Dan Snow's History Hit - Scotland & England's Union

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

The union between the nations of Great Britain goes back to 1707. On each side of the border, statesmen started to realise that a closer relationship offered solutions to problems both countries were facing: Scotland needed economic security and England needed political safeguards against French attacks.In this episode, Scottish historian Professor Murray Pittock talks Dan through the benefits and cracks in this 300-year-old union.Produced by Hannah Ward and edited by Dougal PatmoreEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. On the 1st of May 1707, the Acts of Union came into force. England and Scotland, two of the most ancient kingdoms in Europe, were fused together to become Great Britain. Stanhope, who was a senior politician, arguably should be known as our first prime minister. He was the king's senior political fixer before Sir Robert Walpole. Stan-up said a few years later, never did such a treaty produce more ultimate advantage to a nation. Never was any received with such general and thorough hatred. I love that quote about England and Scotland coming

together to form Britain. It is one of the most fascinating and talked about political unions in history. 300 years later, we're still deciding whether it was artificial, whether it's real, whether there are profound differences between England and Scotland that means that one day separation will become inevitable. This year is the 10th anniversary of the Scottish independence vote of 2014 in which union supporters won. But that proved only a temporary check on the aspirations of separatists in Scotland. They went on to win crushing victories in general elections that followed and polling numbers suggest that the case for an independent Scotland is still embraced by well almost half of the people of Scotland. We've been talking about this union for 300 years,

so why stop now? On this podcast, we've got the brilliant Professor Murray Pettick. He's been on the podcast many times, and now he's back. He's the Pro Vice Principal and Bradley Professor at the University of Glasgow. And we're going to go back

and take a long look at the history of Anglo-Scottish relations, the history of the union, and how that history underpins contemporary debate. This is a repeat of the episode we put out in November 2022, but I thought it'd be a good time to repeat it because of this anniversary when people are taking a look back 10 years after that Scottish independence referendum. Enjoy. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Murray, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast. A pleasure, Dan. Good to speak to you again. Let's talk about the kingdom of Scotland itself. Scotland emerges like England to itself. It's a story of the slow accumulation of territory by one portion of what is now Scotland. That's the case, actually. There's a period, I suppose, in the 8th and 9th centuries when the Picts are the main

kingdom and Dalriata, which is the kingdom of the Scots, the Gaelic speakers, rather than what is rather like Welsh, the Brythonic speakers, are subsidiary, but sometimes they're on top. And eventually, it's they really fundamentally who win out, and Scotland becomes a Gaelic polity, and a more or less centralised kingdom. And so the Pictish lands were roughly roughly speaking, to the east, were they? Yeah, well, east and north. I mean, the whole of the Pictish kingdom probably runs, sometimes, as far as Orkney and as far south as the Forth.

So it's large. And then my favourite of all the British kingdoms that have ever existed, I think, is Dalriata, which extends from the Western Isles of Scotland into the north of Ireland as well. They end up overcoming the Picts and being the basis of the modern Scotland, do they? They do. So Dalriata becomes the basis of the development of the Scottish state, but it is overlaid by the invitation, rather than conquest, the invitation in of large numbers of Normans, starting with Macbeth, but then under David the First, who reigned from 1124 to 1153, brought in a large number of Normans. And so what do you get in Scotland? It's a coalescence of Norman feudalism

and Gaelic social organisation. Both of those things are present. People like the Robert the Bruce's family is this extraordinary blend of those different traditions, isn't it? But Edinburgh still has to bring outlying parts of what is now Scotland under its control. That process takes a long time, doesn't it? I would say that Scotland probably is a fully centralised kingdom with the exception of Orkney and Shetland by the beginning of the 14th century. There is a lot of discussion round about the role of the Lords of the Isles until the 15th century, the leaders of Clan Donald in the West. A lot of that is really about their competition for Scottish noble titles and the ownership of large tracts of other royaldoms and territorial titles outwith the Western Isles, rather than having a

quasi-separate kingdom. I think you could view them as analogous to the Percy Earls of North umberland, in the sense that they operate in a way which is very difficult to incorporate fully into the central polity, but they're not an alternative polity. Though there's a moment in 1402 where that's almost the case. However, that's a different story. Oh, we'd go deep diving out some other time. I'd love that. Now we get the various attempts by the English to conquer their northern neighbours, which fail. And we then get, in the very early 17th century, a very resonant event now. Queen Elizabeth dies and her nearest living relative is the Scottish king who marches south to London, which is something we've also seen recently. Why did James VI of Scotland become

the king of England and Scotland in 1603? James inherited the crown because he was fundamentally the nearest heir as the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor and James IV, Margaret Tudor being the daughter of Henry VII. I mean, I don't think having James was really a very popular move. Many people didn't want this to happen. And Elizabeth never actually named him. But there was really very little alternative without creating civil conflict to having James. So James came. James becomes, in fact, I said king of two countries, in fact, became king of Ireland as well, the three kingdoms. The next hundred years are fairly turbulent, aren't they? I mean, is that because of everything, because the Reformation, various things, great sweeping changes, but was it quite unstable having these three kingdoms separate and yet under one sovereign?

