Christopher Smout

Smout was a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde from 1991; and he has lectured in Japan, in China, in the United States, in Canada and in Australia.

Smout has written extensively on demographic history and many aspects of economic history. Since the mid-1990s, he has developed the new discipline of environmental history in Scotland, giving the Ford Lectures in Oxford in 1999, published under the title of Nature Contested, Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600. A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland, 1500–1920, written with Alan R. MacDonald & Fiona Watson is the first modern history of Scottish woodlands. It examines the relationship between people and woodlands. His most recent publications in this field have been in woodland history and an environmental history of the Firth of Forth. His focus extends beyond the purely academic. For example, Smout has argued that conservationists should judge species based on whether or not they are pests, ignoring their origins.

At St Andrews University from 1980 to 1991, Smout held the Chair of Scottish History. He is now professor emeritus in history at St Andrews University.

Smout taught at the University of Edinburgh, from 1959 until 1980. At Edinburgh, he rose steadily through the academic ranks in the Department of Economic History – as an Assistant Lecturer (1959–62), as a lecturer (1962–64), and as a reader (1964–70) before being appointed as professor of economic history in 1970.

Thomas Christopher Smout CBE, FBA, FRSE, FSA Scot, FRSGS (born 19 December 1933) is a Scottish academic, historian, author and Historiographer Royal in Scotland.