ms55896, Author at Not Even Past

Capitalism After Socialism in Cuba

The trip from Trinidad, Cuba to Havana was very hard, as our landlady misled us in order to make a commission off a local cab company. She convinced us not to take the tourist bus, which is very comfortable, spacious and has a W.C. in the back. She said the cab is cheaper and goes door to door, which is a blessing. But it was a colectivo, and the driver tried to pack us in like sardines with 5 other big, hearty tourists. Three guys had the good sense to back out of the packed van and then the driver refused to take the rest of us unless we paid extra. The haggling went on until past 10:30 when the tourist bus departed and that option was off the table. But the free market, such as it is in Cuba, intervened: another smaller van stopped and the remaining four of us hopped in and took off for Havana. Todo bien? No. We get out to the main highway, a six lane affair with almost no traffic but horse carts, motor scooters, pedestrians and 1950s cars and trucks, and Soviet Ladas. The driver whips out his cell phone and dials numbers and texts and who knows what else while weaving from the center lane to the right. He gets several calls on his smart phone, which he lets ring loudly for a long time because he has a lewd, really lewd, American rap song as a ring tone. But he swears when he can’t hear for lack of good reception. Then he stops for gas, saying he was almost out, but the pumps there didn’t work, and a man with a long rod in his hand was screaming at everyone, obviously having a mental breakdown. Big burly truck drivers surround him. I thought they were going to beat him senseless, but apparently they had had psychiatric training for their professional licenses, because they soothed him until he sat down and sobbed like a baby. The big truckers patted him on the back and looked on with concern and sympathy. Maybe he was one of them. Meanwhile, we stupid tourists were standing around in the sun until the driver told us to find shade in this, the hottest season of the tropical year.

A Lada Cuban Taxi

Meanwhile, the gas station attendants collect enough gasoline in a big bucket and dump it into the underground gas tank, kind of like priming the pumps, and our driver gets enough gas out of one pump to get us all, shaken not stirred, to Havana. I thought he would demand more money too, but he didn’t. When we got to town, we have a discussion about where he should drop us off, and then he abruptly switches lanes. We hear tires screeching from the emergency braking of a 1957 Chevrolet that prevented a collision.

When we arrive at our accommodations at a private home, the casa particular, we discover that we only have 5 pesos to our name, and we need to get to a money exchange before it closes in 27 minutes. But it was raining with one of those late afternoon downpours. The streets are flooding and we get soaked but we make the money changer on time.

Streets of Havana after a rainstorm

Finally, we find a fine private restaurant that they call a paladar. Nice view of the rain outside and beautiful table settings and fine imported table cloths. We begin with a cold beer, the local Bucanero, translated as buccaneer or pirate, and begin to relax. We order the house specialty, Ensalada de Pulpo, squid salad. But they bring us tuna salad. We say we didn’t order that. The waitress says we did. We wanted Pulpo, we say drawing out the puullll in pulpo for emphasis. She says we’ll have to pay for both the tuna and the pulpo. A lengthy discussion ensues off in the corner among three waiters, who give us surly looks. The head waiter, a man, comes over and smiles. He will give us the pulpo and we don’t have to pay for the tuna. The pulpo salad was more than worth the haggle, but we order an ice cream sundae for dessert and the male waiter drops it on the marble floor and glass breaks all over. But we get another and it tastes great!

That was yesterday. Today we rest.

First image via Wikimedia Commons

Second image via ansalmo_juvaga

A Hidden Jewish “Archive” in the Azores

By Miriam Bodian

Some of the most important documents for historians of Jewish history are documents that haven’t been saved at all. In fact, they’ve been discarded – into a closed storage space known as a geniza. This custom has its origins in Jewish law, which prohibits Jews from simply throwing away worn out or unneeded texts that contain the Hebrew name of God. To the great benefit of scholarship, Jews have often extended the precept to include all kinds of texts, sacred and profane.

The greatest treasure of this kind is the Cairo geniza, an enormous cache of some 300,000 documents or fragments discovered in 1896 in a synagogue in Old Cairo and brought to the attention of the great Judaica scholar Solomon Schechter. For a thousand years, Cairo Jews deposited texts and documents here that were no longer of use. Aside from the sacred texts – Hebrew Bibles, prayer books, tractates of the Talmud, etc. – there were shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, leases, secular poetry, philosophical and medical works, business letters, account books, and private letters. Examining these documents has allowed scholars to paint a vivid and dynamic picture of Jewish society in the medieval Muslim Mediterranean. Today, anyone can go on line and see how scholars have dealt with the mass of material from this geniza, with photographs and translations of examples.

