Working the peripheral into the picture: The case of Thomas Hepburn in eighteenth-century Orkney.

What does the idea of improvement mean when applied to an impoverished peripheral region? This paper introduces a little-known Presbyterian clergyman Thomas Hepburn (circa 1727–1777), and situates his economic analysis of eighteenth-century Orkney in the context of corresponding networks in the Scottish Enlightenment. Hepburn reported in his Letter (1760) on poor practices in agriculture, manufacture, and trading, and cited tyranny and oppression by the local lairds as the causes of poverty in Orkney. This paper highlights the central role of the local minister in mediating his observations on the condition of his parishioners to an administrative and learned audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]