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1707, 2007, AND THE UNIONIST TURN IN SCOTTISH HISTORY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2010

ALASDAIR RAFFE
ALASDAIR RAFFE*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
*
Department of History, Durham University, 43 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3EX[email protected]
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Abstract

This article reviews the latest research on the making of the Anglo-Scottish parliamentary union of 1707 and unionism in modern Scotland. Stimulated by the tercentenary of the union, but running counter to the popular mood at the time of that anniversary, many of the recent publications exhibit a novel and sympathetic interest in principled support for union. Using Christopher Whatley's The Scots and the union (2006) and Colin Kidd's Union and unionisms (2008) as starting points, the article shows how the new histories differ from earlier work, while also identifying the interdisciplinary roots of the ‘unionist turn’ in Scottish history.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 1071 - 1083
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Philip Williamson for commenting on a draft of this Review, and to the Journal's referees for their suggestions.

References

1 E.g. Paul Henderson Scott, The union of 1707: why and how? (Edinburgh, 2006).

2 Mason, Roger, ‘Posing the East Lothian question’, History Scotland, 8, (2008), pp. 40–8Google Scholar, at pp. 41–2. Professor Mason presented a version of this article as an inaugural lecture at the University of St Andrews in October 2007.

3 Michael Fry, The union: England, Scotland and the treaty of 1707 (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 3.

4 Books written to make a political splash are not discussed in this review. But see Tom Gallagher, The illusion of freedom: Scotland under nationalism (London, 2009), and the use made of it by the Scottish press: Rob Brown, ‘Salmond accused of tapping dark side of nationalism’, Herald, 25 Oct. 2009.

5 Ferguson, William, ‘The making of the treaty of union of 1707’, Scottish Historical Review (SHR), 43 (1964), pp. 89–110Google Scholar; idem, ‘Imperial crowns: a neglected facet of the background to the treaty of union of 1707’, SHR, 53, (1974), pp. 22–44Google Scholar; idem, Scotland's relations with England: a survey to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 180–272; P. W. J. Riley, The union of England and Scotland: a study in Anglo-Scottish politics of the eighteenth century (Manchester, 1978); Paul H. Scott, 1707: the union of Scotland and England (Edinburgh, 1979).

6 Christopher A. Whatley with Derek J. Patrick, The Scots and the union (Edinburgh, 2006).

7 Colin Kidd, Union and unionisms: political thought in Scotland, 1500–2000 (Cambridge, 2008).

8 Christopher Whatley, A., ‘Salt, coal and the union of 1707: a revision article’, SHR, 66, (1987), pp. 26–45Google Scholar; idem, Bought and sold for English gold? Explaining the union of 1707 (2nd edn, East Linton, 2001).

9 Whatley with Patrick, Scots and the union, chs. 4–5. Whatley aligns his argument with that of T. C. Smout, Scottish trade on the eve of union, 1660–1707 (Edinburgh, 1963): Christopher A. Whatley, ‘Taking stock: Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century’, in T. C. Smout, ed., Anglo-Scottish relations from 1603 to 1900, Proceedings of the British Academy, 127 (Oxford, 2005), p. 103.

10 Allan I. Macinnes, Union and empire: the making of the United Kingdom in 1707 (Cambridge, 2007), esp. pp. 215–20. For a review article comparing Whatley and Macinnes, see Harris, Bob, ‘The Anglo-Scottish treaty of union, 1707 in 2007: defending the revolution, defeating the Jacobites’, Journal of British Studies, 49, (2010), pp. 28–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Fry, Union, p. 308.

12 For a recent discussion of the Equivalent, see Douglas Watt, The price of Scotland: Darien, union and the wealth of nations (Edinburgh, 2007), ch. 17.

13 Christopher A. Whatley, ‘The making of the union of 1707: history with a history’, in T. M. Devine, ed., Scotland and the union, 1707–2007 (Edinburgh, 2008), p. 24; Christopher A. Whatley and Derek Patrick, J., ‘Contesting interpretations of the union of 1707: the abuse and use of George Lockhart of Carnwath's Memoirs’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 27, (2007), pp. 24–47Google Scholar. The chief modern target of this historiographical critique is Paul Scott. See esp. Paul H. Scott, Andrew Fletcher and the treaty of union (Edinburgh, 1992). The modern edition of Lockhart's Memoirs, with a suitably nationalist title and a preface by Paul Scott, is George Lockhart, ‘Scotland's Ruine’: Lockhart of Carnwath's memoirs of the union, ed. Daniel Szechi (Aberdeen, 1995).

14 Iain McLean and Alastair McMillan, State of the union (Oxford, 2005), pp. 43, 60 (quotation).

15 See e.g. Karin Bowie, ‘Publicity, parties and patronage: parliamentary management and the ratification of the Anglo-Scottish union’, in Stewart J. Brown and Christopher A. Whatley, eds., The union of 1707: new dimensions (Edinburgh, 2008), pp. 78–93.

16 McLean and McMillan, State of the union, pp. 28–9.

17 John Kerrigan, Archipelagic English: literature, history, and politics, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 2008), ch. 11. For a complementary account, see McKim, Anne M., ‘War of words: Daniel Defoe and the 1707 union’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 1 (2008), special issue ‘Unions: past – present – future’, pp. 29–44Google Scholar.

