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This is the first full-length history of the Scottish cotton industry, from its beginnings in the late eighteenth century to its premature decline in the years leading up to the First World War. The book examines the industry chronologically and through themes such as precursors, technology, capital and employers, markets, labour and work, placed within their broader economic and scoial contexts. Its account of the cotton industry is set within important historiographical debates such as proto-industrialisation, the speed of industrial change, the diffusion of technology, the labour process, paternalism, workplace control, entrepreneurship and theories of industrial decline. Cotton was Scotland's premier industry during the Industrial Revolution and this book will be wlecomed by specialists, students and interested readers alike.