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The expansion of trade - the 18th Century

 

 
old sail boats on the clyde

When Scotland eventually turned to the Atlantic, Glasgow, ideally placed on the west coast, came into its own. A dynamic business community seized its golden opportunity. Following the Treaty of Union in 1707, trade with the colonial New World burgeoned, and large quantities were being shipped in from the American tobacco states, especially Virginia. Glasgow’s merchants in turn had contracts to supply Europe.

By 1730 this trade with America was fully established, and Glasgow’s tobacco lords had cornered the market, becoming in the process Glasgow’s – and Scotland’s – first millionaires.

 

The American Revolution, however, delivered a vicious blow, and tobacco investors suffered. However, many shrewd Glaswegians had diversified into trade with the West Indies, importing sugar and making rum, and by the end of the 18th century Glasgow had become Britain’s biggest importer of sugar.

 

In 1770, civil engineer John Golborne devised a way to flush the silt layers from the shallow Clyde riverbed by erecting a series of jetties along the banks, so that by 1772 large vessels were able to sail right up the river into the city for the first time, allowing for even greater industrial expansion.

 

James Watt, one of the pioneers of the steam engine, helped supervise this operation encompassing 19 miles of the Clyde. This radical transformation of the river, assisted by the establishment of Port Glasgow near Greenock, was the catalyst for Glasgow’s “golden age” of shipbuilding and heavy industry.