Scotland Archives - Not Even Past

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

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.

Three Hundred Sex Crimes

by Brian Levack

Early in the morning on May 20, 1709, before the trials of offenders commenced, the judges of Scotland’s north circuit court in Perth pardoned some 300 men and women who had been charged with fornication or adultery. After granting these pardons, the court spent most of the day trying a case of incest that resulted in the conviction of John Martin, a 67-year old blacksmith from Dundee, and the acquittal of his half-brother’s 16-year old daughter, Elspeth Martin, for engaging in incestuous sexual intercourse.

Page 1 of the document recording the pardons
(National Archives of Scotland, JC 11/1)

The pardons and the trials of that day marked a turning point in the history of Scottish criminal justice. They brought about the de facto decriminalization of fornication and adultery in the Scottish secular courts while clarifying the Scottish law of incest and challenging prevailing male and clerical attitudes towards rape.

The pardons came about as a result of the passage of a bill of indemnity passed by the British parliament in the previous year. The union of England and Scotland in 1707 had resulted in the establishment of the United Kingdom and the creation of a single parliament for both England and Scotland. In this British parliament the English greatly outnumbered the Scots. On the face of it, the act of indemnity passed by parliament in 1708 had little to do with the prosecution of sex crimes. Its purpose was to pardon people accused of crimes in the wake of a Scottish rebellion against the British monarch, Queen Anne, in that year as a means of reconciling the Scottish population to the established regime. The statute extended a free and general pardon to subjects of the queen who had committed “all manner of treasons, misprisions of treasons, felonies, treasonable or seditious words or libels, misprisions of felony, seditious and unlawful meetings . . . riots, routs, offences, trespasses, entries, wrongs, deceits, [and] misdemeanors.”

Queen Anne in the House of Lords, Peter Tillemans (Wikimedia Commons)

The Members of Parliament (MPs) who passed this bill of indemnity most likely never thought about its application to adultery and fornication, especially since neither of those offenses was a secular crime in England. But 300 Scottish offenders, whose names fill seventeen pages in the records of the court in the National Archives of Scotland, took advantage of this opportunity to avoid the penalties they would have otherwise incurred for these relatively minor sexual offenses. The judges of the court, who agreed that fornication and adultery should not be prosecuted, were happy to grant the pardons. After this trial, there were no more prosecutions in the Scottish secular courts for either offense.

Incest and rape, however, were considered much more serious crimes than fornication or adultery, and they had been specifically excluded from the bill of indemnity. Therefore the trial of John and Elspeth Martin for incest went forward. It is surprising that John was not charged with rape, since the indictment made it clear that he had forced his niece to have sex with him. The court had been reluctant to try him for rape because local magistrates and clergy considered Elspeth just as guilty as John for their sexual intercourse, presuming that she, like all victims of rape, had consented to this sexual act. The reason the court proceeded in this case was that sexual relationship between John and his niece had been incestuous. On that basis John was convicted. During Elspeth’s trial, however, her lawyer emphasized that John had used force against her. This led the jury to recognize that she was a victim of this sexual crime, not its perpetrator, and for that reason she was acquitted. By making the jury understand that rape was a violent crime against women and therefore the most serious of all sex crimes, Elspeth Martin’s lawyer contributed to a significant change in Scottish attitudes toward rape in the eighteenth century.

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