Glasgow, Scotland and links with emergent U.S.A. via the tobacco industry
(Above image is a capture of the Gallery of Modern Art in central Glasgow which has its origins in a mansion built by a tobacco merchant named William Cunninghame.) At the start of the 18 th century Glasgow was a poor town on the wrong side of a poor, isolated country on the fringes of Europe but by the end of the century had been transformed to become the second city of an empire at the forefront of a new industrial society. Key influences on the city’s growth were (a) collapse of the Darien scheme in the 1690s (a failed colony in Panama ) which effectively bankrupted the Scottish ruling class and (b) union with England in 1707 which immensely benefited the ruling class. Colonial trade drove the transformation of Glasgow between 1740 and 1775 but, above all, the trade in tobacco made much of the Glasgow we see today. This trade was inextricably linked with slavery and t...