The search for an Industrial Revolution in England has been made more difficult with the appearance of a strong body of national economic data which shows that economic growth took place over a longer time-span and with less sharp breaks and more modest structural change than earlier accounts had suggested [55]. As a consequence, greater emphasis has been placed on the early modem period, and in particular the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries [44]. Around 1700, it has recently been argued, England was’ “prepared” for an industrial revolution’ [226].

Characterisations of the Scottish economy in the seventeenth century have changed markedly over time. Traditionally, it was portrayed as both poverty-stricken and peripheral, and in relation to England and much of northern Europe, a ‘byword for … backwardness'. Even though attempts were made to improve matters after the Restoration, one historian has concluded that at no point between the mid-sixteenth century and the early eighteenth 'did any important change occur’ [183:48].

Such dismal portrayals of Scotland's pre-Union economy are certainly not without foundation, although it should be noted that one reason for them has been the anxiety of pro-unionist historians to point to the advantages which were brought by the Union of 1707 [276]. Over the past three decades however a much more positive view has emerged, to the extent that the roots of later eighteenth-century advance have been traced back to the previous century. This revised perception has two main components: first, that Scotland's economy and society was much more dynamic and conducive to economic growth than was formerly assumed, and secondly, while there was much about Scotland which was distinctive, in several important respects the country was similar both to England and other more advanced parts of northern Europe, 'the Sweden of the British Isles’ [60:229].

The heftiest revisionist blows have been struck in the critical agrarian sector. The notion of stasis was first undermined and then swept away with the uncovering of a substantial body of evidence showing that Scottish agriculture in the 1600s was becoming commercialised and responding to new market opportunities. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Scottish landowners in the fertile cereal-growing east had managed in many seasons to export grain. Within Scotland, new outlets were created by a 'dramatic’ rise in the number of market centres after 1660.