The emergence of a Scottish engineering community

This project invites successful applicants to examine the growth of a community of Scottish civil engineers from the late eighteenth century until the beginning of the First World War. Although many studies now exist of elite engineers based in Scotland during this period, there exists now sustained collective (prosopographical) account seeking to understand the ways in which Scottish civil engineering developed educationally, institutionally, and culturally. Many of the major institutional studies of engineering focus on those based in London (such as the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institutional of Mechanical Engineers); but significant associations formed by or welcoming engineers, such as the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, the Glasgow Philosophical Society, and the Institution of Engineers in Scotland remain relatively unknown. How was the community of Scottish engineers, focused around Edinburgh and Glasgow, created and sustained? What was its relationship to other regional bodies, and especially bodies based in London? What can be said about a community of Scottish engineers as nation builders and as builders of empire? Given the intense scrutiny that has been given to comparable professions in Scotland (doctors, lawyers, the clergy), how is it that our knowledge of professional engineers remains unclear?