Professor Ewen Cameron (MA, PhD, FRHistS, FSAScot)

Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography

Biography

Background

I studied History and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen before completing a PhD, on Government policy in the Scottish Highlands, c.1880-1925, at the University of Glasgow.

I was a teaching Fellow at the University of St Andrews in 1992/93, was appointed to a lectureship in Scottish History at Edinburgh in 1993 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2000, Reader in 2008, a Personal Chair in 2011 and to the Fraser Chair in 2012.

I am currently Head of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Responsibilities & affiliations

I am currently co-editor (with Dr Siobhan Talbott of the University of Manchester) of the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies. I am Chair of the Trustees of Edinburgh University Press and Convener of the Board of Trustees of Edinburgh University Press . I serve on the editorial board of the journal Scottish Affairs.

Undergraduate teaching

  • Highland Problems, 1851-1953 (4th year MA)
  • Scotland and the Great War (Option)
  • Contemporary Scotland (Option)

Postgraduate teaching

  • Scotland and Ireland, 1800-1945 (Postgraduate, online delivery)
  • Contemporary Scotland (Postgraduate)

Current PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type - Link

     - PhD - ‘The fragmentation of the Labour party ‘revisionist’ right, 1971-1983’, - Primary - link

Angus, Sonny - PhD - 'The Material Culture of Mass Politics in Scotland, c. 1815-c.1914' - Secondary -

Clark, Stuart - PhD - Entangled Histories? Scottish-Irish Interactions, c. 1800-1925 - Secondary -

Harrison, Laura - PhD - TBC - Primary - link

Hutchison, Gary - PhD - TBC - Secondary - link

Kane, Nathan - PhD - Scottish Nationalism 1880 - 1914 - Primary -

Macleod, Alasdair - PhD - John Kennedy of Dingwall (1819-84) and the development of Highland Piety - Primary -

Mason, Richard - MScR - Free Church of Scotland in Italy 1848-1880 - Secondary -

Merz, Caroline - PhD - Early cinema in Scotland; production - Secondary -

     - PhD - ‘Politics in Scotland during the Second World War’ - Secondary -

Noble, Alastair - PhD - ‘That Barbarous Region’: Representations of the Highlands and the Construction of Scotland 1745-1760 - Secondary -

Phemister, Andrew - PhD - ‘Our American Aristotle’: Henry George and the republican tradition during the transatlantic Irish Land War, 1877-1887 - Secondary -

Raeburn, Fraser - MScR - Scottish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War - Secondary - link

      - PhD - Shetland and the First World War - Primary -

      - PhD - From Menace to Mainstream: The Integration of the Catholic Irish Diaspora into Scottish Society 1920-1960 - Secondary -

Scothorne, Rory - PhD - TBC - Primary - link

Stewart, Thomas - PhD - TBC - Primary - link

Thompson, Kyle - PhD - Edinburgh Politics: 1885 - 1910 - Joint -

Watt, Patrick - MScR - 'The Scottish influences in the 16th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force' - Primary - link

Past PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type - Completion year

Abernethy, Sally - MScR - ‘“Let us be cool, calm - and elected”: Conservative party strategy and the “centre” in the 1983 British general election’ - Secondary - 2014

Moxey, Sarah - MScR - ‘All in it together? Scotland, national unity and public opinion during the Second World War’ - Primary - 2013

Aikman, Calum - MScR - ‘The Labour party right and Britain’s entry into the Common Market, 1971’ - Primary - 2013

Ritchie, David - MScR - From Menace to Mainstream: The Integration of the Catholic Irish Diaspora into Scottish Society 1920-1960 - Secondary - 2010

Birnie, Clive - PhD - The Scottish Office and the Highland Problem, 1930s-1965 - Primary - 2008

Mulhern, Kirsteen - PhD - The Intellectual Duke: George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll, 1823-1900 - Primary - 2006

Tindley, Anne - PhD - The Sunderland Estate, c. 1860 - 1914: aristocratic decline, estate management and land reform - Primary - 2006

Barker, Douglas - PhD - Shapinsay: the transformation of an island society, 1830-1875 - Primary - 2005

MacGillivray, Neil - PhD - Food, poverty and epidemic disease, Edinburgh 1840-1850 - Primary - 2004