Fast-forward to 2014, when I joined my colleague Jane Gerber of CUNY Graduate Center to study material from another geniza, one that was far less important than the one in Egypt, but that had the attraction of never having been examined. With the indelible image of the two Scottish sisters in mind, we traveled to an abandoned synagogue in the Azores – an archipelago of nine islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, far from the historical centers of Jewish life. The trip was part of an effort organized and financed by the Azorean Heritage Foundation, whose mission is to bring to light the history of the now extinct community of Sahar Asamaim (Sha’ar Ha-Shamayim, or “Gate of Heaven”) that was established in the town of Ponta Delgada in 1821 by a group of Moroccan Jews. The community’s small synagogue, which has lain for years in disrepair, is now being restored, and the geniza materials – filling about 50 large filing boxes – have been recovered and deposited in the Municipal Archives of Ponta Delgada.

Documents in the Geniza archive in the Azores

Map of the Azores. The geniza archive is stored in the Municipal Archives of Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel

It’s too soon to know just how much the fragile, sometimes worm-eaten, occasionally mildewed material we found in this cache can tell us, but even at this early stage, the contours of the community have begun to emerge. Communal documents and commercial letters we examined confirm that this was a mercantile community dominated by a few wealthy families. It was quite traditional: the materials include many well-used Jewish sacred books, as well as phylacteries, prayer shawls, mezuzah scrolls, and other religious items. It was a distinctly North African community: the boxes contain documents signed by rabbis in the ornate Magrebi style, and members of the community had names like Bensaude, Zagorey, Bozaglo, Azulay, Zafrany, and Biton.

Professor Bodian examining documents in the Azores geniza

Miriam Bodian examining documents in the Azores geniza

Yet the community was strongly oriented toward Europe. A commercial letter discussing trade in textiles mentions Liverpool, Bahia, Lisbon, and Hamburg as cities that were part of the author’s trade network. Hebrew books whose remains are in the geniza were imported or brought from Livorno, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin. One of our favorite finds was a set of wrapping labels from packets of matzah (unleavened bread for Passover) imported from Manchester. The labeling, in Hebrew letters, had been carefully cut from the wrapping and placed in the geniza.

Jane Gerber holding the matzah wrapper

Among the materials we found were a number of appeals from the Holy Land, seeking funds for Jews living in the four cities Jewish tradition held to be holy – Jerusalem, Tiberias, Hebron, and Safed. These petitions attest to the strength of the ties the Azores community maintained with a Jewish center that had no commercial importance but immeasurable spiritual significance.

Request for funds to support Talmud study in Tiberias

The community thrived for generations, but by the 1940s its numbers had so dwindled, through emigration and conversion, that the synagogue did not have a minyan, or quota, of ten adult men for Sabbath prayer. Today, there is only one person left from the community, Jorge Delmar, who holds the key to the Jewish cemetery. He has carefully saved Jewish documents and ritual items preserved in his family, though he has little idea of what they are. He showed us, for example, a set of three tiny Scrolls of Esther. An undated note left with the scrolls by their owner, for the benefit of whoever might come across them, offered poignant testimony of the disappearance of a community and its culture. The note explained that these were “Meguilot [scrolls] that they were accustomed to read in the synagogue on the eve of Purim. They are written on parchment and they are very old and for this reason they are of great value to the Israelites.”

Scrolls of the Book of Esther.

Note left with the scrolls describing the meguilot

Note left by the owner of the Esther scrolls.

The Revolution will televise football

By R. Joseph Parrott

As football returns to living rooms across the United States, it’s worth remembering that the sport has an international appeal for many who have spent time in this country. Fifty years ago this week, one such foreign fan launched a revolution from Tanzania. Eduardo Mondlane, the first president of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique or FRELIMO), loved American sports, especially professional football. Beginning in September 1964, he guided an armed struggle for the independence of his homeland against imperial Portugal, but he still did his best to make time on Sunday nights to settle in for a game.

