Scotland's Populations is a coherent and comprehensive description and analysis of the most recent 170 years of Scottish population history. With its coverage of both national and local themes, set in the context of changes in Scottish economy and society, this study is an essential and definitive source for anyone teaching or writing on modern Scottish history, sociology, or geography. Michael Anderson explores subjects such as population growth and decline, rural settlement and depopulation, and migration and emigration. It sets current and recent population changes in their long-term context, exploring how the legacies of past demographic change have combined with a history of weak industrial investment, employment insecurity, deprivation, and poor living conditions to produce the population profiles and changes of Scotland today. While focussing on Scottish data, Anderson engages in a rigorous treatment of comparisons of Scotland with its neighbours in the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe, which ensures that this is more than a one-country study.

Auteur

Michael Anderson worked in the University of Edinburgh for forty years, initially in Sociology until he was appointed to the Chair of Economic History in 1979. He was the University's Senior Vice-Principal from 2000 to 2007. Over the forty years he taught a wide variety of Sociology, Economic and Social History, and Social Science Research Design courses. His research interests have included historical work on the family and demography, a large-scale census enumeration book database for 1851, and studies of the social economy of the household, both in the past and, through surveys and interviews, in the 1980s and 1990s. He holds Fellowships of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He served on the Council of ESRC and chaired the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for twelve years. Corinne Roughley is Fellow of Hughes Hall Cambridge and has wide-rangng interests in the spatial patterning of people and their activities from the Neolithic to the present.