Scotland a Nation!.

Now, to get at length to the point:

Scotland had a British problem: we were supposed to be independent under a personal union, only since considerable powers were vested in what had turned out to be rapidly becoming the English monarchy, we weren't. Commercially this was a real bugger, since we were at once outside English tariff barriers and forced to take part in wars with our other trading partners fought by England for England. England, too, had a British problem: they didn't like us, but they were stuck with us. The latter Stewarts had been very effective at playing one kingdom off against the other - for instance during the Exclusion Crisis Charles got an act recognising James as heir through the pliant Scottish parliament and then said "Look! If the Whigs get their way, war with the Scots! Remember how well the last bitter political contention that intersected with a war with the Scots went!"

The British problem needed solving. That had long been true. But there were several solutions going. A lot of the Union debate was debate between Unionists. Fletcher of Saltoun, the most famous, articulate, and interesting opponent of 1707, was in favour of Union per se. There were proposals going about that looked eerily like devolution, actually.

So: Union doesn't have to mean the end of the Scottish parliament and flag.
 
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This. Look at what happened to Ireland, who some historians have concluded was in 1700 economically healthier and more dynamic than Scotland.

Do you have a source for this? Would love to read more.

In fact, the Anglo-Irish elite were frantic for a union throughout the whole first decade of the 18th century; the English (and us; both countries controlled Irish imports) kept them out for mercantilist reasons.

This too.
 
Do you have a source for this? Would love to read more.

My source was a historian saying some historians say this but he doesn't agree. Still counts. :D The new British history: founding a modern state, 1603-1715, Glenn Burgess editor. It's a series of essays in the new British history, of which I am an exponent. The old British history was English historians assuming that the history of Britain is the history of England and those other people, Scots and Irish historians counter-attacking by assuming that Scottish and irish history precludes British dimensions, and Welsh historians talking largely to themselves. The new one is is showing through detailed study of all these communities and how they interracted the extent to which Britain was an economic, cultural, and civic space before it was a country. Union was a change in channels and balances of power that had changed plenty already.

I'm dubious of the supposition too, honestly. The idea is that Ireland had a similar economy to Scotland: overwhelmingly agrarian, all the big settlements are trading-ports, extraction of raw materials and some rough textile manufacture, the people substantially poorer and more primitive than their English counterparts, highly dependent on English trade but with other substantial partners as well. So if Ireland had been the one to get free access to the British world-system, why not the Irish Enlightenment?

Thing is, Ireland lacked our emphasis of education, our banking system, and our base of lower-level urbanisation, and had the problem of absenteeism. But still, an important reminder that Ireland was not always the poor sister - and was definitely damaged by Anglo-Scotto-British mercantilist exploitation. It was no coincidence that people on both sides of the American crisis were fond of Irish comparisons ("Do we want to end up another Ireland?"/"They revolt, and next go the Irish!").

This too.

For primary sources, one might point to the congratulatory address in 1707: "Well done, guys! Now please please please let us in, please". The identities at play are analysed in books on British ideas of self in this period, say, British Consciousness and Identity: the making of Britain 1533-1707, Roberts and Bradshaw editors.

The Anglo-Irish landowning ascendancy thought of themselves as at once a race of pioneers civilising a primitive land, and an extension of the English race and nation. They assumed as a matter of course their involvement in Englishness and their right to not be locked out of English markets for the benefit of the English in England. When it became apparent from 1720 on that Great Britain had every intention of treating Ireland as an economic colony, the Patriots began to germinate.

Ireland, unlike Scotland, had long been part of 'the imperial crown of England'. During the civil war, for example, both sides assumed that they would 'restore order' to Ireland as soon as the fighting was over and capital war raised on the security of the rebel estates to be forfeited; but nobody could say the same stuff about Scotland even though the estates of leading Coevanters did end up being forfeited; indeed in 1648, England would happily have been shot of us.

The reason their wasn't a union unti lthe ruling classes of 'independent' Ireland has systematically discredited themselves is because for the English, 1707 represented the triumph of geopolitics over commercial interests: they had to unite with us to ensure the Protestant succession in both countries. What could the Anglo-Irish do if they didn't like the present English policy? Invite the Pretender back, confiscate their own lands, and then execute themselves? ;)

An important coda for this is that 'Anglo-Irish' refers to the Ascendancy classes, the sort of people who would probably have been pretty Tory if they'd lived in England, not to all the people of English extraction living in Ireland. The Old English had not quite yet melted into the 'Irishness' defined by Counter-Refomation Catholicism: Tyrconnel, James the Worst's main Irish advisor and the man who was, according to Protestant opinion, going to be personally responsible for raping the women with a sword on fire, still didn't much like what he called 'these Macs and O's.'

And going the other way, Scottishness may have attached to the Ulster Protestant community by reason of their puritanical and sectarian reputation, but they're substantially English as well. Whatever it's called, it's not called Edinburghderry.

This was a time of crazy complexity in terms of people's identities.
 
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Interesting stuff. I was reading recently about Frederick Louis, it was mentioned in passing thaty one of the planned policies his circle had was to allow those with Irish landholdings to count in England.

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I assume it meant for voting rights purposes. It suggested he had heavy backing from Irish landed classes, so maybe if Frederick had come to the throne, union may have happened earlier?
 
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