Climate, Trade and the Anglo-Scottish Union, 1660-1707

This book integrates environmental history and political and economic analysis to reconsider certain factors that led up to the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Union. Scholars have long emphasized the importance of religion, political institutions, party dynamics, and economic conditions, but this study also incorporates seventeenth-century climatic and environmental crises and their impact. Through a close examination of seven key commodities—herring, salt, coal, grain, cattle, wool, and linen—the book demonstrates how environmental instability reshaped patterns of production, trade, and economic perception and altered intellectual and material contexts in which parliamentary decisions were made. Such changes prompted a reassessment of Scotland’s economic viability and informed debates about commerce and political alignment.