18 Jeffrey Stephen, Scottish presbyterians and the act of union 1707 (Edinburgh, 2007); Derek J. Patrick, ‘The Kirk, parliament and the union, 1706–1707’, in Brown and Whatley, eds., Union of 1707, pp. 94–115.

19 E.g. Richard J. Finlay, ‘Keeping the covenant: Scottish national identity’, in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young, eds., Eighteenth-century Scotland: new perspectives (East Linton, 1999), pp. 122–33. See the discussion of Kidd's Union and unionisms below.

20 Raffe, Alasdair, ‘Presbyterianism, secularization and Scottish politics after the revolution of 1688–1690’, Historical Journal, 53, (2010), pp. 317–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kidd, Colin, ‘Conditional Britons: the Scots Covenanting tradition and the eighteenth-century British state’, English Historical Review, 117, (2002), pp. 1147–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Whatley with Patrick, Scots and the union, ch. 9. See e.g. Devine, T. M., ‘The union of 1707 and Scottish development’, Scottish Economic and Social History, 5, (1985), pp. 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 28–31; Christopher A. Whatley, Scottish society, 1707–1830: beyond Jacobitism, towards industrialisation (Manchester, 2000), ch. 2; Daniel Szechi, 1715: the great Jacobite rebellion (New Haven, CT, and London, 2006).

22 Andrew Mackillop and Micheál Ó Siochrú, ‘Introduction: unions in Europe’, in Andrew Mackillop and Micheál Ó Siochrú, eds., Forging the state: European state formation and the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 (Dundee, 2009), pp. 2–5. Other comparative perspectives are promised by a volume I was unable to consult before completing this article: Jon Arrieta and John H. Elliott, eds., Forms of union: the British and Spanish monarchies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Riev, cuadernos 5 (Donostia, 2009).

23 Allan I. Macinnes, ‘The treaty of union: made in England’, in Devine, ed., Scotland and the union, p. 67.

24 Macinnes, Union and empire, quotation at p. 314. See also Andrew Mackillop, ‘A union for empire? Scotland, the English East India Company and the British union’, in Brown and Whatley, eds., Union of 1707, pp. 116–34.

25 Riley, P. W. J., ‘The union of 1707 as an episode in English politics’, English Historical Review, 84, (1969), pp. 498–527Google Scholar, at p. 498. For Anglo-Scottish political relations in 1707–8, see Townend, Graham, ‘Rendering the union more complete: the Squadrone volante and the abolition of the Scottish privy council’, Parliamentary History, 28, (2009), pp. 88–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Colin Kidd, ‘Eighteenth-century Scotland and the three unions’, in Smout, ed., Anglo-Scottish relations, pp. 171–88.

27 McLean and McMillan, State of the union, p. 8.

28 Conveniently sampled in Keith M. Brown and Alastair J. Mann, eds., Parliament and politics in Scotland, 1567–1707 (Edinburgh, 2005).

29 Karin Bowie, Scottish public opinion and the Anglo-Scottish union, 1699–1707 (Woodbridge, 2007); Whatley with Patrick, Scots and the union, ch. 8, esp. pp. 306–11.

30 John Robertson, ‘An elusive sovereignty: the course of the union debate in Scotland, 1698–1707’, in idem, ed., A union for empire: political thought and the British union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 198–227; Clare Jackson, ‘Conceptions of nationhood in the Anglo-Scottish union debates of 1707’, in Brown and Whatley, eds., Union of 1707, pp. 61–77.

31 Kidd, Union and unionisms, p. 5.

32 Catriona M. M. Macdonald, ed., Unionist Scotland, 1800–1997 (Edinburgh, 1998) was pioneering in this respect.

33 Kidd, Union and unionisms, p. 304.

34 The point was made in Richard J. Finlay, ‘Unionism and dependency culture: politics and state intervention in Scotland, 1918–1997’, in Macdonald, ed., Unionist Scotland, p. 101. The distinction is important to the argument in Paul Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom, 1918–1974 (Basingstoke, 2005), see esp. pp. ix, 4.

35 See Catriona Burness, ‘Strange associations’: the Irish question and the making of Scottish Unionism, 1886–1918 (East Linton, 2003); Ewen A. Cameron, ‘The politics of the union in an age of unionism’, in Devine, ed., Scotland and the union, pp. 123–39.

36 Kidd, Union and unionisms, p. 24. The concept is adapted from Michael Billig, Banal nationalism (London, 1995).

37 McLean and McMillan, State of the union, p. 113.

38 John Robertson, ‘The Anglo-Scottish union of 1707: the scope for a European perspective’, in Mackillop and Ó Siochrú, eds., Forging the state, pp. 63–7.

39 Kidd, Union and unionisms, pp. 260–1 (quotation), ch. 5.

40 See also Graeme Morton, Unionist-nationalism: governing urban Scotland, 1830–1860 (East Linton, 1999), pp. 176–84; James Coleman, ‘Unionist-nationalism in stone? The National Wallace Monument and the hazards of commemoration in Victorian Scotland’, in Edward J. Cowan, ed., The Wallace book (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 151–68.

