Scotland's Empire

Jan 10, 2025 8:10 PM

Author:T. M. Devine

Scotland's Empire

In Scotland's Empire, T.M Devine tells the compelling story of Scotland's role in forging and expanding the British Empire, from the Americas to Australia, India to the Caribbean.

By 1820 Britain controlled a fifth of the world's population, and no people had made a more essential contribution than the Scots - working across the globe as soldiers and merchants, administrators and clerics, doctors and teachers.

In this widely praised book, T. M. Devine - acclaimed author of The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora - traces the vital part Scotland played in creating an empire - and the fundamental effect this had in moulding the modern Scottish nation.

'A tour de force ... Tom Devine is the pre-eminent historian of modern Scotland'

  Niall Ferguson, author of Empire

'Captivating ... tells the story of the Scots who put their marching boots on, or were forced into them, to start a new life abroad'

  Barclay McBain, Herald

'A fascinating work, replete with telling detail'

  Allan Massie, Literary Review

'Nobody has done more over the past thirty years to bring Scottish historiography into rigorous and unsentimental alignment with developments elsewhere than Tom Devine'

  Colin Kidd, The Times Literary Supplement

'Captivating ... tells the story of the Scots who put their marching boots on, or were forced into them, to start a new life abroad'

  Economist

T.M. Devine,OBE is University Research Professor and Director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. His other books include The Scottish Nation and To the Ends of the Earth.

Reviews

Scotland's Empire is a fascinating work, replete with telling detail and continually throwing out observations which invite further speculation

—— Literary Review

A book that will be enjoyed by anyone interested in history, or who simply enjoys a good story, well told

—— Laurence James , Herald

The history of the British empire will never look the same after this book

—— Professor Christopher Bayly

Tom Devine, Scotland's foremost historian, follows up his majestic The Scottish Nation with a forensic analysis of Scotland's central role in the British Empire ... Devine creates a book that suits post-devolution Scotland - we only have ourselves to understand

—— Frank McAvetty, MSP , Sunday Herald (Books of the Year 2003)

As a sophisticated and clearly argued statement of Scots and Empire this book could hardly be bettered

—— Scotsman

Sarah Wise is too clever and considered a historian simply to give us a lurid, one-dimensional Victorian melodrama. Through painstaking archival work and readable empathetic prose, she has instead sought to evoke the texture of life here

—— Daily Telegraph

The account is both moving and engrossing, and its tendency in places to become a litany of misery and despair is redeemed by Sarah Wise's light and occasionally humorous touch

—— Literary Review

As with her previous book The Italian Boy, Sarah Wise is superb on statistical detail... In every respect this is a note-perfect work of social history, thoroughly researched, charitable in its sympathies, and sadly still embodying lessons for today

—— Independent

Carefully researched... a wide-ranging study

—— Sunday Telegraph

Her achievement is remarkable... This engrossing work shines a light not only on a turbulent period in London's history, but on humanity itself. Only the best histories can claim as much

—— Guardian

Spilling facts, lives, conditions, intolerable burdens and the spirit expressed by spontaneous dancing in the streets, The Blackest Streets is a little masterpiece

—— Herald

Extraordinary scholarship and rare sensitivity

—— Ophelia Field , Daily Telegraph

Sarah Wise mines the archives to bring the local inhabitants back to life, and makes particularly brilliant use of the interviews that historian Raphael Samuel conducted in the 1970s with Arthur Harding.

—— LRB

As in her wonderful book The Italian Boy, she explores a milieu that was hungry, dirty, threadbare and exploited

—— Christopher Hirst , The Independent

Sarah Wise animates the horrors in fascinating detail

—— Toby Clements , The Telegraph

Reveals the London beneath your feet in all its fascinating – and sometimes horrifying – glory. Historian and novelist Ackroyd invests his tales of buried rivers and catacombs with enormous energy

—— ELLE Decoration

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