Scottish historian
Sir Thomas Martin Devine Kt OBE FRSE FBA (born 30 July 1945) is a historian and author.
Early and personal life
Thomas Martin Devine was born on 30 July 1945 in Motherwell, Scotland.[1] His four grandparents had migrated from Ireland in the late nineteenth century.[2] His father, Michael Gerard Devine, graduated with an MA from Glasgow University in the 1930s and had a long career as a teacher in Scottish secondary schools after serving in North Africa in World War II. His mother was Norah (née Martin).[3] Tom Devine graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 1968 with First Class Honours in economic and social history.[1][4] He has five children with his wife, Lady Devine.[5][6]
Career
In 1969, a few months after commencing doctoral research, Devine was hired at the University of Strathclyde,[7] where he was appointed assistant lecturer in history and eventually rose to head of the history department.[1] He was appointed professor of Scottish history in 1988, and later became dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences, and then deputy principal of the university from 1994 to 1998.[8] In 1991, Devine was awarded higher degree of DLitt (Doctor of Letters) by the university in recognition of the quality of his published research to that date.[1]
In 1998, he moved to the University of Aberdeen and became the founding director of the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies(RIISS), later the UK Arts and Humanities Research Centre(AHRC) in I&SS.[8] He was also appointed to the externally-funded Glucksman Professorship of Irish and Scottish Studies. RIISS was granted the title of a UK AHRC Centre of Excellence in the Humanities[9]
From 2006 to 2011 Devine was the Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, the oldest and most prestigious Professorial Chair in that field.[8] From 2008 he was also the first director there of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies (now integrated into the Edinburgh Centre for Global History).[8] He retired from Edinburgh in 2011 but returned by invitation of the Principal of the University for a further period as Senior Research Professor of History. At the end of that tenure in 2015 he became the Sir William Fraser Professor Emeritus of Scottish History and Palaeography. His retirement celebration focused on a discussion of his career with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a sell out event in the University's McEwan Hall.Messages of congratulation were received from the Prime Minister of the UK and the First Minister of Scotland.[8]
Devine was listed in 2015 as one of the top 20 individuals, and the highest placed academic, in 'Scotland's Power 100:The 100 most powerful people in Scotland by The Herald, which described him as "the nation's preeminent historian ...an academic tornado from early in his career who has reshaped the way the Scottish past is viewed".[10] He was ranked seventh most influential Catholic in Britain by The Tablet in 2015 and was described as the "intellectual heavyweight behind Scottish nationalism".[11]
When Tom Devine's decision in the summer of 2014 to vote YES in the subsequent referendum on Scottish independence was made public it drew much coverage in UK news media at that time.[12][page needed][13][page needed]
Awards and honours
Devine was awarded the Senior Hume Brown Prize for the best first book in Scottish history (1976); the Saltire Society Prize for best book on Scottish History (1988-1991); and the Royal Society of Edinburgh Henry Duncan Prize and Lectureship in Scottish Studies (1993).[14]
In 1992 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), and of the British Academy in 1994.[14] He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2001 ('for excellence in the humanities or sciences based on first-class world standards') so achieving the rare distinction of being an elected member of all three national academies in the British Isles for which he is eligible.[15] He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and the Royal Society of Arts.[16]
Devine was awarded the Royal Medal, Scotland's supreme academic accolade, with the Nobel Laureate,Sir James Black OM, on the authority of Queen Elizabeth II in 2001,the only historian so honoured since the Medals were inaugurated by the monarch in 2000. [17]
He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to Scottish history.[18] In 2012, he was awarded the RSE's inaugural Sir Walter Scott Medal, which 'recognises exceptional achievements in arts, humanities and social science by a senior career researcher' and the following year won the RSE's Senior Public Engagement Medal across all disciplines, 'rewarding those who are exemplary at communicating and facilitating the public engagement of their research'.
Other accolades received during this period include the John Aikenhead Medal from the Institute of Contemporary Scotland for services to Education in Scotland (2006) and the Wallace Medal of the US-based American-Scottish Foundation for contributions to heritage, arts and culture (2016).[19]
He has received the following honorary degrees during his career: DLitt (2001) Queens Belfast; DLitt (2001) Abertay Dundee; DUniv (2006) Strathclyde.
Devine was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for "services to the study of Scottish history"[20]
In 2016 Edinburgh University Press published Global Migrations. The Scottish Diaspora since 1600. A Tribute to Sir Tom Devine eds Angela McCarthy and John M. MacKenzie.
