CAITHNESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY • By John E. Donaldson
Caithness in the north-east corner of Scotland is not part of the Highlands and has always led a life of its own. Mr. Donaldson, whose scholarly account of its social and economic history (Moray Press, 7s. 6d.) is largely derived from the estate papers of the Sinclairs of Mey near Thurso, thinks that this isolated community was on the whole less poverty- stricken than the Highland counties. The farmers grew a great deal of barley and exported it to Leith or to Norway, the crops seldom failed, and the landlords were on the whole considerate and enterprising. Mr. Donaldson knows, of course, that eighteenth-century Scotland was far behind England in agriculture, but he strongly contests the belief that the Caithness peasantry were as miserable as their fellows farther south. It is interesting to know that the Edinburgh firm most active in the grain trade of Caithness was that of John COutts and Company, whose successors took to banking in London. Mr. Donaldson's book is a useful contribution to Scottish economic history.
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