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The Scots made a unique though not fully recognized contribution to the destruction of black slavery. This book begins with a Virginian slave seeking his freedom in Scotland in 1756 and ends with the abolition of the apprenticeship scheme in the West Indian colonies in 1838, including many stories told here for the first time.

Intellectual Politics and Cultural Conflict in the Romantic Period maps the intellectual formation of English plebeian radicalism and Scottish philosophic Whiggism over the long eighteenth century and examines their associated strategies of critical engagement with the cultural, social and political crises of the early nineteenth century. It is a story of the making of a wider British public sphere out of the agendas and discourses of the radical and liberal publics that both shaped and responded to them. When juxtaposed, these competing intellectual formations illustrate two important expressions of cultural politics in the Romantic period, as well as the peculiar overlapping of national cultural histories that contributed to the ideological conflict over the public meaning of Britain's industrial modernity. Alex Benchimol's study provides an original contribution to recent scholarship in Romantic period studies centred around the public sphere, recovering the contemporary debates and national cultural histories that together made up a significant part of the ideological landscape of the British public sphere in the early nineteenth century.

Harris provides insights on the different views of the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union of 1707. He assesses important recent works on the Act of Union between England and Scotland. Until recently, historians had assumed that English politicians manipulated Scottish politicians into signing the Act of Union and the latter acquiesced out of their own self-interest. However, more recently historians have argued that more substantial debates about politics and economy shaped the union. He points out that Scottish contemporaries believed the union was necessary for economic survival. In addition, Harris also traces a shift from a Namierite explanation to a more social, cultural, religious, and economic context for the union.

In his recent study of the Union, Christopher Whatley has challenged much of the established historiography associated with 1706-1707. Whatley's longer-term approach has identified considerable continuity during the period 1688-1707, from the Glorious Revolution to the Union. Patrick builds on Whatley's seminal study by examining the demands of the Kirk. He explores how these were addressed in the Scottish Parliament and considers the wider significance of the church act. In particular the question is posed of whether this act was essentially political, designed to appease Presbyterian churchmen and weaken popular opposition, or whether there is evidence that Presbyterianism was as significant to the majority of members of Parliament as it was to the Kirk and the Scots people in general.

The road to the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 was strewn with obstacles. Anglo-Scottish relations deteriorated from verbal skirmishing almost to the point of open conflict in 1704 and 1705. This had in large part been precipitated when the Scottish Parliament passed the Act of Security in 1703, a measure that defied Westminster's Act of Settlement of 1701, and asserted Scotland's right to nominate a Protestant successor to Queen Anne unless Scotland's grievances were dealt with. Possibly the issue that most exercised the hearts and minds of people outside Parliament Close was the fate following union of the visible mark of Scotland's nationhood and sovereignty, the honours of Scotland, the ancient crown and the sword and sceptre of state.

Storrs looks at the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 in the context of the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701-1714, one of the great European conflicts. He seeks to demonstrate that the War of the Spanish Succession played a crucial part in determining the timing, the mode and aspects of the implementation of the Union, as well as defining some of the benefits it brought to the Scots.

Between the end of January and the middle of March 1720, a series of riots raged along Scotland's east coast. Thousands of people were involved, as actors and supporting players in the crowds, and as spectators, or as magistrates, town officers and soldiers who struggled to control the situation. Faced with widespread violent unrest, the authorities in Edinburgh and London expressed their outrage at what were described as impudent, lawless and criminal proceedings. Law officers in Edinburgh and the affected counties were ordered to prosecute the most active rioters. Charges of sedition were brought against many of the accused, and some of those found guilty were transported to the West Indies for 7 years. In the broader context of the historiography of European food riots, the 1720 riots in Scotland are in some respects unremarkable. The Scottish historical context, however, places the riots in a different light, and they represent an important episode of popular disorder in early modern Scottish history.

Saville explores the intellectual strengths available to the middling and upper ranks in the Scottish professions. By the 17C, the extension of grammar schools and university education, coupled with the Calvinist theology, provided the Reformed Church of Scotland with an intellectual base well suited to theological and philosophical controversy. Through the developments that occurred, we see the rise of the Scottish administrator; the manager trained in the grammar schools, prepared to work long hours for low pay in business, trade and improved husbandry, and who after work would enlist in the civilian army of the Church and municipal government. In the determination to fight the Jacobites and the French, the four pillars of the Scottish system, i.e. Calvinism, the legal system, the grammar schools and the universities and the commonsense philosophy of the professionals and landowners, and the new constitutional politics stiffened the revolution in England, and secured Scots their place in British public affairs.