Mondlane watched American football games at the Kilimanjaro Hotel in Tanzania’s capital of Dar es Salaam, near where FRELIMO operated its headquarters in exile. The modern glass-clad block is still down the road from the whitewashed façade of St. Joseph Cathedral on the city’s waterfront. In the 1960s, it was a popular gathering place for revolutionaries from across the southern third of the continent – Angola, Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Southwest Africa (Namibia) – which was still under colonial rule. On Sundays, though, Mondlane carved out a little piece of America. Watching football in Africa can still be difficult today, if only due to the time differences. Before satellite transmission made live international broadcasts possible, it was even harder. Physical films had to be delivered by plane from the United States. Each weekend that a game was available, Mondlane would gather with his children and an African American from Chicago named Prexy Nesbitt, who was working with FRELIMO’s propaganda arm on their English-language publication, Mozambique Revolution. Nesbitt remembers that when Mondlane was away on one of his frequent diplomatic missions in the late 1960s, he would ask Nesbitt to keep the tradition going with his children. The determination partly came from Mondlane’s love for American sports– he was a fan of the Cleveland Indians baseball team as well – but there was likely a deeper personal connection. Watching the films on Sunday, even a few weeks after they occurred, connected him with the unique ceremony that is football in America. It maintained a sense of community with the country where Mondlane had been educated and where his wife and children had been born.

Map highlighting Mozambique. Image via Wikicommons.

Football was just one of Mondlane’s deep ties to the United States. He came from a noble Tsonga family in the south of Mozambique, but he spent over a decade living in Chicago, New York, and places in between. An education at a Protestant mission in Mozambique first took him to the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa until apartheid made further study impossible. His nationalist politics also made it uncomfortable to continue his schooling in metropolitan Lisbon. The United States offered a refuge. Protestant missionary connections and a scholarship from the Phelps-Stokes Fund allowed him to enroll as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. In 1953, he graduated at the advanced age of 32 with a bachelor’s degree, a love of Cleveland Indians baseball, and a passion for the pigskin. He would continue to Northwestern, where he earned a PhD in sociology under legendary Africanist Melville Herskovits. He worked with the Trusteeship Department of the United Nations that was pushing for continued decolonization in Africa, including Portuguese colonies like Mozambique. He even accepted a position as a professor at Syracuse University, resigning only after he was elected president of FRELIMO upon its formation in 1962.

Eduardo Mondlane class photo at Oberlin College, 1953. Image via wikicommons.

Throughout his time in the United States, Mondlane promoted African decolonization. Even before he graduated from Oberlin, he began making appearances alongside UN officials like Ralph Bunche and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer as an expert on Portuguese Africa. He was active in church circles, where he urged congregations and church camps to expand their interests from domestic civil rights to global political and human rights. Many listeners would take these lessons to heart, including future congressman and Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young. In Chicago, he taught university and informal classes, while also speaking to local organizations. Africa stood at a crossroads, Mondlane would explain to his audiences, and it was up to progressive forces in the United States to support its bid for independence against outdated colonialism. Only this international pressure could force Portugal to finally give up her colonies without the need for armed revolution. The nonviolent message would link Mondlane with the emerging Civil Rights movement. Longtime National Urban League head Whitney Young knew him well, and he attended the first American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Farmer. Those who met him remembered him as intelligent, personable, congenially authoritative, and utterly convincing.

Mondlane’s ties to the United States were extensive, but his strongest by far was his marriage to Janet Rae Johnson of Downers Grove, Illinois. Mondlane met his future wife at a church summer camp, and they began a lengthy correspondence. She was part of a generation of young Americans whose religious convictions pushed them to agitate for racial equality, but her interests were more global. Janet Mondlane became a partner for Eduardo in much more than a domestic sense, sharing his commitment to self-determination for Mozambique. The marriage was controversial – Janet was not only white but nearly fourteen years younger than her husband – but they were nothing if not determined. Janet and their growing family joined Eduardo in Dar Es Salaam when he moved there to direct the exile movement. The white Midwesterner became the head of the fundraising arm of FRELIMO known as the Mozambique Institute, which ran a secondary school for refugees. Her powerful position angered some within the party due both to her race and gender, but she became an important element in selling FRELIMO’s cause to the wider world.

