Scotland Accounted For: An
Introduction To The 'Old' (1791-1799) And The New (1834-1845) Statistical
Accounts Of Scotland
by Charles W J Withers, Professor of
Historical Geography at the University of Edinburgh
What are Scotland's
statistical accounts?
Scotland's statistical
accounts provide vitally important reference sources for Scotland's
history, geography and society. Based on detailed parish reports (with
supplementary reports, for example, on the universities), the statistical
accounts enumerate and describe such topics as agriculture, antiquities,
industrial productions, population and natural history at crucial periods
in Scotland's past.
There have been three
statistical accounts of Scotland. The first, undertaken at the end of the
eighteenth century under the direction of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster
(1754-1835), is referred to simply as the Statistical Account of
Scotland. Known also as the 'Old' or 'First' statistical account by
reference to its later companions, it was published in twenty-one volumes
between 1791 and 1799. The second was the New Statistical Account,
published between 1834 and 1845. The Third Statistical Account of
Scotland was undertaken and published between 1951 and 1992.
This brief introduction
summarises the nature and origins of the 'Old' and the New accounts in
order that the modern reader should understand the background to, and the
content of these valuable historical sources. The introduction is in
several parts. The first considers the accounts in historical context. The
second discusses the nature of Sinclair's Statistical Account and
outlines what contemporaries understood it to be. The third part
summarises the purpose and the publication history of the New
Statistical Account. A short guide to further reading is provided.
Scotland's statistical
accounts in historical context
Sir John Sinclair's
Statistical Account of Scotland in the 1790s is rightly seen as the
first in a sequence of national descriptive accounts. Yet, as Sinclair
recognised, it should also be understood as the first successful attempt
to survey Scotland geographically.
Earlier failed efforts
were, like the 'Old' and the New accounts, usually undertaken
through the ministers of the Church of Scotland. Such men represented the
most reliable sources of credible local knowledge. The Church outlined
plans for such a survey in the 1620s and early 1630s. Sir Robert Sibbald,
from 1684 Scotland's Geographer Royal, distributed 'General Queries' in
the 1680s and 1690s about the state of the nation, and plans made in the
early eighteenth century for a never-realised Royal Society of Scotland
included a parish-by-parish description of the country.
The Church authorities were
again active between 1720 and 1744 in proposing a 'Geographical
Description of Scotland'. In a similar exercise, in 1743-44, the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland was involved in parochial
questionnaires through its Moderator, the Rev. Robert Wallace, in his
plans for an annuity scheme for the widows and orphans of ministers.
Wallace's work, which influenced the Rev. Alexander Webster's 1755
population census of Scotland, was a major prompt to the development of
the actuarial sciences in which context Sinclair's work - a national
account - must also be seen. There is an important connection, too, with
the New Statistical Account which was organised on behalf of the
General Assembly by a 'Committee of the Society for the Sons and Daughters
of the Clergy'.
In 1767, the Scottish
political economist Sir James Steuart recommended an examination of the
nation 'parish by parish' in his Enquiry into the Principles of
Oeconomy. In 1781, David Erskine, Earl of Buchan and founder of the
Society of Antiquaries in Scotland, proposed a general parochial survey of
Scotland in order to further historical understanding and, as he put it,
advance 'national improvement'. Only a few parishes were ever surveyed in
Buchan's scheme and by the time the limited results were published (in
1792), his scheme had been overtaken by Sinclair's Statistical
Account.
The Statistical Account
of Scotland stands, then, as a 'new' beginning for understanding
Scottish and, indeed, British society, but also at the end of over 150
years of failed attempts to enumerate the nature of the nation - attempts
which failed for several reasons: lack of money, too few people involved
and/or no central organisation. Sinclair succeeded both by drawing upon
these earlier schemes (but by not making the same mistakes) and because
his contemporaries had a clear and shared sense of the work's purpose. The
New Statistical Account in turn built upon its earlier counterpart and was
further supported by widespread interest in the 1830s in the nature and
condition of civil society, in Scotland and elsewhere.
Scotland's 'political
anatomy': Sir John Sinclair and the 'Old' Statistical Account, 1791-1799
Sir John Sinclair, MP for
Caithness, lay member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
and known as 'Agricultural Sir John' for his interests in estate
improvement and work for the Board of Agriculture, first articulated
proposals for a detailed parish-by-parish survey of Scotland in May 1790.
Sinclair aimed to elucidate 'the Natural History and Political State of
Scotland'. Those terms mean rather different things now, but in his
understanding and in that of his contemporaries, this was a project of
statistical intent, of knowledge relating to the state as a political unit
and to its condition, its state, in terms of natural and human history.