Birnie, Clive - MScR - The Scottish Office and the Highland Problem, 1930s-1965 - Primary - 2004

Wheeler, John - PhD - No Popery : John Cormack and the use of history - Secondary - 2003

Tindley, Anne - MScR - The Sunderland Estate, c. 1860 - 1914: aristocratic decline, estate management and land reform - Primary - 2002

Blair-imrie, Hew - PhD - The relationship between land ownership and the commercialisation of agriculture in Angus, 1750-1820 - Secondary - 2001

Research summary

Places: 

  • Britain & Ireland
  • Scotland

Themes: 

  • Ideas
  • Imperialism
  • Labour
  • Politics
  • Society

Periods: 

  • Nineteenth Century
  • Twentieth Century & After

Current research interests

My research focuses on four inter-related themes. The first is the history of the Scottish Highlands. I have published widely on this and am currently completing a volume in EUP’s History of Gaelic Scotland series and a co-edited (with Dr Annie Tindley of the University of Dundee) volume for Birlinn on the contexts of the medical doctor and social reformer Dr Lachlan Grant. My interests in the highlands led me to make comparisons with Irish history and the comparative and transnational history of the land question has remained an interest. Research undertaken for my general history of Scotland since 1880, Impaled on a Thistle (Edinburgh, 2010) stimulated work on the political history of modern Scotland. This investigation of the position of Scotland within the Union and the relationship between Scotland and the UK state has prompted my recent work on the history of Scottish Universities in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Professor Ewen Cameron.

Books - Authored

Cameron, E. (2010) Impaled Upon the Thistle: Scotland since 1880. Edinburgh University Press

Cameron, E. (2000) The LIfe and Times of Fraser Mackintosh, Crofter MP. Aberdeen: Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen

Cameron, E. (1996) Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880-1930. Tuckwell Press

Books - Edited

Cameron, E. and Tindley, A. (eds.) (2015) Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871 - 1945. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers

Cameron, E. (ed.) (2013) Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement and Community Ownership in the Hebrides. Kershader: Islands Book Trust

Articles

Cameron, E. (2021) The Scottish landed estate: Break-up or survival?. Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 10(1), pp. 95-116

Cameron, E. (2020) Freshness, freedom and peace?: Land settlement in Scotland after the Great War. Northern Scotland, 11(2), pp. 161-175DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2020.0219

Cameron, E. (2019) Desolation or New Deal? The Highlands in the inter-war period. History Scotland Magazine, 19, pp. 40-46

Cameron, E. (2018) Out with the old, in with the new: Scottish politics in the aftermath of the Great War. History Teaching Review Yearbook, pp. 54-72

Cameron, E. (2018) The 1918 Reform Act, redistribution and Scottish politics. Parliamentary History, 37(1), pp. 101-115DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-0206.12340

Cameron, E. (2017) University realities: the Inverness Campaign to establish Scotland's fifth university. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 67, pp. 9-50

Tierney, D., Kehoe, S. and Cameron, E. (2014) The Scottish Catholic archives and Scottish historical studies. The Innes Review, 65(2), pp. 79-94DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/inr.2014.0069

Cameron, E. and Wood, S. (2013) Political Unionism and the First World War. History Scotland Magazine, 13, pp. 24-30

Cameron, E. and MacGillivray, N. (2013) Sir James Young Simpson and religion: myths and controversies. Journal of medical biography, 21(1), pp. 33-40DOI: https://doi.org/10.1258/jmb.2011.011022

Cameron, E. (2013) The Political Histories of Modern Scotland. Scottish Affairs, 85(1), pp. 1-28DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/scot.2013.0040

Cameron, E. (2010) Scotland's Global Impact. Northern Scotland, 1, pp. 3-11DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/nor.2010.0002

Cameron, E. (2008) Rival foundlings: the Ross and Cromarty by-election of February 1936. Historical Research, 81, pp. 507-30

Cameron, E. (2007) "Maistly Scotch" Campbell Bannerman and Liberal leadership. Journal of Liberal History, 54, pp. 30-7

Cameron, E. (2007) Journalism in the late-Victorian Scottish highlands: John Murdoch, Duncan Campbell and the Northern Chronicle. Victorian Periodicals Review, 40, pp. 281-306