In a way, not, but in a way, yes. And that's terribly kind of Kennedy, maybe it's I, maybe it's not kind of answer. But first of all, it's a composite monarchy. They're very common in the early modern period, Denmark, Norway, the Commonwealth of Poland, Lithuania. There are many other examples. The issue is really, and this got lessons for the present day perhaps, is that England had very great difficulty coming to terms with the fact that it wasn't the only kingdom. In other words, that whereas Scotland understood the state as a composite monarchy, England really thought it was England, plus whatever Scotland did it could just get up to on its own.

But if it intruded whatever England wanted to do, then it needed to be brought to heel. And so there was no real constitutional mechanism for operating as a multinational polity. And that was actually compounded by the fact that the Scottish Diplomatic Service was effectively completely a crown patronage appointment system. So that when the crown moved to England, they just appointed the diplomats. And that means they stopped appointing Scottish diplomats. And so there were attempts to keep Scottish foreign policy alive in the 17th century, but they ran into big trouble because basically patronage was with the king who was in London. And you then have what used to be called the English Civil War now much more properly known as the kind of War of the Three Kingdoms or the wars that involve all England Scotland and Ireland

and in which the Scottish play an absolute decisive part but I'm always fascinated by 1688 where William and Mary come across from Holland are to a certain extent welcomed in England but Scotland at that moment had a huge opportunity to not go along with the English Parliament decision. And yet actually Scotland goes even further. They say James II, rather than English have a fiction that James II sort of abdicated, Scotland goes further and says James II was almost treasonous. He is being removed and William is replaced. That's a huge moment, isn't it? It is. The claim of rights, a big moment in 1689. It stands in a tradition which goes back not just to Calvin's political theory in the 16th century, but arguably to the

Declaration of Arbroath itself in 1320, which says, of course, though it's largely rhetorical, the declaration that if Robert the Bruce should fail him in any way, that the community of the realm of Scotland can cashier him and get rid of him and choose somebody else who'll defend the country better. So that's what happens with James. It is a big moment, but of course, it's very much a confessional moment. Scotland is also very closely aligned in the 17th century with the Netherlands. There's even a suggestion more than once of Scotland becoming one of the United Provinces. That's first suggested in 1677, that it should join Zealand and become yet another United Province. So that's a very different way to go. But first of all, Scotland's very close to the Netherlands in a

lot of ways, including religiously. And secondly, James's Catholicism is a big turnoff in large parts of Scotland, particularly central Scotland. One has to remember, however, that when it came to the Scottish estates and the claim of right, there were a lot of politics in the mix. I mean, for example, James's chancellor wrote to them in very, very firm terms about coming back into their obedience. He didn't do any politics. He just, you know, do it or else. And they just said, well, or else then, that's fine. So there's a lot of politics. But yes, it was a very radical statement. And of course, it underpins some future constitutional discussions, including those around about the American Declaration of Independence. Queen Anne, Stuart, James II's daughter.

So sort of patching over the schism of the 1680s. Queen Anne does not have any children. Tragically, all of them die. And then you've got an issue, haven't you? Because the succession is going to pass to the reasonably distant Hanoverians. What is it at that point that made Queen Anne and her government seek to formalise this union between England and Scotland? Was it that looming succession issue? That was certainly part of it. So there was a range of events. First of all, under William, there was the Scottish parliamentary investigation into the massacre at Glencoe. And although

