this comment from my friend Robert Burr in another thread about Scottish independence deserves a post of its own. I learned a ton by reading it that I had no idea of previously. ---------------- All right, heres the Burr notes version. I warn you all in advance that this was part of my Thesis, so its extra detailed. Scotland and England had a very complex adversarial relationship before 1608. In part, this was because whenever a King of Scotland managed to get his nobles under control, his next step was generally to invade northern England - there have been fifteen Scottish invasions of England throughout their mutual history, but only two English invasions of Scotland. In part this was because the continental powers, particularly France, tended to use Scotland as a catspaw to curb Englands ability to intervene in Europe - you sometimes hear this Franco-Scottish connection referred to as the Auld Alliance, and its why there are weird things like Partan Bree in Scottish cuisine, which is essentially a crab and cheese quiche. This state of affairs ended in 1608 when James VI of Scotland became James I of England after the death of Elizabeth. England and Scotland became that strange creature called a dual monarchy - one king, two legislative bodies, two sets of laws. There were some hiccups in this arrangement, notably during the English Civil War, but it endured for most of the 17th Century. Scotland still maintained ties to France, but since Stuart England was also pretty much a French client state at the time, it didnt matter. This was the way things worked for most of the formative period of American Colonial society. The beginning of the end for the Dual Monarchy was the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Glorious Revolution is a really cool topic all by itself, but whats most important about it is that it ended Englands experiment with absolutist government and put Parliament firmly in control of the country, and it replaced James II, a relatively mild-mannered Catholic content to be a French client, with William of Orange, whose entire life mission was to oppose the continental ambitions of the French king, Louis XIV. William put England right in the middle of that fight, and for the next hundred years (some historians even call it the Second Hundred Years War), England was Frances major opponent in Europe and all over the world. This meant it was in Englands major interest to secure Scotland to prevent France from using it as a distraction as she had in the past. Meanwhile on the Scottish side, the Scots had come to realize that they were in a resource-poor country with a bad economy (their one colonial venture at Darien was an embarrassing failure that almost bankrupted them) under constant pressure from Catholic France. The solution was the 1707 Act of Union, in which the two crowns were united as the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Scottish parliament voted itself out of existence. This benefited both parties in a lot of ways. Most obviously, it enabled them to combine their efforts to oppose France. Secondly, the Act of Union abolished all the tariff barriers between the two countries, making Great Britain the largest free trade zone in Europe. There was some economic displacement in the first years after the Act of Union - enough that the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion had a real chance of putting the Stuarts back on the throne - but by the mid-1700s, Scotland was experiencing the benefits of all that trade as well as access to colonial markets - enough that when Bonnie Prince Charlie made his gamble in 1745, none of the influential Clans came out in support. The events of the Long 18th Century - opposing first Bourbon France and then Napoleon, bound England and Scotland together very quickly, as did a conscious attempt by the government to foster a new culture of unity by creating new holidays and new shared cultural traditions. The Scots very quickly became partners in the new Imperial experiment, securing influential positions and using their powers of patronage to help their countrymen out. Indeed during the American Revolution, Scots were so prevalent in the senior ranks of the British Army that it could even be said that the Army was in the grip of a Scottish Mafia. Sleepy ports like Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Perth became major shipping and trading cities. And thats been the state of affairs right up to the late 20th Century. Only relatively recently has there been any kind of serious move towards independence now that Scotland has both a surplus of energy to sell and a surplus of economic woes as part of the UK. Wether Scotland can make it as an energy satrapy like Dubai, Im not sure. I do think that independence will diminish both countries.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 17:30:09 +0000
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