Statistical Accounts of Scotland
Series of documentary publications
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland are a series of documentary publications, related in subject matter though published at different times, covering life in Scotland in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The Old (or First) Statistical Account of Scotland was published between 1791 and 1799 by Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster. The New (or Second) Statistical Account of Scotland published under the auspices of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland between 1834 and 1845. These first two Statistical Accounts of Scotland are among the finest European contemporary records of life during the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
A Third Statistical Account of Scotland was published between 1951 and 1992.
Early attempts
Attempts at getting an accurate picture of the geography, people and economy of Scotland had been attempted in the 1620s and 1630s, using the network of about 900 ministers of the established Church of Scotland. The time and resources involved, not to mention the troubled times of the Civil Wars, led to limited results.
Sir Robert Sibbald (1684–1690s)
However, the Geographer Royal for Scotland, Sir Robert Sibbald took this forward between 1684 and the early 1690s. Sir Robert circulated some "General Queries" to parish ministers, but again this was the unsettled time of the Glorious Revolution and, though progress was made, the results provided a very incomplete picture of the nation.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1720–1755)
The General Assembly proposed a "Geographical Description of Scotland" and took some action on this between 1720 and 1744, again during troubled times for the country, latterly involving the Jacobite rebellion under Bonnie Prince Charlie.
The public source identifies “Statistical Accounts of Scotland” as series of documentary publications. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Statistical, Accounts and Scotland.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7604367. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1791, 1799, 1834 and 1845.
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This entry incorporates text from “Statistical Accounts of Scotland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.