William had certainly signed the order to extirpate the McDonalds, was not included in castigating the findings, William certainly didn't like them having the inquiry. So that rather turned William to favor the Union. Then when the English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in 1701, which secured the Hanoverian succession, they didn't consult Scotland at all. Hence the issues about some of the contemporary reflections of this in political terms, and also the way in which the composite monarchy didn't work because of that lack of consultation. Therefore, Scotland, first of all, passed the Act of Security, and then the Act to End Peace and War. Those two acts, both reserved to Scotland the right for independent foreign policy, and for Scotland the right to an independent line of succession, unless certain guarantees

were met by the English government. And those were seen as direct constitutional challenges. And the real fear, of course, was, and it was not an idle fear because 22,000 men came out to fight for him in 1715, that James VIII would return to Scotland and become king, and that he would have French help in doing so. And how did Anne and her managers get the Act of Union through the Scottish ruling class? Well, there are really two ways. First of all, a commission was appointed, and the Crown selected all members of the commission. They included one or two Jacobites, kind of just for show, who would grumble and complain, but who would not be able to do anything, men like George Lockhart of Carnoisse. But basically, there was a pact commissioned to treat on the Union. The Alien Act of 1705 made

it clear that Scots would not only be excluded from English overseas trade, but we'd be aliens within England, unless Union negotiations opened. There was a good deal of religious sympathy on the Presbyterian side. A lot of patriots nonetheless went down the Union Road for religious reasons because they feared a Catholic restoration in Scotland under the Jacobites, or at least a restoration which would restore episcopacy and tolerate Catholicism. There was also the feel that Scotland was enormously ambitious from a very early date in overseas trade and be constructively excluded by the Navigation Acts and other measures from the English imperial trade and into the power, the sea power to project itself like the Netherlands

or Portugal. So basically, the Scots couldn't create a commercial empire and couldn't create the major trading companies, tried to, of course, the company of Scotland, but couldn't create the major trading companies, which would sustain the enormous growth in wealth some of the major European powers saw in this early modern era. So they saw that the access to imperial markets promised by the Union was absolutely mission critical. And that's what swung the union. But even so, the union itself is rather an odd beast because the document partly is about things which are to do with parliamentary right, which could be changed by future Westminster parliaments, and partly things which are supposed to be for all time coming, which are linked to

the rights of the crown in Scotland. So in a sense, Scotland remains in part a separate kingdom under the Union, and in part is merged with Westminster, what we might call a classic British compromise. But we live in an increasingly uncompromising era, and that's one of the challenges of today. You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come. Making research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions.

And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Scotland did then take advantage of being part of that imperial polity and famously my ancestors among them Scottish people leading the way into the colonization of Canada and various other places Scotland took full advantage of those imperial opportunities. There's no question that Scotland did, and more than full advantage of them. It might have been a slower start, but Robert Walpole, who was a great statesman and not

really just a great fixer, though he was that, saw that the best way to detach Scots elites from supporting Jacobitism was to ease their way into patronage within the East India Company and elsewhere, but principally East India Company. And so Scots became, at an early date, very disproportionately present in India. It was a successful policy. It helped Scots to build on what were already strong associational, territorial, and educational networks to create a massive overseas presence, which was of colossal proportions in certain territories. Indeed, Charles Dilk, when he goes abroad in 1868 and writes, the British Empire outside Great Britain should be called Scotland. It's a bit of a joke. He's a radical liberal MP.

But nonetheless, he's making a point. But one of the other interesting things about that compromise, I mean, there's much that could be said about it, is that Scottish institutions abroad from the 17th century onwards, St Andrews societies, Caledonian societies, later on Barnes clubs and others, they exist not only to socialise and to network Scots in the British Empire, but also to exclude non-Scots from jobs, to get Scots jobs and to exclude non-Scots. They are completely tolerated, indeed patronised, by any English governors, and not that there aren't often Scottish governors, and governors general in this period. So it's an interesting, again, a toleration of Scotland expressing itself nationally abroad,

providing it doesn't express itself nationally at home. And of course, many of the great epic moments of British military history feature Scottish units, be it at the Battle of Waterloo, Quebec, elsewhere. Scotland plays a disproportionate part in the military, well, the hard power elements of the British Empire. Yeah, there was a big ideology around that, which we've now again, largely forgotten. It's very interesting to look at films like The Child of the Light Brigade made in the 60s, or indeed as late as Zulu Dawn at the end of the 70s, and the visibility of non-English troops in the British Army, whereas most modern adaptations, you'd think everyone that ever served in British imperial forces came from England. But the initial huge access of Scots into

British imperial forces comes as part of the solution to the fact that the post-Colombian Scotland cannot be kept down. I mean, it can be kept down, but it can only be kept down by large-scale occupation of British troops. So really, they have to start raising people to serve overseas. That is the solution that's adopted in the mid-1750s. And it's a very successful solution in the War of 1756-63. Indeed, the Heights of Abraham are accessed by the British forces in 1759, because a Scottish soldier formerly in the French service can do the password in French. So these critical moments all the way through to the 20th century, but they're often presenting the kind of rhetoric of the Scots as kind of elemental, primitive, but brave, and that they are, as it were, what people in the empire, if they consent to be conquered, will turn into.

