The conclusion summarises the key findings of the book. Not only were petitions and petitioning a central, and hitherto, missing component of our understanding of UK political culture, but these practices contributed to the transformation of political culture. The remainder of the conclusion considers how a study of petitionary culture reconnects and pushes forward the currently fragmented field of nineteenth-century political history, before considering three major implications of the book for the wider historiography. First, it demonstrates that UK political culture was even more inclusive than previously thought, thereby qualifying the emphasis on the exclusivity of the political nation. Second, it charts how the authority and legitimacy of the Commons in particular, and Parliament more generally, was renewed by petitions, although it could also, on occasion, be challenged by petitioners. Third, it shows how the UK state was transformed by the continuous interaction with petitioners, and restores the place of the people within accounts of the relationship between state and subjects. Ultimately, petitions and petitioning were part of a broader social phenomenon that decisively reshaped the modern political culture of the UK.

This introductory chapter surveys the existing histories of Scottish nationalism and gives an initial narrative of the independence movement’s trajectory across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The chapter then argues that the methods of intellectual history can shed fresh light on this history by investigating in greater depth how nationalists have conceptualised and defended the goal of ‘independence’ in political argument. The chapter distinguishes the focus of this book on more analytic modes of political thought from other cultural histories of the period and delineates the complex ways in which the concepts of ‘nationalism’ and ‘unionism’ have been used in Scottish political debate. The chapter concludes by giving an overview of the structure and argument of the book.