Cameron, E. (2007) The idle dream of James G. Kyd: the Third Statistical Account of Scotland 1944-92. Scottish Local History, 69, pp. 31-8

Cameron, E. (2006) 'A far cry to London': Joseph Chamberlain in Inverness, September 1885. The Innes Review, 57, pp. 36-53DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/inr.2006.57.1.36

Cameron, E. (2005) Conservatism and Radicalism in the highland press: the strange cases of the Highlander and the Northern Chronicle. Northern Scotland, 27, pp. 117-29

Cameron, E. (2005) Communication or separation? Reactions to Irish land agitation and legislation in the Highlands of Scotland, c. 1870-1910. The English Historical Review (EHR), 120 (487), pp. 633-66DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cei124

Cameron, E. and Newby, A. (2004) ‘Alas, Skyemen are imitating the Irish’: A note on Alexander Nicolson's ‘Little Leaflet’ concerning the Crofters' Agitation. The Innes Review, 55, pp. 83-92DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/inr.2004.55.1.83

Cameron, E. (2003) Glasgow's going round and round: some recent Scottish urban history. Journal of Urban History, 30, pp. 276-87DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926803001159

Cameron, E. (2001) The seven men of Knoydart and the Scottish highlands in the 1940s. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 60, pp. 156-83

Cameron, E. (2001) Unfinished business: the land question and the new Scottish parliament. Contemporary British History, 15(1), pp. 83-114DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/713999393

Cameron, E. (2000) The library of Charles Fraser Mackintosh MP. The Library, 16, pp. 133-42

Cameron, E. (1998) The political career of Charles Franser mackintosh 1874-1892. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, 60, pp. 70-119

Cameron, E. (1997) The Scottish Highlands as a Special Policy Area, 1886-1965. Rural History, 8, pp. 195-216

Cameron, E. (1997) They will listen to no remonstrance: land raids and land raiders in the Scottish Highlands, 1886 to 1914. Scottish Economic and Social History, 17, pp. 43-64

Cameron, E. (1994) The political influence of Highland landowners: a re-assessment. Northern Scotland, 14, pp. 27-46

Cameron, E. (1993) Politics, ideology and the Highalnd land issue, 1886 to the 1920s. The Scottish Historical Review, 72, pp. 60-79DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.1993.72.1.60

Chapters

Cameron, E. (2022) “The empire strikes back”: Indian influences on land legislation in Scotland and Ireland in the late nineteenth century. In: McIntyre, N. and Cathcart, A. (eds.) Scotland and the Wider World: Essays in Honour of Allan I. Macinnes. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 188-202DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv24cns8r.17

Cameron, E. (2022) 'Not a bashful man': Dr Gavin Brown Clark and land nationalisation. In: Evans, S., McCarthy, T. and Tindley, A. (eds.) Land Reform in the British and Irish Isles since 1800. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 95-112DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474487702-006

Cameron, E. (2020) Scotland's hidden powers?: Politics and the Union in an uncertain age. In: Muller, P. (ed.) Scotland and Arbroath, 1320-2020: Seven Hundred Years of Fighting for Freedom, Sovereignty and Independence. Berlin: Peter Lang, pp. 325-346

Cameron, E. (2020) Still on the agenda? The strange survival of the Scottish Land Question, 1880 to 1999. In: Combe, M., Glass, J. and Tindley, A. (eds.) Land Reform in Scotland: History, Law and Policy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 94-109

Cameron, E. (2019) 'It was not a crofter question, it was more gigantic': Political networks in the Scottish Highlands in the 1880s. In: Byrne, M. and Kidd, S. (eds.) Lìontan Lìonmhor: Local, National and Global Gaelic Networks from the 18th to the 20th Century. Glasgow: Celtic and Gaelic University of Glasgow, pp. 175-200

Cameron, E. (2018) 'Not a popular personage': The factor in Scottish property relations, c. 1870-1920. In: Rees, L., Reilly, C. and Tindley, A. (eds.) The Land Agent: 1700-1920. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 39-55

A. Cameron, E. (2018) Securitization, memory and the (historic) debate on Scottish Independence. In: Strukov, V. and Apryshchenko, V. (eds.) Memory and Securitization in Contemporary Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 51-75DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95269-4_3

