has been the major growth area in Scottish manufacturing in the past decade; the estimated number of employees, in Scotland, in plants classified to the electronics industry in 1991 was over 45,300. Electronics accounted for approximately 13 per cent of Scottish manufacturing employment compared with less than 6 per cent in 1978. Between 1981 and 1991 the output of the industry increased by an average rate of around 14 per cent per annum, in real terms. The industry in Scotland is diverse, with strengths in information systems, defence, electronics, instrumentation and semi-conductors. In 1991, office machinery and data processing equipment is estimated to have accounted for 29 per cent of Scottish manufactured exports; a larger contribution than that of the whisky industry. Among other high technology areas, health care and biotechnology and advanced engineering offer new areas of opportunity and growth.

The discovery in the early 1970s of vast energy resources below the northern North Sea had a substantial impact on the Scottish economy, and afforded a wide range of industrial opportunities. By the mid-1970s employment in firms wholly related to North Sea oil and gas was 27,000; by 1990 this figure had more than doubled to over 63,000. Taking account of indirect effects, the total impact of oil-related employment in Scotland in 1990 was around 100,000, almost 5 per cent of total employees in employment. Although the oil price has remained low in real terms, in recent years the technological advances, combined with the competitive nature of the oil-related sector, has contributed to a sustained level of production, which is expected to continue into the mid-1990s.

As regards infrastructure, the housing stock has been greatly improved and expanded, with a growing trend away from the public rented sector towards owner-occupation. Since 1979 a total of 128 major trunk road schemes have been completed providing 345 miles of new or improved roads; a full 17 per cent of the total trunk road network has been renewed. In total, some £ 1.2 billion has been invested. The notable achievements have been the upgrading of the A9 between Perth and the Cromarty Firth and the virtual completion of the Stirling-Perth-Dundee-Aberdeen road to dual carriageway standard.

The current major priorities include the upgrading of the A74 to motorway standard and the completion of the central Scotland motorway network. Five new towns have been created as centres of industrial growth and much has been achieved by way of re-generating older urban centres and public sector housing estates.

Income levels in Scotland have become much closer to the UK average in the past decade than in the 1950s and 1960s. Currently, Scotland lies in the middle group of UK Standard Regions in terms of Gross domestic product per head and personal Disposable Income per head, together with the South-West, East Midlands and North-West.

The prospects for Scotland’s economy are dependent to a considerable extent on developments in the UK and world economies. Although the general sluggishness in global economic activity in the early 1990s resulted in difficult trading conditions and a subsequent downturn in output levels for a number of UK companies, the outlook for the remainders of the 1990s is for a return to positive levels of economic growth.

Scotland will benefit from the more favourable prospects for the UK economy. Much is expected from the further expansion and development of high technology sectors such as electronics, advanced engineering, health care and biotechnology. Although North Sea Oil production is now past its peak, the industry will continue to provide many thousands of jobs in Scotland well into the next century. Moreover, the development of industry to supply the North Sea has provided the capability to supply other offshore markets throughout the world and has enhanced the technical skills of many engineering companies in Scotland. The impact of North Sea oil on Scottish manufacturing industry has thus been more fundamental than the employment figures indicate, and should continue to have a significant impact in the future. The service industries are likely to continue to provide the main source of employment growth, especially given the trend towards higher productivity and labour-saving technology within the manufacturing sector. Scotland will continue to benefit from regional policy; recent changes are designed to promote enterprise and wealth creation and to make regional spending more cost effective. However, as in the past, economic prosperity and a continuing improvement in living standards will depend on the ability to compete effectively in new and expanding markets.


FACTSHEET 2
Scotland in Profile
Produced by The Scottish Office Information Directorate in June 1994.
This information will be fully updated.