Many people think Britain is a very old country. In fact, it is barely older than the USA -- younger if we insist on its current name, the United Kingdom.
Britain became an official country in 1707, when England and Scotland united to create The Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Ireland was added to the Union and it was renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (now Northern Ireland).
The road to the union of Scotland and England began a century before, in 1603. Elizabeth I died childless, as Virgin Queens tend to do. She also painted herself with white poison and had poor personal hygiene. That may be another reason for her lack of an heir. But she did live to be 69.
Her cousin King JamesVI of Scotland inherited the throne of England, where he was crowned as James I. History books generally refer to him as James I, because England is much more important than Scotland, you see.
James was not only the first Scottish monarch of England. He was also the first to rule the entire British Isles. He styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland" although no such kingdom existed. James proposed a formal union between Scotland and England, but the idea was unpopular in both countries. Rather.
It took another century to achieve James's idea of union. In 1707, his great granddaughter, Queen Anne, became the first monarch of the Kingdom of Great Britain. The flag of the new country was that designed by James, which combined the English cross of St. George with the Scottish cross of St. Andrew.
The parliaments of both countries passed the necessary legislation, the Act of Union, which abolished the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. Scotland received 45 MPs and 16 representative lords in the Westminster Parliament.
Scotland also kept its own legal system of civil law, which differed (and differs) in many ways from English common law. Scotland retained (and retains) its own established or state church. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, unlike the Episcopal Church of England, had no bishops, and there were some major doctrinal differences as well.
The Union was a tough sell, especially in Scotland, because of the loss of its parliament. It was obvious then as now that English representatives would always dominate over the much smaller number of Scottish ones.
English negotiators sweetened the deal with a number economic goodies. The Scottish economy was in dire shape after the collapse of the Darien Scheme in the 1690s. Financial help from the English Exchequer and free trade with the English colonies was a deal maker for the Scots. That and a bit of well-directed bribery.
It took several decades for the new union to find grudging acceptance on both sides of the border. They had after all been enemies for centuries and had fought many a bloody battle.
Scots who opposed the Act of Union complained that their leaders had sold off their parliament for English gold. Many of the English were appalled by the prospect of their country being invaded by lean and hungry Scots greedy to take over their jobs, money, women, and empire.
Alas, Scots in great number did pour into England. As much as possible, the English sent them away to serve as soldiers, sailors, and administrators of the Empire. Oh, and Doctors, or McDoctors.
During the 18th century, English writings and images often portrayed Scots as impoverished, uncouth, dirty barbarians. In "A Scots Pastoral" (1763), the poet Charles Churchill characterized Scotland as a land of famine where "half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies." Samuel Johnson called Scotland a "vile country." (He later changed his opinion somewhat after a visit there.)
The cartoons below indicate how some of the English viewed their new fellow citizens, the "North Britons." They usually portrayed them as savage Highlanders and referred to them as "Sawney."
The name "Sawney" came from the legend of Sawney Bean, a robber who allegedly lived in a cave and ate his victims. The English represented themselves in the character of John Bull, a sturdy, honest beef eater. You get the picture: thieving cannibal v. hard working farmer.
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In 1714, a change of dynasty threatened to kill the infant state of Great Britain in its cradle. Queen Anne had at least 17 pregnancies, but only five of them resulted in live births. Of those, four died before the age of two. One child survived infancy, but he died aged 11. Anne turned out to be the last of the Stuarts to rule the two kingdoms.
Anne had lots of relatives with claims to the throne, most notably her younger half-brother James, "The Old Pretender." The problem was that he and all of Anne's close relatives were Catholic. After the reign of Bloody Mary, that was a BIG problem in England.
In 1702 the English parliament barred Catholics from inheriting the throne. It passed an act settling the crown on Anne's nearest Protestant relative, who was German. The Scots parliament initially refused to go along, but accepted it as part of the agreement that produced the Act of Union in 1707.
A lot of people in Britain were upset by the Act of Settlement, which they viewed as a violation of hereditary right. But it was most disliked in Scotland, especially in the Highlands.
When Anne died in 1714, George, Elector of Hanover, became king, the first Hanoverian monarch. During the next thirty years, Scotland was the scene of several Jacobite risings on behalf of the exiled Catholic Stuarts.
The last and most dangerous of these revolts, in 1745, saw the last battle fought on British soil, at Culloden, near Inverness. A Hanoverian army of mainly Lowland Scots and English soldiers crushed a Jacobite force of hungry, exhausted, outnumbered Highland clansmen. It was more of a massacre than a battle.
The romance surrounding the '45 and its leader, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" seems inexplicable today. Prince Charles Edward Stuart escaped from the battlefield disguised as a woman. This was a sound ploy in the Highlands, where transvestism was widespread. He then fled to the Continent, to spend the rest of his life beating his wife, gambling, and drinking himself to death.
In the aftermath of Culloden, Parliament passed laws designed to destroy Highland clan culture. Laws proscribed the wearing of the tartan and undermined the clan system. In the 19th century a reimagined Scottish culture emerged, which we are still suffering from today. I blame the Romantic movement and Queen Victoria.
Ironically, the new/old Scottish culture was essentially sanitized Highland culture without Highlanders: tartan, kilts, bagpipes, whisky, Highland games, and haggis. The most famous writers about the Highlands were Lowlanders: Burns, Scott, and Stevenson.
Queen Victoria also lent a hand. Vicky loved Scotland, and I do mean LOVED. None of the Hanoverian kings had gone near Scotland, except for George IV in the 1820s, when he exposed his massively obese self in a kilt at the request of Sir Walter Scott. It must have used a lot of tartan.
In the 1850s Victoria bought the Balmoral Estate and built the current castle. She started the tradition of the Royal Family holidaying in the Highlands in August and September. I'm not sure the family has ever forgiven her.
Lots of English and Lowland tourists followed the royals, as they do, wearing tartan and pretending to be Rob Roy or Braveheart -- who BTW Mel, didn't wear a kilt or paint his face blue.
The new romantic Highland culture was both ironic and tragic. Tragic because it came into existence largely in the absence of Highlanders themselves. Most of them left in the 19th century, some by choice, but many by force. Greedy landlords drove them off their farms to make room for sheep and wealthy tourists, hunters, and fishermen.
The Highland Clearances were part of a great Scottish Diaspora. Scots left their homeland in droves, like the Scottish cattle going south to feed the rich folk of London. Scots emigrated to the Lowlands, England, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the globe.
Today there are fewer people in the Highlands than in 1800. It is the most sparsely populated region in Europe. The population of Scotland itself remains small for a country its size.
In 1707 the population of England was about 5 times that of Scotland. Today, it is more than 10 times larger, 67 million to 5.5 million. Much of England's demographic growth came from immigrants, and many of them were Scots.
One of the things that helped cement the Union, and maintain the UK until recently, was the British Empire. Note: British, not English. It was a shared venture of all the peoples of the British Isles.
Scots were particularly active in imperial affairs, for good or ill. With the end of Empire, a sense of shared Britishness seems to have gone as well. Nowadays, most white people in the UK identify as English, Scots, or Welsh, not British.
Since 1998, Scotland has had its own devolved parliament at Holyrood, in Edinburgh. It is currently dominated by Scottish nationalists committed to independence. Brexit has sharpened Scots' desire for independence, because they feel that the English have dragged them out of the EU against their will. It may be that Brexit is the final nail in the coffin for the UK as it exists today. Stay tuned.
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