Portugal was part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in the midst of the Cold War it used anti-communism to justify fighting a war to retain its colonies. Western allies disagreed with Portugal’s approach to its colonies, but they were not willing to put decisive pressure on the government in Lisbon. After FRELIMO decided on the course of armed revolution, it depended on weapons from neighboring African countries, China, and communist Eastern Europe, but it did not want to choose sides. The Mondlanes knew that there were many in the United States and Europe who sympathized with their cause and they worked to cultivate these relationships. Eduardo Mondlane’s cultural fluency and vision of a free Mozambique made a good impression on Robert Kennedy in 1963, which led to the Ford Foundation donating tens of thousands of dollars to the Mozambique Institute. But such government aid to a revolutionary movement was unpopular and unusual since it targeted an ally. FRELIMO relied more on building relationships with civil society groups, which included religious organizations and young people frustrated by the Cold War. Popular movements would eventually develop throughout the Western world, holding political rallies, launching boycott campaigns, conducting clothing drives, and raising funds to support the social programs of FRELIMO and the Mozambique Institute. In Europe especially, these movements would grow in strength until they convinced governments and political parties in places like Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and even Britain to directly aid the liberation parties. The Mondlanes and FRELIMO cultivated these unofficial friendships through a shared commitment to self-determination, but also through personal connections like those formed with Prexy Nesbitt. Effective transnational diplomacy depended as much on talking about local concerns and personal passions – like Chicago football – as talking African freedom.

Frelimo button with the face of Eduardo Mondlane, the first president of the movement. Translation: ‘Frelimo will win’. Image via African Activist Archive at MSU

Eduardo Mondlane would not live long enough to see the independence to which he had dedicated his life. He died in 1969 after opening a parcel bomb mailed to him in Tanzania. Janet Mondlane remained active in the struggle and continues to live in Mozambique today. She and FRELIMO maintained her husband’s diplomatic neutralism after his death and oversaw the expansion of Western support, even as they used African and communist supplied weapons to fight Portugal to a standstill and gain independence in 1975. Neither in Mozambique nor in those American institutions that he touched has Mondlane been forgotten. In a tribute published in Mozambique Revolution in February 1969, one party member observed that “he was able to speak for us the language of other men – the language of the diplomats, the language of the universities, the language of power.” On Sundays, he would also speak the language of American football, illustrating the transnational linkages that can create a sense of community between the United States and the world but too often pass unnoticed or unremembered.

The Isles: A History, by Norman Davies (1999)

By Mark Sheaves

On September 18 the Scottish people will vote to decide whether the country should withdraw from the United Kingdom. Over the summer the polls have swung back and forth, and as the referendum draws closer the competing campaigns have intensified. Nationalist rhetoric prevails on both sides, with historical examples deployed to either highlight injustices or moments of peaceful prosperous union. Indeed, the historical animosity felt by many Scots towards the ruling Conservative party seems to be worrying the Prime Minister, David Cameron. Demonstrating his lack of faith in the Scottish people’s decision-making faculties he urged voters last week not to break up the union just to give the “effing Tories a kick”. The history of the relationship between the two kingdoms is vital for both camps, but surely it is more complicated than historical subjection or fraternal cooperation. Exploring the millennium long relationship between England and Scotland – as George Christian also did in his NEP article last Monday – we can begin to comprehend the complicated issues at stake in this referendum and the possible ramifications. Few have tackled such a large topic, but one book that has is Norman Davies’ The Isles: A History.

Published in 1999, The Isles, traces the development of the political entities and cultural identities inhabiting the archipelagos currently divided into the nations of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Drawing on a selection of reference works and the expertise of some specialists the book ranges from the last Ice Age to the present day. It covers the early Celtic, Germanic, Roman and Norse groups, the emergence of separate kingdoms, and the various configurations of unity running alongside the rise and fall of the British Empire. The final chapter, The Post-Imperial Isles, addresses a contemporary debate about a perceived British political and identity crisis, in the context of the devolution of the United Kingdom. Davies concludes by offering his own vision for the future, arguing that the establishment of the United Kingdom served the interests of Empire, and therefore, in a post-imperial world, each nation should exist as a distinct entity in the wider community of Europe. While Davies’ argument supports the dissolution of the United Kingdom, at over one thousand pages long The Isles is unlikely to be near the top of the yes to independence campaign’s reading list.

The complex relationships between the states of the British Isles from 927 to the present (Wikimedia Commons)

The Isles is a book that tries to accomplish a lot of different goals. Davies’ broad scope, incorporating a variety of historical perspectives, tackles Anglo-Centric narratives and myth-making that taints much scholarship on this subject since the “Protestant triumphalism” of the seventeenth century. The long periodization and large number of themes covered seeks to address a perceived overspecialization in the discipline of History and the lack of coherence in History teaching in schools. Quotes from primary sources lace the lively and clear narrative in an attempt to appeal to a wide readership. Engaging and informative, both academics and the public will benefit from reading the Isles, but does Davies try to do too much?

