| dc.description.abstract | A study of the
social and economic geography of Shetland in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, based on the Garth and Gardie
estate manuscripts.
The thesis is based upon a major and hitherto almost
unresearched historical manuscript source, the Gardie Papers;
it assesses their usefulness to the historian and the historical
geographer, compares the evidence from this source with that
from the extensive published literature on the Shetland Islands,
and analyses data from Gardie that is not available from other
sources.
The first (historical) part of the work (chapters 1, 2 and 3)
discusses the Garth and Gardie estates in the general context
of seventeenth and eighteenth century Shetland, and the role of
the Mouat family in the social, economic and political affairs
of the time.
The second (thematic) half (chapters 4, 5 and 6) is based on
statistical analyses of data from Gardie and elsewhere; it covers
a range of topics under the broad headings of 'The Estate and
its Produce', 'The Tenants and the Land' and 'Problems of
Demography and Labour Supply'. | en |
