Kill the Scotish Nation
- Thread starter Dirk_Pitt
- Start date
I don't think so, I've always liked the idea of a surviving Kingdom of Northumbria, it just seems to make sense culturally and geographically in a way the differences between high and low and east and west Scotland doesn't. Any "Scottish" kingdom remaining would be a massively different place without Edinburgh.
Two possible Pod :
-Roman Caledonia
and/or
-Roman Ireland
It would certainly give a different look to Migration Period in northern Brittania, by butterflying away Gael takeover on pictish shores.
Course you'll still end with a Pictland that was one of the constituent of Scotland (and admittedly the dominant part), but it wouldn't be "Scot"tish.
-Roman Caledonia
and/or
-Roman Ireland
It would certainly give a different look to Migration Period in northern Brittania, by butterflying away Gael takeover on pictish shores.
Course you'll still end with a Pictland that was one of the constituent of Scotland (and admittedly the dominant part), but it wouldn't be "Scot"tish.
Unlikely up to birth of *nationalism. British Islands are too large to be culturally unified.
Or have the Scottish royalty die out like OTL but have Edward I claim from the beginning to be king of both England and Scotland, and be a bit more "gentle" about the merger and "sensitive" to Scottish practices. Give it a few hundred years and the differences would fade more and more, not completely but much less pronounced than they are today, I'd venture.
I can't help but wonder what a continued Byrytthonic Scotland would look like. In OTL large parts of lowlands Scotland spoke 'welsh even during Roman times.
Alex Richards
Donor
I'd say the cultural differences between Cornwall (which is 90% English speaking), Devon, Kent, Liverpool and Yorkshire are large enough that you can incorporate at least Lowland Scotland into that general continuum of Englishness without much of an issue of calling it English.
Please tell France. Culturally speaking if in 1300 you travelled from London to Edinburgh the cultural difference would be much less than travelling from Paris to Brest in Brittany. In France you had the whole lot united into one realm under an assimilationist government before the birth of Nationalism. In Britain you didn't. I think the Rough Wooing was the latest it could be managed but if Henry VIII had been successful and Edward VI had lived and had heirs with Mary then while you'd have the idea of Scotland and Scottish people it would be similar to Cornish identity, i.e. a subset to Englishness/Britishness.
Alex Richards
Donor
I'm not sure if that might be a little too late. IIRC Scotland was already moving strongly towards Presbyterianism as opposed to the Anglican Church (and especially the Henrican Church) which was still very Catholic in tone.
But pre reformation it can definitely be done- being of the same religion and with Lowland Scots being in pretty much the same linguistic continuum as English the cultural differences are relatively small and assimilation can be brought about through the respect of some of the traditional laws and practices in the Kingdom, provided of course that the English monarchs can get enough initial loyalty for the region to stay relatively peaceful.
Lowland, certainly. The entire Scotland? I've doubts : the whole Highlands and neighboring islands are the perfect spots for isolate. Like in Wales for England, it formed a land where local elites and culture can live on without too much interference from neighbors. Don't get me wrong, it would certainly be much influenced by English culture in this case, but it would be still distinct.
Furthermore, as I say below, identity up to nationalism rise is more based on "loyalty" (lack of better word) on local or royal structures, that can overlap or divide linguistic aeras.
No, definitely not.
Only regarding language the only assimilation touched elites : the population of 1/2 of the kingdom didn't speak french. Only the elites, including local ones after the XVI, had a bilingual dilgossic use of french.
The main difference between Britain and France (while we should maybe talk about former Gaul in order to have a fitting parallel to the discussion that is about having an early PoD to butterfly away Scotland, that is for me possible in roman era) is the population : While Gaul/France enjoyed an huge population, Brittania/Britain always had fewer, the 2 millions of inhabitants of whole post-Roman Britain being far more assimilable to Anglo-Saxons than 6/8 millions of post-roman Gaul. Ditto for the Middle-Ages.
I disagree : identity up to the XVIII isn't much made along language or "national" feature but more on relation towards power. The existance of a kingdom of Scotland since the XI and a line of kings, clans, etc. formed a structure that was recipient of identity.
Cornwall, at the contrary of Scotland or even Wales, didn't managed to form such structure and was soon absorbed entirely by its neighbors.
With such PoD, while you can have a scottish identity more close or less conflictual with England (a bit like Wales) you won't butterfly or get rid of it.
Larger, longer lasting norse occupation that kills off a larger portion of the male population and settles in larger numbers? Basically make scottland a "nordic" country...
