The road to the isles
Ben Thomas enjoys a handsomely illustrated overview of 18th- and early 19th-century travel in Scotland
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many people to change their holiday plans. Instead of jetting off to France, Spain or further afield, holidaymakers have limited their horizons to the British Isles, especially the countryside. For many Scots, this has meant a chance to acquaint themselves with the remoter parts of their country, and to enjoy its spectacular scenery and landscapes. But in becoming the latest travellers to take the road to the isles, they are in many ways rediscovering Scotland using the same routes that the country’s first tourists did.
The contrast between old and new is at the heart of OldWays New Roads:Travels in Scotland 1720-1832. Edited by academics and curators at the University of Glasgow and the Hunterian museum, it uses a wealth of collections held by the museum to bring to life how Scotland was seen, experienced and understood in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Chapters from various contributors take us through the impact of war and peace on the Scottish countryside, changing attitudes to agriculture and nature, and the rise of tourism, romanticism and the picturesque.Throughout, the text is accompanied by images from a wealth of archives, libraries and museums, many of which formed part of a virtual exhibition run by the Hunterian between January and May of 2021.
Much like the road to the isles or the modern ‘North Coast 500’, the terrain covered by OldWays New Roads is by now well-travelled. Does the book say anything radically new or insightful about such a well-worn topic? For anyone with even a basic knowledge of the subject matter, the answer really is that it does not. There is little new here, and no spectacular insights to overturn existing understanding. Chapters cover the impact of road building on the post-1745 highlands, clearance and improvement and their impacts on Scotland’s landscape, or the material culture of travel without adding anything particularly original. Both A History of Scotland’s Landscapes and Scotland: Mapping the Nation have, after all, covered similar ground already in recent years, and both in a similar coffee-table format.
Yet this is not ultimately as much of a problem as it might first appear. For what OldWays New Roads does do, and do incredibly well, is make its subject matter easily available and accessible, while providing a treasure trove of images to bring the writing to life. While some overlap with the books mentioned above is inevitable, this book covers a wide enough range of themes to move beyond both, while providing enough new imagery and contemporary travel accounts that even readers familiar with the subject at hand will find new ways to appreciate it. Although the predominant approach is one of art history, the maps, plans, documents and object photographs scattered liberally throughout the text make this a colourful and enjoyable read in more senses than one.
There are some minor quibbles. The book is divided into four sections, with chapters presented under each but numbered separately. This can make it confusing to navigate between text and images when later chapters refer back to pictures in sections (e.g. S3.4) rather than chapters (C3.4), although at least the section pages are coloured differently to aid navigation. More substantively, none of the authors grapple strongly with the geographical scope of the ‘Scotland’ encountered in these pages. As a helpful diagram on page 4 shows, both the ‘petit’ and ‘long’ tours of 18th-century Scotland missed out significant chunks of the country, including Dumfries and Galloway, the borders, the western isles, Orkney, Shetland, most of the northern and western highlands and the Cairngorms.When these regions do feature, they do so as bit-part players: a contrast to the dominant role they would go on to play in the heyday of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Although staying clear of ‘Balmorality’ and the impact of the railways on Scotland was perhaps a wise choice on the part of the editors, the addition of a conclusion might have helped to wrap up issues like this while situating developments and trends within a wider national context.
Overall, OldWays New Roads is an accessible and engaging introduction to some of the main themes of modern Scottish history. It can only be hoped that the Hunterian will return to ‘old ways’ and re-run the exhibition in physical form over the next few years, to give the public a chance to see some of these artworks and objects in person. In the meantime, anyone planning a new Scottish adventure in future could do worse than pick this book to accompany them.
Ben Thomas is a historian of the modern highlands and islands.
Does the book say anything radically new or insightful about such a well-worn topic?