Location
Collingwood College Penthouse Suite, Durham University
Registration is open, via the conference website, and will close for in-person attendance on 4 July and for online attendance on 18 July.
Register here: https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/history/events/histories-of-scottish-politics-in-the-age-of-union-c1700-1945/
Join us for two days of discussion about the place of politics and the meaning of the political in modern Scotland, a period of massive political, constitutional, economic, environmental, religious and social change in Scotland, the UK and the empire. The conference features 40 paper presentations, a keynote on ‘Where did the nineteenth century go?’ and a roundtable on ‘The future of Scottish political history?’.
The conference is hybrid and free to attend.
Day One: Tuesday 23 July 2024
9.45AM – 10.20AM Registration (Lobby) and refreshments (Boardroom)
10.20AM – 12PM Panel Session 1
Panel 1.A (Room A) Courtroom politics
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Kajsa Varjonen, ‘Politics in the courtroom: The prosecution of rioters after the 1725 Malt Tax crisis’
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Emma Macleod, ‘Enlightenment justice: the Scottish trials for sedition and treason in comparative context, 1793-98’
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Valerie Wallace, ‘William Macao and the politics of subjecthood in the courts’
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Rachel Bennett and Lauren Darwin, ‘This trial is no trivial matter. It affects me, but it affects the country more’: The Scottish Martyrs, Scots law and convict transportation to the Australian colonies’
Panel 1.B (Room B) The politics of abolition
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Matthew Lee, ‘The Haitian Revolution, abolitionism and pro-slavery thought in the Scottish public sphere, 1791-92’
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Stephen Mullen, ‘The West India interest’s takeover of the Scottish political system in the abolition era, 1807-34’
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Frankie Aird, ‘“A Manifest Violation of Justice and Humanity”: The campaigns against British and American slavery in nineteenth-century Perthshire’
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James Wylie, ‘Tartan and slavery: surveying the evidence’
12PM – 12.40PM Lunch (Boardroom)
12.40PM – 2.20PM Panel Session 2
Panel 2.A (Room A) Land and environment
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Grace Wright, ‘“Damn the fellow”: the organisation and prevention of land agitation in the social networks of Dugald MacLachlan during the Crofters’ War’
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Annie Tindley, ‘The politics of the Scottish land market: from Lloyd George’s Land Campaign to community ownership’
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Graeme Morton, ‘Patronage and politics within Scotland’s climate science, 1820-1921’
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Sarah Leith, ‘Beauty and the Hydro-Electric Board: Revisiting “use and delight” in mid-twentieth-century Scotland’
Panel 2.B (Room B) Women in politics
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Natalee Garrett, ‘Fashionably Scottish: The Duchess of Gordon and Scottish identity in British high society, c.1770-1810’
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Hannah Speed, ‘Lifelong political identities in the autobiographies of Scottish women’s suffrage campaigners’
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Lisa Berry-Waite, ‘The Duchess of Atholl: Scotland’s first woman MP’
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Katie McCrossan, ‘Un-co-operative parties? The Scottish Co-operative Women’s Guild and Labour Politics’
2.20PM – 2.40PM Refreshments (Boardroom)
2.40PM – 4PM Panel session 3
Panel 3.A (Room A) Friendship and feeling
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Michael Fraser, ‘The Public face of the Argathelian regime: The image of John Campbell, Second Duke of Argyll, c.1704-1733’
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Brendan Tam, ‘Henry Dundas, “The Friends of Mr. Pitt” and Networks of Political Friendship, 1783-1811’
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Nicholas Barone, ‘“I used to…think about Scotland in my hours of bitterness”: Pessimism, decline and patriotic anxiety in Scottish political thought, 1800-1850’
Panel 3.B (Room B) Political faith
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Edwin Sheffield, ‘Clan MacKenzie and Ross-shire politics after Union, c.1708-1715’
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Myles Smith, ‘“Sour Saints and Bad Subjects”: Scottish presbyterian dissent and the British state, 1775-1815’
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Joshua Smith, ‘Politics in the Presbytery: political participation and reaction in the Presbytery of Dunblane, 1790-1832
4PM – 4.20PM Refreshments (Boardroom)
NB: During this break rooms A and B will be joined to make Penthouse Suite Room A/B
4.20PM – 5.30PM Keynote talk (Penthouse Suite Room A/B)
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Ewen Cameron, ‘Where did the nineteenth century go?’
5.30PM – 6.45PM Drinks reception (Boardroom)
Co-sponsored by Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies and History of Parliament Trust
7PM – Conference dinner
Day Two: Wednesday 24 July
8.45AM – 9.15 AM Registration (Lobby) and refreshments (Boardroom)
9.15AM – 10.35AM Panel session 4
Panel 4.A (Room A) Twentieth-century politics
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Jim Tomlinson, ‘From a globalised economy to national economy? The economic foundations of a new national politics in Scotland, 1914-45’
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Sarah Moxey, ‘All quiet on the political front? Politics in Second World War Scotland’
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Matthew Nicolson, ‘Island politics and the Liberal Party’s revival in Orkney and Shetland, 1945-50’
Panel 4.B (Room B) Popular politics
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Karin Bowie, ‘Scottish petitioning in a British context from the Revolution of 1688-90’
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Colin Kidd, ‘The contours of modern Scottish republicanism’
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Richard Huzzey and Henry Miller, ‘And Your Petitioners: Scottish petitions, subscriptional communities and petitioning, 1780-1918’
10.35AM – 10.55AM Refreshments (Boardroom)
10.55AM – 12.15PM Panel session 5
Panel 5.A (Room A) Constituency and parliamentary politics
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Gary D. Hutchison, ‘The Scottish Conservative Party outwith Scotland, 1832-68’
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Martin Spychal, ‘Surveying Scottish county politics in the constituencies and at Westminster, 1832-68’
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Kyle Thompson, ‘The Young Scots and English carpetbaggers’
Panel 5.B (Room B) Spaces and places
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Thomas Archambaud, ‘Scotland’s imperial meridian: the politics of James and John Macpherson in London, Madras and Calcutta, 1764-87’
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Petra Johana Poncarová, Ruaraidh Erskine’s Gaelic magazines: nationalism, language and faith in the early twentieth century’
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Oli Betts, ‘“On Historic Ground”: The politics of building and running railways in Scotland, 1844-1923’
12.15PM – 12.55PM Lunch (Boardroom)
12.55PM – 2.15PM Panel session 6
Panel 6.A (Room A) Radical politics
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Dominic Barron-Carter, ‘After Orbitson: Retracing “rank and file” experiences of early cooperative communities in nineteenth-century socialism’
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Sonny Angus, ‘“Working Men Cling to Your Text”: Christian Chartism in Scotland’
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Dave Steele, ‘The 1838 Chartist meting on Glasgow Green: Triumph or damp-squib’
Panel 6.B (Room B) Constitutional politics
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Laura Stewart, ‘The (re-)imagining of the Scottish constitution before 1707’
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Stuart Neave, ‘Bryce, Argyll and the “forces” underlying the British constitution’
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David Torrance, ‘Dreaming of Stormont: Northern Ireland as a model for Scottish devolution’
2.15PM – 2.30PM Refreshments (Boardroom)
NB: During this break rooms A and B will be joined to make Penthouse Suite Room A/B
2.30PM – 3.30PM Roundtable (Penthouse Suite Room A/B)
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The future of Scottish political history?
Ewen Cameron, Colin Kidd, Emma Macleod, Naomi Lloyd-Jones, Malcolm Petrie, Valerie Wallace