Cameron, E. (2017) 'Offensive to national sentiment'? The bicentenary of the Union of 1707. In: Otte, T. (ed.) The Age of Anniversaries: The Cult of Commemoration, 1895-1925. Abingdon; New York: Routledge, pp. 82-100

Cameron, E. (2016) Unionism and nationalism: The historical context of Scottish politics. In: McTavish, D. (ed.) Politics in Scotland. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 6-23DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315678672

Cameron, E. (2016) Sir Alexander MacEwen. In: Mitchell, J. and Hassan, G. (eds.) Scottish National Party Leaders. Biteback Press, pp. 87-104

Cameron, E. (2015) Education in rural Scotland, 1696 to 1872. In: The Edinburgh History of Education in Scotland. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 153-170

Cameron, E. (2015) "Outside the ranks of those who stand for the traditional and the sentimental": Lachlan Grant and economic development. In: Cameron, E. and Tindley, A. (eds.) Dr Lachlan Grant of Ballachulish, 1871 - 1945. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, pp. 1-9

Cameron, E. (2013) A record to be proud of? A comparative approach to post-clearance recovery in Scotland. In: Cameron, E. (ed.) Recovering from the Clearances: Land Struggle, Resettlement and Community Ownership in the Hebrides. Islands Book Trust, pp. 37-59

Cameron, E. (2012) Internal policing and public order, c. 1797-1900. In: Spiers, E., Crang, J. and Strickland, M. (eds.) A Military History of Scotland. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 436-457

Cameron, E. (2012) Internal Policing and Public Order. In: Spiers, E., Crang, J. and Strickland, M. (eds.) The Military History of Scotland. Edinburgh University Press

Cameron, E. (2012) The Stateless Nation and the British State since 1918. In: Devine, T. and Wormald, J. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 620-634

Cameron, E. (2010) Setting the heather on fire: The land question in Scotland. In: M Cragoe, P. (ed.) The Land Question in Britain, 1750 - 1950. Palgrave, pp. 109-125

Cameron, E. (2010) The Scottish Highlands and the conscience of the nation, 1886 to 2003. In: MacNeill, P. (ed.) Celts in Legend and Reality: Papers from the Sixth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies. University of Sydney, pp. 255-282

Cameron, E. (2008) From engrossing clerks to mandarins: civil servants in Scotland. In: Mulhern, M. (ed.) Scottish Life and Society, A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, 7: the Working Life of the Scots. John Donald, pp. 541-555

Cameron, E. (2008) The politics of the Union in an age of unionism. In: Devine, T. (ed.) Scotland and the Union, 1707-2007. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 123-39

Cameron, E. (2007) Poverty, Protest and Politics: Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands in the 1880s. In: D Broun, M. (ed.) Miorun Mor nan Gall, The Great III-Will of Lowlander. Glasgow, published online, pp. 218-48

Cameron, E. (2005) The modernisation of Scottish agriculture since 1918. In: Devine, T., Lee, C. and Peden, G. (eds.) The Transformation of Scotland: The Economy Since 1700. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 184-207

Cameron, E. (2004) Introduction and bibliography. In: Manners, customs and history of the highlanders of Scotland. Barnes and Noble, pp. iv-xv

Cameron, E. (2003) Politics in East Lothian since 1945. In: Baker, S. (ed.) East Lothian 1945-2000, fourth statistical account: the county. East Lothian Fourth Statistical Account, pp. 222-8

Cameron, E. (2000) Civil society, protest and parliament: housing and land in modern Scotland. In: H T Dickinson, M. (ed.) The Challenge to Westminster: Sovereignty, Devolution and Independence. East Linton, pp. 123-32

Cameron, E. (1998) Embracing the past: the Highlands in the nineteenth century Scotland. In: Broun, D., Finlkay, R. and Lynch, M. (eds.) Image and Identity: the making and re-making of Scotland through the ages. Edinburgh, pp. 195-219

Cameron, E. (1998) The Highlands since 1850. In: Cooke, A. (ed.) Modern Scottish History, 1707 to the Present, volume 2, The Modernisation of Scotland, 1850 to Present. East Linton, pp. 47-72

Cameron, E. (1996) Congested District to Objective One: the Scottish Highlands in the twentieth century. In: T M Devine, R. (ed.) Scotland in the Twentieth Century. Edinburgh, pp. 153-69

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