This book analyses the development of Catholic schooling in Scotland over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Scholarship of this period tends to be dominated by discussions of the 1872 and 1918 Education (Scotland) Acts: while these crucial acts are certainly not neglected in this volume, the editors and contributors also examine the key figures and events that shaped Catholic education and Catholic schools in Scotland. Focusing on such diverse themes as lay female teachers and non-formal learning, this volume illuminates many under-researched and neglected aspects of Catholic schooling in Scotland. This wide-ranging edited collection will illuminate fresh historical insights that do not focus exclusively on Catholic schooling, but are also relevant to the wider Scottish educational community. It will appeal to students and scholars of Catholic schooling, schooling in Scotland, as well as Christian schooling more generally.

The popular image of Scotland is dominated by widely recognized elements of Celtic culture. But a significant non-Celtic influence on Scotland's history has been largely ignored for centuries? This book argues that much of Scotland's history and culture from 1100 forward is Jewish. The authors provide evidence that many of the national heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and ministers of Scotland were of Jewish descent, their ancestors originating in France and Spain. Much of the traditional historical account of Scotland, it is proposed, rests on fundamental interpretive errors, perpetuated in order to affirm Scotland's identity as a Celtic, Christian society. A more accurate and profound understanding of Scottish history has thus been buried. The authors' wide-ranging research includes examination of census records, archaeological artifacts, castle carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls, noble genealogies, family crests, portraiture, and geographic place names.

Although much has been written about Scottish involvement in slavery, the contribution of Scots to the abolition of black slavery has not yet been sufficiently recognised. This book starts with a Virginian slave seeking his freedom in Scotland in 1756 and ends with the abolition of the apprenticeship scheme in the West Indian colonies in 1838. Contemporary documents and periodicals reveal a groundswell of revulsion to what was described as "e;the horrible traffik in humans"e;. Petitions to Parliament came from remote islands in Shetland as well as from large public meetings in cities. In a land steeped in religion, ministers and church leaders took the lead in giving theological support to the cause of abolition. The contributions of five London Scots who were pivotal to the campaign throughout Britain are set against opposition to abolition from many Scots with commercial interests in the slave trade and the sugar plantations. Missionaries and miners, trades guilds and lawyers all played their parts in challenging slavery. Many of their struggles and frustrations are detailed for the first time in an assessment of the unique contribution made by Scotland and the Scots to the destruction of an institution whose effects are still with us today.