Alex Richards
Donor
The Highland clearances OTL did a very good job of decimating Scots Gaelic to the point where to find majority Gaelic speaking areas now requires going to the Outer Hebrides and despite quite large efforts to spread it, the number of speakers is actually decreasing. If we're assuming that Scotland has been unified with England in such a manner that there isn't 'Scots Law' or 'the Scottish church' or a Scotland defined any differently from one of the regions of England, then I would think it quite possible for Scots Gaelic to decline to at least the same extent and, more significantly, for it to become detached from Scottish regional or national identity.
You know better than I do that there were significant Occitan (or at least significantly different in culture to Paris) dynasties ruling large parts of the south of France practically independently, and that most of the county was a patchwork of duchies and so forth ruled with separate laws and by long lineages of dukes right up until the revolution, yet no-one speaks of the Bourbon nation thesedays. I'd argue that if you've got some sort of union and the separate Scottish Parliament, legal system etc. has been abolished, then it's very likely that the population would, by the present era, view it in the same way that you get the general internal rivalries between different regions. You've got a strong Yorkshire identity and various regions hark back to formerly independent kingdoms and powerful landed magnates (the Percy family of Northumberland, the Prince-Bishop of Durham, the Cavendish family of Derbyshire, the old kingdoms of Essex and Wessex). But significantly these are all viewed as regional differences rather than national ones. The removal of a Scottish national identity doesn't necessarily mean that the concept of Scotland as a distinct area of the country with its own culture and customs must also be removed (because that's damn near impossible).
Are you seriously suggesting that 10% of modern Cornwall's inhabitants actually have [Brythonic] Cornish as their primary language?!?
Odd to point out Cornwall on that. Its one of the whitest parts of England. Quickly checking up- 4.2% are from outside the UK and Ireland (though a few .%s of them probally have English as their first language anyway. Maybe even a whole percent)
They already are pretty much, traditionally except for the hills on the edges.
And much bigger places are 'culturally united' (you could of course argue not as however big or small a difference as you want can count. On some level towns a few miles apart were culturally diverse traditionally).
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Alex Richards
Donor
No, I'm saying that about 10% of Cornwall speaks any Cornish whatsoever. I don't think anyone uses Cornish as their primary language, and Mebyon Kernow are stuck at ~5-6% vote share.
Who's talking about external immigrants? Cornwall is the English county most often cited as being culturally different due to Celtic influences, and is the only English county with a frequently mentioned independence movement. That movement's still an absolute joke, but your point here seems absolutely irrelevant.
I could only guess you meant immigrants as meaning celts doesn't really make sense.
Cumbria and the Welsh borders have a lot of celtic influence too. As does the rest of England, which is often conveniently forgotten.
Cornwall's uniqueness is more on account of being remote than its history, and it isn't at all the undoubted most unique county in England, nobody thinks of it that way (Except maybe the Cornish, but then people from a lot of counties will think that about themselves), there are lots of quirky counties.
I precised, but I began to think nobody cares to remember, "before *nationalism".
You're making two wrongs assumptions here.
1) Highland clearances themselves didn't broke Scottish national identity, it's still existing. It weakened the social structure of northern Scottish society, allowing a better hold for later national movements British or Scottish.
2) Language =/= nation. You have maybe 5% of Irish Gaelic regular speakers in Eire, the rest of the country being largely english-speakers, and yet they're not British or English nationals.
Scots law or Scottish church are more, in my opinion, consequences of a distinct identity (even if a dialectal relation exists) than its cause. The distinction between Northern England and southern Scotland existed before them, and while the Scots law certainly strengthened it, it's posterior to Scotland existence.
Again, that's the main difference between Cornwall, Yorkshire and Scotland : while you had local elites and dynasties that were the recipient of a local identity (there's other referential, but it's a main one) there was a large conscience to be part of a larger social continuum. Scotland, on the other hand, was its own continuum in this regard (and actually had strong local identities of its own)
I don't get the point here.
I'm not really sure to understand what you want to say : are you arguing that nowadays, aka after nationalist movements, the national identity in Western Europe isn't based on dynastic reference? Yes.
But I precised, as said above, before *nationalism rise, that put national identity to others referential. See above and please, people, would you care to read all this post? It's not like it's that long.
You had OTL such union between Scotland and the rest of UK (even if it didn't destroyed its entire administrative particularities) and yet it didn't broke the Scottish national identity.
Again, doing such can be really useful as destroying social recipient of identity allows to provoke national movement and, if you manage to kill in infancy scottish national movement, you can replace it by something else.
An ATL exemple : Commonwealth living on, managing to have the upper hand on Scotland, systematically destroying Scottish social and political infrastructure to replace it with is own (if you want an OTL equivalent, French departementalisation and official/imposed use of french in all public and educational sphere), and being successful at this. You'll end with a British identity overlapping a Scottish local one, without too much trouble from local Gaelic speakers.
Again, disappearance or maintain of a distinct language doesn't make a nation.