July 2018, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the UK all-party parliamentary group on Archives and History of the House of Commons and House of Lords.[21]
In 2020 was awarded the 'rarely granted' Honorary Membership of Scottish PEN for those 'who have advanced and enriched our literary tradition and who have openly and consistently supported the PEN ideal of freedom of expression'.[22]
In 2021 Devine was elected to the Academy of Europe/Academia Europeia. [23]
Books
- The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, c. 1740–90 (John Donald, 1975; reprinted Edinburgh University Press, 1992)[a]
- Lairds and Improvement in the Scotland of the Enlightenment (editor and contributor, Scottish History Society, 1978)
- A Scottish Firm in Virginia, 1767–1777, William Cunninghame and Co. (Scottish History Society, 1982)
- Scotland and Ireland, 1600 to 1850 (joint editor and contributor, John Donald, 1983)
- Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770–1914 (editor and contributor, John Donald, 1984, 1994)
- People and Society in Scotland, Volume 1, 1760–1830 (co-editor and contributor, John Donald, 1988, 1994)
- The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century, John Donald, 1988, reprinted 1995, 2008, 2020)[b]
- Improvement and Enlightenment (editor and contributor, John Donald, 1989)
- Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700–1850 (editor and contributor, John Donald, 1990)
- Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (editor and contributor, 1991)
- Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society (editor and contributor, John Donald, 19xx)
- Clanship to Crofters War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (1994; Reprinted 2013, Manchester University Press)
- Scottish Elites (editor and contributor, 1994)
- Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1700 (co-editor and contributor, 1994)
- The Transformation of Rural Scotland: Social Change and the Agrarian Economy, 1660–1815 (Edinburgh University Press, 1994, reprinted 1998)
- St Mary's Hamilton: A Social History, 1646 – 1996 (editor, John Donald, 1995)
- Exploring the Scottish Past (John Donald, 1995)
- Scotland in the Twentieth Century (co-editor and contributor, Edinburgh University Press, 1996)
- Eighteenth-century Scotland (co-editor and contributor, Tuckwell Press, 1998)
- Celebrating Columba: Irish-Scottish Connections, 597–1997 (co-editor, 1999)
- The Scottish Nation: 1700–2000 (Penguin, 1999).Number One in 100 best books on Scottish history by List Muse. Multiple reprints and new editions, the most recent being The Scottish Nation: A Modern History.[24]
- Scotland's Shame?: Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (editor and contributor, Mainstream Publishing, 2000)
- Being Scottish: Personal Reflections on Scottish Identity Today (2002, co-editor and contributor, Edinburgh University Press)
- Scotland's Empire and the Shaping of the Americas, 1600–1815 (Smithsonian Institution Books, USA, 2003)
- Scotland's Empire, 1600–1815 (Penguin Books, 2003, reprinted 2012).[c]
- The Transformation of Scotland; The Economy since 1700 (co-editor and contributor with Clive Lee and George Peden, Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
- Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700–1900 (John Donald, 2006, reprinted 2012)
- The Scottish Nation 1700 to 2007 (revised editions, Penguin, 2006, 2012). [d]
- Scotland and the Union 1707 to 2007 (editor and contributor, Edinburgh University Press, 2008)
- Scotland and Poland: Historical Connections (joint editor, John Donald, 2011)
- To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010 (Allen Lane and Penguin Books, 2011, paperback, 2012). [e]
- Scotland and the British Empire (joint editor and contributor, 2011, Oxford University Press)
- The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History, 1500–2010 (joint editor and contributor, 2012, Oxford University Press)
- The Scotland Trilogy (2012, Penguin)
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection (editor and contributor, Edinburgh University Press, 2015).[f]
- Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 2016)[g]
- The Scottish Experience in Asia c. 1700 to the Present: Sojourners and Settlers (joint editor and contributor, Cambridge Imperial and Colonial Series, Palgrave and Macmillan, 2016)
- Scotland and the British Empire (joint editor and contributor, Oxford University Press, 2016)
- Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon (joint author, Manchester University Press, 2017)[h]
- New Scots: Scotland's Immigrant Communities since 1945 (joint editor and contributor, Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
- The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed 1600-1900 (Allen Lane: The Penguin Press, 2018, pbk 2019) [i]
In addition, 104 articles which have been published in academic journals and chapters in book collections since 1971.