The polarized critical reception of this book in newspapers and book reviews reveals the pitfalls of adopting such an ambitious scope. Some nations receive more attention than others (Wales fares particularly badly), while certain events, such as the Irish potato famine, and themes, such as industrialization and slavery, receive short shrift. The author’s political convictions also color interpretations. Davies presents the Reformation as a moment when England cut cultural and intellectual ties with the continent, ignoring much scholarship that demonstrates the continuance of strong ties not only with Europe, but also the wider Atlantic world. Similarly, Davies ignores important insights about social revolution contained in works by eminent historians such as Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson. Finally, as result of the broad scope, the final chapters on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries attempt to condense a large number of themes and events and do not do justice to this complicated era. However, these criticisms might be unwarranted as Davies aims for a “very personal view of history.” With these shortcomings in mind, readers will find that his book introduces key themes in the history of the Isles, integrating multiple perspectives on significant historical and current issues related to the different nations and cultures. Are these differences enough to justify the end of the Union? Or are the kingdoms too entangled? The voters will decide shortly…

Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom. In Scotland, the Queen has a separate version of the Royal Arms - read about the differences here. (Wikicommons)

Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom. In Scotland, the Queen has a separate version of the Royal Arms. (Wikicommons)

Norman Davies, The Isles: A History

Independence for Scotland? An Historical Perspective on the Scottish Referendum

By George Christian

On September 18 Scottish voters will decide whether Scotland should withdraw from the United Kingdom and set up shop as a sovereign nation-state. If voters approve the referendum, the ruling Scottish National Party will be tasked with negotiating the country’s withdrawal from the 1707 Treaty of Union (the one that established the UK in the first place), proposing a new constitution for independent Scotland, and dealing with myriad economic and foreign policy issues for which the UK Parliament is currently responsible.

Voter surveys have consistently shown that about half of likely voters oppose the referendum, while support for the referendum has generally hovered around 40%. Nevertheless, up or down ballots are notoriously difficult to forecast, particularly when the question has passionate minority support, as independence most certainly does. In any event, the vote marks an important historical moment in the past millennium of Anglo-Scottish relations. And however things turn out, it is likely not be the last word on the subject.

When considered in its historical context, we might view this fall’s independence referendum as part of an ongoing series of adjustments, some by coercion and others by negotiation (often under the threat of coercion), of the relationship between the two countries. Of course, this assertion begs the question of how “Scotland” should be defined as an entity capable of meaningful acts of self-representation in the first instance. Opinions range widely on this question, which encompasses both Scotland’s juridical status and Scottish “national identity.” Taking the long view (and ignoring for these purposes the very real historical differences between Highland and Lowland Scotland), Scotland has existed as an ancient Irish colony, an independent kingdom, a Norman colony, a feudal vassal state of England, a North British province of the UK, and, most recently, a sub-state within the UK with a devolved parliament exercising restricted sovereign authority within its own borders.

Scottish Exemplification (official copy) of the Treaty of Union of 1707

The extensive historiography of Scottish “identity” further complicates the question. On one end of the spectrum, a few Scottish historians have argued that Scotland is little more than an internal labor colony of capitalist England, perhaps not as badly treated as Ireland, but shackled more or less unwillingly to a larger, richer, and more powerful neighbor just the same. On the opposite end, some English historians, if they have anything to say about Scotland at all, treat Scottish identity as a nineteenth-century “invention” or post-hoc construction designed to assuage wounded Scottish national feelings by the assertion of some kind of aesthetic nationalism (created in no small part by literary figures such as Robert Burns and Walter Scott).

William Wallace Statue at Edinburgh castle

William Wallace at Edinburgh castle

In the vast middle of the spectrum, historical characterizations range from claiming for Scotland a distinctive form of European sub-nationalism within the British state to treating Scotland as a full partner in the British imperial enterprise. Whether historians take the Scottish, English, or “British” line, their work cannot be read in the vacuum of historical “objectivity.” Nationalist history runs just as strongly in Scotland as it does elsewhere. This observation takes nothing away from the exceptional economic and social histories that Scottish historians have produced in the last 25 years to remedy the appalling absence of Scotland from most accounts of English history. At the same time, these histories have complicated as much as they have clarified questions of Scottish nationhood and identity.