That's, for example, how Scots are presented in wars on the northwest frontier as late as the 1880s. You too, you Pashtuns, can be like these Scots. If they're capable of civilisation, so are you. Nationalism, we see it, of course, in India. We see it everywhere in the late 19th, 30th, 20th centuries. How much of Scottish nationalism is a product of people seeking more local, more regional national identities against these giant, sort of heterodox, dynastic, imperial, monarchical states. And how much is particular to the internal politics and the history of the Isles? Scottish patriotism is very profound in the 19th and early 20th century, but it doesn't

fundamentally threaten the Union. And the reason it doesn't fundamentally threaten the union. And the reason it doesn't fundamentally threaten the union is the union doesn't fundamentally threaten it. So Scottish nationalism, I think, in the modern era, is in many respects, much more like the nationalism, if people wouldn't normally call it that, but that's really what it is, of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, than it's like the nationalism of Catalonia. It's about moving on. And one of the things that moving on has come about from is the big change you get between the 1930s and the Festival of Britain in 51, where you get a move from a Britishness and identity. So there's a big Scottish National Pavilion, for example, in 1938. The Festival of Britain does away for the first time with the idea that British is an

international identity. It sees it much more as a national one. It's on the back of the Battle of Britain, of the standing alone, the Dunkirk myth of the introduction of the term postcode lottery in the 45-51 Labour government. All of those things create an idea of a Britain which is unitary and an island, and just an island. And that starts to exclude Scotland, because it's fine to be Scottish and British in a world where you can be Canadian and British and New Zealand and British. But when that starts to be being British or being New Zealand, Scots like to be Scots. And the lack of room for Scotland compared to a situation where, for example, in the 1940s, Walter Scott was set, and not just

the English novels either, was set for school certificate in English schools. The lack of a voice, a national presence within the British family of nations, that is the critical driver, that combined with the loss of imperial markets and the empire itself, and therefore the loss of the imperial bargain of the union. These are the drivers for modern Scottish nationalism, that in a sense, the union has changed, and that's why Scotland has changed. It's almost like the British Conservative Party, they could win majorities of the UK Parliament with English votes if they fired up English nationalism, but they also knew that might break the union. So they turn away from it in the late 19th, early 20th centuries,

as the Liberals used the Irish vote, for example. But it's almost like in recent years, they've decided to give in to that primal urge. The union was almost so sacrosanct that the British Conservative Party were almost happy not to be in power to preserve it. And that appears to have changed over the last few years, few decades. It's an interesting reading of how they've done things. The question is, is it as deliberate as that? Do they actually know what they're doing? Maybe they do. I think they knew in the late Victorian Edwardian period, I think they knew that they could guarantee themselves permanent majorities, but at the cost of breaking the union. I think they did know that back then. And they've sort of forgotten that now.

They certainly knew it then and they might know it now. So I mean, I think they've taken increasing risks have been taken, shall we put it this way, with the union, even given the setup of the post-60s era was fundamentally a positive one for the growth of Scottish nationalism, that growth is only going to be intensified by a sense that Scotland is to be discarded or suppressed, not just implicitly, but explicitly within the union. This may be the vision, but I'm not quite sure what the long-term strategic political vision here of either the Conservative or, I have to say, the Labour Party is, because the Labour Party's spokespersons have not, of course, adopted the union's position vis-a-vis Scotland, but interestingly, both Keir Starmer and his Northern Irish spokeswoman have suggested

that a Labour campaign for the union in a cross-b border pole, that is explicitly excluded by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which Labour government created. So I think there's a fetishisation of the union combined with a lack of understanding of what it really is, which is not, you know, some kind of deal whereby you can lock these countries away in a safe and pretend they don't exist. That's not a good idea. I think you mentioned the term strategic vision from Westminster politicians, which I think is probably lacking. So listen, Murray, thank you very much indeed for coming on and talking about that. Everyone should go and buy your book, which is called? Scotland, The Global History.

Boom. It's a great book. Murray Pittock, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. We'll probably be talking to you again in the next few months and years. Dan, thank you very much. It's a great book. Mario Pettuk, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. We'll probably be talking to you again in the next few months and years. Dan, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to speak to you. You make it so easy to talk. Thank you. you