His plan involved parish
ministers working to a pre-planned set of questions. In summary, a set of
160 questions in four sections was distributed to the clergy: questions
1-40 covered the geography and topography of their parish, its climate,
natural resources and natural history; 41-100 addressed population and
related matters; 101-116 concerned the parishes' 'agricultural and
industrial production'. A final section embraced miscellaneous matters. A
further six questions were asked as an appendix to his circular of May
1790 and five more followed in a circular of May 1791. Not all ministers
responded by the deadline. By June 1796, Sinclair had resolved 'to send
Statistical Missionaries' to different parts of the country to
hurry ministerial replies. Yet, by 3 June 1799, the project was complete:
Sir John laid before the General Assembly 'a unique survey of the state of
the whole country, locality by locality'.
The returns made were
neither compiled nor published at the same time, and for that reason the
Statistical Account is not, strictly, an at-a-moment 'snapshot'
of the condition of the nation. But it has the great merit of being
locally written - in large part by the parish ministers - and factually
based. This was, as Sinclair knew, a project of empirical inductivism
along the lines practised by contemporary natural scientists then
investigating 'nature's economy':
The superiority, which
the philosophy of modern times has attained over the ancient, is justly
attributed to that anxious attention to facts, by which it is so
peculiarly distinguished. Resting not on visionary theory, but on the
sure basis of investigation and experiment, it has risen to a degree of
certainty and pre-eminence, of which it was supposed incapable. It is by
pursuing the same method, in regard to political disquisitions, by
analysing the real state of mankind, and examining, with anatomical
accuracy and minuteness, the internal structure of society,
that the science of government can alone be brought to the same height
of perfections.
The Statistical Account
should be seen, then, as a work of scientific intent, of national
social accountancy and of 'political anatomy' investigating the state of
'the body' of Scotland. It was, in all these ways, a work which reflected
and directed the rational philosophical interests of its age: as one
modern historian has noted, it is a 'remarkable manifestation of
Enlightenment idealism at work'.
'A farther service to the
public': the New Statistical Account, 1834-1845
The suggestion to have a
further statistical account of Scotland 'by requesting from the parochial
Clergy a description of their respective parishes' was first made to the
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland by the Committee of the Society
for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy in 1832. The Society had felt
moved to undertake this project given, as it explained, 'their having
possessed the property of the first Statistical Account, which was
conveyed to them by its benevolent and public-spirited projector'
[Sinclair].
The New broadly
follows the form of the 'Old' but several distinguishing features should
be noted. Maps were included of the counties. Although the parish reports
were mainly either written or edited by the resident minister, the New has
contributions from other local credible informants: doctors, landowners,
schoolmasters. As was noted at the time:
Above all, it will be
remembered that a Statistical Account of any country implies something
more than the mere reporting of ascertained facts; and that it cannot be
accomplished, in all points completely, without great and various labour
in the ascertainment of the facts to be reported, - by the scientific
survey of its physical qualities, by inquiries into its past history and
situation, and by the close investigation of its actual state,
industrial, social and moral.
So great had been the
changes in Scotland's industrial, social and moral state since the first
Account that the advertisement accompanying the first part of the
New Statistical Account, which was published in March 1834, noted
how the Committee 'do not hesitate to announce, that they now present not
merely a new Statistical Account, but, in a great measure, the Statistical
Account of a new country'. It is for precisely that reason, of course,
that much of the utility of the accounts - to the modern reader now and to
the contemporary observer then - rests in the comparison of the parish
reports. We are afforded insight into educational improvements, the
changed state of agriculture, the nature of the local economy and the
circumstances of people in their daily routine. More so than for the
'Old', the New is also a reliable source for Scotland's natural
history.
For the modern reader using
the New as a source document, either as 'a moment' or in relation
to the 'Old' and other documents, two points of caution should be noted.
Statements by reporting
ministers and others, however 'factual' they may be claimed to be, should
not be separated from the context of their time, from the moral and other
judgements of the reporter: this is also what was meant at the time in
noting that a statistical account 'implies something more than the mere
reporting of ascertained facts'. It is important, too, to note the
publication history of the New Statistical Account. The New
was published in three formats. The first edition, which took the form of
52 quarterly parts, was published between March 1834 and October 1845. A
re-issue in 33 county volumes was published between 1841 and 1845. A
second re-issue, in 1845, took the form of 15 collected county volumes. It
is this second re-issue which has been used here.
Anyone examining Scotland's
past through this rich and detailed source should be aware, then, that,
like its counterpart, the New Statistical Account documents a
period of time rather better than it captures single moments.
A short guide to further
reading
For a summary of national
'statistical' survey in Scotland before Sinclair's work in the 1790s,
notably of Sir Robert Sibbald's efforts to undertake a geographical
account in the later seventeenth century, see F. Emery, 'A "geographical
description" of Scotland prior to the statistical accounts', Scottish
Studies 3 (1959), 1-16 and C. W. J. Withers, 'How Scotland came to
know itself: geography, national identity and the making of a nation,
1680-1790', Journal of Historical Geography 21 (1995), 371-397.
