Scotland History

Early Times. Little is known about the early inhabitants of Scotland, but they managed to repel Roman incursions and forced Emperor Hadrian to shield Roman England behind an immense 73 mi. long wall . Later invaders were more successful, however, and by AD 600 four groups inhabited the Scottish mainland: the native Picts, the Celtic Scots, and the Germanic Angles and Saxons. In AD 843, the Scots decisively defeated the Picts and formed the beginnings of a consolidated kingdom. United against the threat of encroaching Vikings, various groups gathered under King Duncan (later killed by a certain Macbeth in 1040), and the House of Dunkeld or Canmore reigned over Scotland for 200 years. In the early 12th century, Scotland prospered under the popular and pious King David I (1124-53), who built castles, abbeys, and cathedrals all over the Lowlands. Subsequent Scottish monarchs found their independence threatened by an increasingly powerful England. During the 13th century, Scotland maintained a tenuous peace punctuated with occasional fighting as Scottish kings struggled to contend with civil revolts and Scandinavian attacks.

War With England. In 1286, King Alexander III died without an heir, and the resulting contest over the Scottish crown fueled the territorial ambitions of Edward I of England. Edward promptly seized most of Scotland and commenced a long history of English oppression. His not-so-gentle governing hand earned him the nickname “Hammer of the Scots.” The Wars of Independence bred figures like William Wallace (yes, the Braveheart guy), but it was Robert the Bruce who emerged as Scotland’s leader after a spate of assassinations. Robert led the Scots to victory over Edward II’s forces at Bannockburn in 1314, and won Scotland its independence. In the next centuries the Scottish kings frequently capitalized on an “Auld Alliance” with France to stave off the English.

The reigns of James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-42) saw the arrival of both the Renaissance and the Reformation . Following the death of James V, the infant Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-67), ascended the throne and was promptly shipped off to France. Lacking a strong ruler during her absence, Scotland was vulnerable to the revolts of the Reformation as the iconoclastic preacher John Knox spread his austere brand of Protestantism, called Presbyterianism, among the nobility. In 1560, the Scottish Parliament denied the pope’s authority in Scotland and established the Presbyterian Church as Scotland’s official church.

In 1561, after the death of her husband, the staunchly Catholic Mary returned to Scotland. Unpopular with Scottish nobles and Protestants, Mary’s rule fanned the flames of discontent, and civil war resulted in her forced abdication and imprisonment in 1567. She escaped her Scottish captors only to find another set of shackles accross the border in England, where her cousin Elizabeth I ruled. As Mary languished in an English prison, her son James VI was crowned king of Scotland. Nine years later, with Catholic Spain becoming a rising threat, Queen Elizabeth forged a tentative alliance with the nominally Protestant James, which didn’t stop her from executing his mother in 1587.

Union With England. When Elizabeth died without an heir in 1603, James VI was crowned James I, for the first time uniting Scotland and England under the same monarch. James ruled from London, and his halfhearted attempts to reconcile the Scots to British rule were tartly resisted. Scottish Presbyterians supported Parliamentary forces against James’s successor Charles I during the English Civil War , but, when the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell executed Charles, the Scots shifted alliances and named the deceased king’s son King Charles II. In response, Cromwell invaded Scotland and integrated it into the Commonwealth. Charles’s restoration in 1660 returned some measure of autonomy, but conflict simmered between the high-handed Stuart kings and their proud subjects in Scotland. The victory of the Protestant William of Orange over James II in the Glorious Revolution convinced many of Scotland’s Presbyterian leaders that its interests were safer with the Anglicans than with longtime Catholic ally France. Scotland was formally unified with England in the 1707 Act of Union.

The Jacobite Rebellion. Scottish supporters of James II (called Jacobites) attempted a series of unsuccessful anti-union uprisings, after which they launched the “Forty-Five” —the 1745 rebellion that captured the imaginations of Scots and Romantics everywhere. James’s grandson Charles (or Bonnie Prince Charlie ) landed in Scotland, where he succeeded in mustering unseasoned troops from various Scottish clans. He rallied the troops in Glenfinnan and marched to Edinburgh, where he prepared a rebellion. Despite the Jacobite victories at Stirling and Falkirk in 1746, desertions and the uncertainty of French aid undermined the rebellion. While Charles, disguised as a serving maid, eventually escaped back to France, his Highland army fell heroically on the battlefield of Culloden . The English subsequently enacted a new round of oppressive measures: they forbade hereditary tartans and the playing of bagpipes, discouraged the speaking of Gaelic, and forcibly eradicated much of traditional Scottish culture.

Enlightenment And The Clearances. Despite Jacobite agitation and reactionary English countermeasures, the 18th century proved to be one of the most prosperous in Scotland’s history. As agriculture, industry, and trade boomed, a vibrant intellectual environment and close links to continental Enlightenment thought produced such luminaries as Adam Smith, David Hume, and James Mill.

Although political reforms did much to improve social conditions in the 19th century, economic problems proved disastrous. The Highlands in particular were affected by a rapidly growing population, limited arable land, archaic farming methods, and the demands of rapacious landlords. The resulting poverty led to mass emigration and the infamous Highland Clearances. Between 1810 and 1820, the Sutherland Clearances, undertaken by the Marquis of Stafford, forcibly relocated thousands of poor farmers to small landholdings called crofts to make way for expanded sheep ranching. Resistance to the relocations was met with violence—homes were burned and countless people were killed. Other clearances occurred throughout the Highlands, in some cases evicting entire villages and shipping their people overseas. The Industrial Revolution led to growth in Glasgow and the rest of southern Scotland and contributed to increasingly poor living conditions for new industrial laborers. The situation worsened in the mid-19th century, when the Highland Potato Famine caused widespread starvation, death, and continuing emigration from the Highlands.

The 20th Century. Scotland, like the rest of Britain, lost countless young men in WWI and suffered the ensuing economic downturn. In the 1930s, the Depression hit Scotland hard. The Home Rule (or Devolution ) movement, begun in 1886 and put on hold during WWI, continued the push for a separate parliament in Edinburgh. The Scottish National Party (SNP) was founded in 1934 on the strength of nationalist sentiments. On Christmas of 1950, young agitators broke into Westminster Abbey and stole (or liberated, depending on your political persuasion) the Stone of Scone —a block of sandstone historically used as a seat in the coronation of the Scottish monarchy that had been removed from Scotland by Edward I. The discovery of North Sea oil gave Scotland an economic boost and incited a new breed of nationalism embodied by the SNP’s 1974 political slogan, “It’s Scotland’s Oil!” Polls in the 70s indicated that Scotland’s population favored devolution, but the crucial 1979 referendum failed to garner the required 40% approval of the entire electorate.