41 Kidd, Union and unionisms, pp. 25–31.

42 Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992). For a survey of the debates surrounding the ‘new British history’, see Glenn Burgess, ed., The new British history: founding a modern state, 1603–1715 (London, 1999).

43 Recent studies include Jason White, C., ‘Militant Protestants: British identity in the Jacobean period, 1603–1625’, History, 94, (2009), pp. 154–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steve Murdoch and J. R. Young, ‘Union and identity: Scotland in a social and institutional context’, in Jørgen Sevaldsen and Jens Rahbek Rasmussen, eds., The state of the union: Scotland, 1707–2007, Angles on the English-speaking world, 7 (Copenhagen, 2007), pp. 35–58; Steve Murdoch, ‘James VI and the formation of a Scottish-British military identity’, in idem and Andrew Mackillop, eds., Fighting for identity: Scottish military experience, c. 1550–1900 (Leiden, 2002), pp. 3–31.

44 Ferguson, Scotland's relations with England; Whatley with Patrick, Scots and the union, esp. ch. 2. See also Bruce Galloway, The union of England and Scotland, 1603–1608 (Edinburgh, 1986); Allan I. Macinnes, ‘Politically reactionary Brits?: the promotion of Anglo-Scottish union, 1603–1707’, in S. J. Connolly, ed., Kingdoms united? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500: integration and diversity (Dublin, 1999), pp. 43–55; Clare Jackson, ‘The Anglo-Scottish union negotiations of 1670’, in Tony Claydon and Thomas N. Corns, eds., Religion, culture and the national community (Cardiff, forthcoming).

45 Kidd, Union and unionisms, ch. 2. See e.g. Arthur H. Williamson, Scottish national consciousness in the age of James VI: the apocalypse, the union and the shaping of Scotland's public culture (Edinburgh, 1979); Mason, Roger A., ‘Scotland, Elizabethan England and the idea of Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 14 (2004), pp. 279–93Google Scholar; idem, ‘Posing the East Lothian question’.

46 Kidd, Union and unionisms, pp. 52–3. For a recent corrective, see Roger A. Mason, ed., John Knox and the British Reformations (Aldershot, 1998).

47 See Ferguson, ‘Imperial crowns’.

48 Kidd, Union and unionisms, pp. 96–101.

49 David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: the sociology of a stateless nation (London, 1992), p. 33. McCrone's post-devolution formulation is ‘understated’ nation: David McCrone, ‘State, society and nation: the problem of Scotland’, in Sevaldsen and Rasmussen, eds., State of the union, p. 21.

50 McCrone, Understanding Scotland, pp. 21–4; Lindsay Paterson, The autonomy of modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1994); Michael Keating, The independence of Scotland: self-government and the shifting politics of union (Oxford, 2009).

51 Ward-Smith, Gabrielle, ‘Baldwin and Scotland: more than Englishness’, Contemporary British History, 15, (2000), pp. 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Morton, Unionist-nationalism. See also Alice Brown, David McCrone and Lindsay Paterson, Politics and society in Scotland (Basingstoke, 1996), esp. pp. 11, 50, 207, 215; Morton, Graeme, ‘Scotland is Britain: the union and unionist-nationalism, 1807–1907’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 1, (2008), pp. 127–41Google Scholar.

53 du Toit, Alexander, ‘“Unionist nationalism” in the eighteenth century: William Robertson and James Anderson (1662–1728)’, SHR, 85, (2006), pp. 305–314Google Scholar; Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom, pp. 5–6.

54 Paterson, Autonomy of modern Scotland, p. 60.

55 Kidd, Union and unionisms, ch. 7.

56 E.g. Tom Nairn, After Britain: New Labour and the return of Scotland (London, 2000); Harvie, Christopher, ‘The moment of British nationalism, 1939–1970’, Political Quarterly, 71, (2000), pp. 328–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Ward, Unionism in the United Kingdom; idem, ‘“Union is not amalgamation. Scotland is a nation”: unionism and Scottishness in the twentieth century’, in Sevaldsen and Rasmussen, eds., State of the union, pp. 59–76. See also Keating, Independence of Scotland, p. 2.

58 Richard J. Finlay, A partnership for good? Scottish politics and the union since 1880 (Edinburgh, 1997), pp. 9–10, 20–1; T. C. Smout, ‘Introduction’, in idem, ed., Anglo-Scottish relations, pp. 11–12.

59 See Iain Macwhirter, ‘Does the SNP still do exactly what it says on the tin?’, Herald, 19 Oct. 2009.

60 See www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk (accessed on 17 July 2010).

61 Neil MacCormick, ‘New unions for old’, in William L. Miller, ed., Anglo-Scottish relations, from 1900 to devolution and beyond, Proceedings of the British Academy, 128 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 249–55.

62 Finlay, Richard J., ‘Review article: new Britain, new Scotland, new history? The impact of devolution on the development of Scottish historiography’, Journal of Contemporary History, 36, (2001), pp. 383–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.