T. M Devine

The Scots are one of the world's greatest nations of emigrants. This text takes many famous stories and removes layers of myth and sentiment to reveal the no less startling truth, paying particular attention to the exceptional Scottish role as traders, missionaries and soldiers.

18th-century Scotland is famed for generating many of the enlightened ideas which helped to shape the modern world. But there was in the same period another side to the history of the nation. Many of Scotland's people were subjected to coercive and sometimes violent change: traditional and customary relationships were overturned and replaced by the 'rational' exploitation of land use. 'The Scottish Clearances' is a highly original account of this...

There can be no relationship in Europe's history more creative, significant, vexed and uneasy than that between Scotland and England. From the Middle Ages onwards the island of Britain has been shaped by the unique dynamic between Edinburgh and London, exchanging inhabitants, monarchs, money and ideas, sometimes in a spirit of friendship and at others in a spirit of murderous dislike. Tom Devine's seminal new book explores this extraordinary history...