The claim that Sinclair's work on the 'Old' Statistical Account
should be considered a 'most remarkable manifestation of Enlightenment
idealism at work' is made by D. Withrington, 'What was distinctive about
the Scottish Enlightenment?', in J. Carter and J. Pittock (eds.),
Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987), 9-19. For Sinclair's
view of his own purpose in compiling the Statistical Account, see
J. Sinclair, Analysis of the Statistical Account of Scotland
(London, 1826). Sir John Sinclair's life and work is summarised in the
Dictionary of National Biography (Vol. Xvii, 301-305), and discussed
in detail in R. Mitchison, Agricultural Sir John: the life of Sir John
Sinclair of Ulbster, 1754-1835 (London, 1962). A summary of the
publication history of the New Statistical Account is provided by
J. A. Gibson, 'The New Statistical Account of Scotland, 1834-1845: correct
publication dates of the parish accounts', The Scottish Naturalist
107 (1995), 3-52.
A short introduction to the Statistical
Accounts of Scotland
Many people today think of
statistics as just figures and tables. In Scotland in the
1790s, 'statistics' was a fairly new word. Sir John Sinclair, Member of
Parliament for Caithness at Westminster, had heard it from the Germans who
used it to refer to a collection of facts about the political strength of
a country. The new word was very close to the word 'state'. Sir John took
the notion much further. He wanted a collection of information about the
economic and social activities and the natural resources
of Scotland.
Known as 'Agricultural Sir
John' for his interests in estate improvement and work for the Board of
Agriculture, Sinclair had two aims in mind. In 'Enlightenment' Scotland,
the increase in well-ordered knowledge was quite simply a good thing in
itself. This was also the age of the encyclopaedia. He was sure that his
collection of well-ordered facts based on responses by ministers in each
of the 938 parishes of Scotland to 166 queries would form an
account of 'the quantum of happiness' of the communities of Scotland and
also be a 'means of future improvement'. Sinclair did not aim to provide
information to the government so that the Scotland's resources could be
exploited in time of war. A copy of his queries can be found by using the
Search tab, and entering the word "queries". They are in Volume 20, Page
20 of the 'old' Statistical Account.]
Everything from changing
fashions in dress to the different attitudes to smallpox inoculation and
resulting high infant mortality between the north and south of Scotland
can be studied in the Statistical Account. The ministers'
responses covered topics such as agriculture, antiquities, industrial
production, population and natural history, and some were long in coming
back. Sir John, however, was patient and eventually, after sending
Statistical Missionaries' to hurry up late entries and a 'final demand'
written in red ink, the 21 volumes were complete by 1799.
These books were part of a
world of turnips and steam engines, of growing cities and expanding trade,
of cotton mills and newly drained fields. It was no accident that
'statistics' was added to other new words and new meanings like 'science'
and 'political economy'. The Statistical Account
joined Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (first published in Edinburgh between 1768
and 1771), on the bookshelf. Many other nations, from the Irish to the
Swiss followed, but few could match the disciplined and engaging clarity
of Sir John and his army of ministers. These detailed parish reports
provided then and now quite extraordinary, even revolutionary, ways of
looking at the world, hence their excitement as a source for historians.
In 1832, the clergy were
once again asked to describe their parishes, this time by the Committee of
the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy, who had benefited
from sales of the first Statistical Account. It felt that the
time was ripe for a new edition because of the great changes which had
taken place in Scotland since the 1790s. The New Statistical Account
was written mostly in the 1830s and published in parts from 1834, finally
being issued as 15 volumes in 1845. So great were the changes that the
Committee advertised 'in a great measure, the Statistical Account of a new
country'. Used together, the two accounts make 'the close investigation of
its actual state, industrial, social and moral' very rewarding.
The New Statistical Account of Scotland (1845)
The Old Statistical Account of Scotland (1791-1799)
You can view the Third Statistical Account here (1951)
You
might also want to read the
Domestic Annals of Scotland (1561 - 1748)
And
you might also want to read individual histories of
Places in Scotland
See
also...
Geographical and Statistical Description of Scotland
Containing A General Survey of that Kingdom, Its Climate, Mountains,
Lakes, Rivers, Products, Population, Manufactures, Commerce, Religion,
Literature, Government, Revenue, History, A Description of Every County,
its extent, soil, Products, Minerals, Antiquities, Seats with an
Appropriate take to each County: and a Statistical Account of every
Parish by James Playfair in 2 volumes in pdf format. (1819)
Volume 1
|
Volume 2
|