More specifically with respect to the Scottish independence question, Scotland and England have for more than a thousand years battled one another to achieve the best political, economic, and security advantage that each could wrest from the other. In most instances the more powerful southerners have prevailed to a greater or lesser extent. But I think that history indicates a marked instability in this balance of power, and that the fact Scottish voters have independence in their hands, following hard upon devolution, marks a shift for the time being in favor of North Britain.

To demonstrate this suggestion, I think it is possible to break down the history of Anglo-Scottish relations into more or less distinct periods in which the balance of power has favored one or the other side of the Tweed. This approach, while provisional, has the merit of detaching the question from nationalist narratives on both sides and viewing Scotland and England as having legitimate and important interests in relation to one another that, at various times in history, have required mediation. Such mediation has sometimes resulted in a closer union between Scotland and England, but at other times has produced a devolution of power.

In broad terms, I identify three more or less distinct periods of significant Scottish receptivity to English political and economic influence. Early periods of “union” tended to occur at historical conjunctions of stability in the Scottish monarchy and substantial dynastic links between Scotland and England, such as the post-Norman conquest era, when Scottish kings fostered close dynastic and familial ties with the Anglo-Norman court, and the regnal union of 1603. The formal union of 1707, by contrast, took place in the context of international crisis, military threat, and an uncertain succession, but endured largely because it eventually offered substantial economic benefits to a majority of Scots.

In each case, however, “devolution” has eroded union when English political interests have diverged significantly from those of the Scots: Edward I’s feudal power play culminating in the Scottish Wars of Independence; Scottish separatism in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, the deposition of the Stuart monarchy, and economic rivalry of the 1690s; and, in our own time, growing Scottish dismay with English conservative politicians and their offensive (to Scots) policies. Like Bruce’s victory over the English Bannockburn (1314), which produced a short-lived period of independence but no stable, long-term resolution of Anglo-Scottish relations, the independence referendum represents a noteworthy event that appears to decide a question without answering it.

If we can accept this rough and ready model of historical ebb and flow in Anglo-Scottish relations, what might the future hold? The possibilities are intriguing. As I see it, here are some of the potential outcomes of the referendum event:

A second Scottish Revolution? The referendum succeeds, a fully sovereign Scotland separates from UK, and joins the EU as its 29^th member state. (In the event, it would be interesting to see how quickly Wales tried to follow suit. The UK is not the only European state facing significant constitutional change. The Catalan parliament is expected to enact legislation calling for a referendum on independence later this fall, though it is likely that Spain’s Constitutional Court will nullify the ballot.)
The Third Devolution continued? The referendum fails in reasonably close vote, leaving SNP unfazed in its dominant political position and in a strong position to urge another independence vote in the future while negotiating more devolved powers (which the British government appears prepared to concede even if the referendum fails).
The Fourth Union? This scenario looks similar to the Third Devolution, but here devolution becomes part of a larger movement to establish a “federation” of British states (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) involving a substantial revision of the constitutional relationships between the British nations.
The Fourth Union II? The referendum fails in a landslide, discrediting the SNP and precipitating its fall from power and restoring the traditional UK party structure in Scotland. Scottish animus toward the ruling Tory/Lib Dem administration lessens when Labor eventually returns to power. The restoration of a Labour government stabilizes the status quo for the foreseeable future and indefinitely shelves moves toward further devolution or, for that matter, independence.

There is only one thing that history seems to rule out: a permanent status quo in which the current constitutional standing of England and Scotland ossifies so that memory runneth not to the contrary. Indeed, historical memory tends to run very deeply in Scotland, and while the independence referendum undoubtedly serves SNP’s domestic political interests in the short-term, one cannot deny the historical character of the emotional response among its most passionate advocates. Moreover, if voter surveys are accurate and a slim majority of Scottish voters decide that now is not the time to leave the nest, this does not mean that the relatively few Scots who hold the balance will not change their minds, especially if an unpopular Tory government pursues the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and persists in its policy assault on a social safety net dearly earned in Scotland by centuries of poverty and hard labor. These problems and others will not be conjured away by the independence referendum, whatever its result, and the historical significance of the September 18 vote remains to be seen by a future generation of historians of Britain.

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