Scottish-Swedish Union?

Hey guys,

I'm doing a little side TL in which England and Denmark-Norway unite under a single monarch then eventually a political union, and also where Scotland and Sweden unite (albeit 'accidentally'.)

I'll give the backstory so you can understand the TL a bit better so you can get a view of the world:
Queen Elizabeth I marries King Frederick II and they have offspring, none of which marry James VI of Scotland. James VI marries Princess Sigrid of Sweden, daughter of the previous King of Sweden, Eric XIV. They have 4 children, 2 of which die at the ages of 13 and 11 of smallpox. After James VI dies his son Henry takes the crown with his Queen Amalia Hedwig of Neuburg. Henry I however has one major problem, he is infertile. By the ages of 60 the couple had no children, Henry didn't even have any illegitimate children. 5 years after Henry and Amalia married Henry's his younger sister Princess Anna had married Prince Gustavus of Sweden. She died during childbirth, it was the birth of her fifth child by Gustavus. When Henry died in 1649 there was a succession crisis; the only viable heirs were 4 princesses and King John IV of Sweden. After Mary, Queen of Scots Scotland was wary of a Queen again, and so it seemed the only option for Scottish Parliament was King John IV, who 2 months later was crowned King John II of Scotland.

Right I've gotten the back-story out of the way. Now how possible is all this? Without any other heirs apart from King Frederick I of England and his few relatives who are distantly related.

Also how would this affect the economies of both nations? The culture? And also the most important IMO at this point in world history how would the colonization of the Americas go?

Please discuss :)
 
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Queen Elizabeth I marries King Frederick II and they have offspring, none of which marry James I of Scotland.

James I of Scotland (1394-1437)
Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603)

I can see good reasons why her children didn't marry James I of Scotland. I trust, of course, that you mean James VI of Scotland, OTL's James I of England.

I don't know how true it is that because of Mary I of Scotland the Scottish Parliament would not want another queen, but I agree that King John IV of Sweden, by dint of being a man and having a little more 'persuasive' power as king of Sweden, would probably be the more likely candidate.
 
James I of Scotland (1394-1437)
Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603)

I can see good reasons why her children didn't marry James I of Scotland. I trust, of course, that you mean James VI of Scotland, OTL's James I of England.

I don't know how true it is that because of Mary I of Scotland the Scottish Parliament would not want another queen, but I agree that King John IV of Sweden, by dint of being a man and having a little more 'persuasive' power as king of Sweden, would probably be the more likely candidate.
Thanks for drawing my attention to the 'James I' mistake.
How do you think this would affect both the nations? And also relations between England & Scotland and Denmark & Sweden now that the two unions in this scenario dislike each other?
 
Interesting. Trouble with a straight answer here is that there's a lot of ways this can go. For instance, with these two countries you've essentially got two rival examples of one strong country having to prop a weaker country up, and this is going to produce a huge amount of resentment within the two unions for the sister countries - the English will resent the Danish dragging them into the Baltic conflicts time and time again while the Swedish will detest the Scottish for forcing them to constantly commit troops to defend Edinburgh. From the start we appear to be heading for a situation where the two unions will be dissolved sooner or later - the Swedes, for example, may attempt to reinvoke the right of the Nobles to elect a King so they can forcibly divorce Scotland, while the English may back a rival claimant in the case of a civil war (providing the rival claimant genuinely has a strong claim). You also have the very real possibility of the new rivalry forcing England to return to their previously-ditched policy of claiming the right to control Scotland as a vassal, so a victorious England could actually conquer Scotland and themselves break up the Swedish-Scottish union. Sweden, by contrast, is likely to focus itself on trying to win Norway which would secure the supply lines between Scotland and Scandinavia, and there's every chance they could be successful there. It could get chaotic. In order to hold these unions together you'd likely need Denmark and Sweden to be very restrained in their diplomacy with each other. Perhaps they can concentrate on helping Protestant Germany out instead...but then that just brings further problems for England.

I'll ignore the implications for Anglo-Denmark as that has both been discussed elsewhere and is not the exact subject of this thread. Starting with the basics, we're going to see a Scotland which is somewhat economically stronger from the union, as though the Swedes will likely resent them, trade will surely be artificially increased through lower tariffs and royal decrees forcing such trade into being. This can only help Scotland, as in this era it's one of the hardest-up nations in Europe, with a noticeable lack of useful natural resources to exploit. However, don't expect them to have a market boom. Scotland might be able to afford a couple of small colonial exploits, for example, but they're not going to start trading with India, having a top-notch navy, or building opulent palaces etc. That's still beyond their capacity, even in the long term. Sweden, however, may even come off worse of this as Scotland has little that Sweden wants, and while laws from the Kings can force Sweden to sell Scotland what it needs for affordable prices, the Swedes aren't likely to get much back - they'll be making less than they would if they traded elsewhere, I mean. The navy of the union will be improved, however, though Scotland is likely to miss out here as Sweden's lack of control of the Sund means they can't afford to spill out into the North Sea and must focus on the Baltic primarily. Swedish influence will likely provoke the Scottish to accept tercio tactics when Sweden adopts them, though the Scottish aptitude for this, considering the probable small size of their army, is questionable. Religiously I'd expect Scotland and Sweden to have a bit of a falling out initially over their backing of different horses (Scotland's Calvinism to Sweden's Lutheranism) but likely as the origins of these denominations fade into history they will settle on quite a strong anti-Catholic Lutheran style dominated by Swedish interests, and an interesting counter-example to Anglo-Denmark's liable "enhanced Anglo-Catholic" style.

Colonially, as I say Scotland will probably try one or two things with its money, perhaps akin to Courland's very basic colonialism taking over a small island somewhere and trying to turn it into a trading post. Success would probably be limited. Sweden, however, would probably attempt more colonialism than OTL largely in an attempt to rival Anglo-Denmark, which I reckon would be able to capitalise on its better sea-trading prospects by expanding colonies faster than OTL. Sweden may, for instance, try to colonise another part of the eastern seaboard, or expand more into the Caribbean. If they can hold these colonies it should do well for them but I have to say that I can see England snapping them up sooner or later, leaving Sweden with a decidedly rump-empire formation - kind of like RL, I guess, with Guadeloupe and not much else. Maybe if Anglo-Denmark has a disaster of a war it could secure what it has or even take some back, but if England isn't prevented from reaching it's RL potential - and it has every opportunity to unless you make events dictate otherwise - then Sweden can't really resist the naval monolith.

I'm not sure what else to say really. I couldn't make a good prediction as to the cultural side-effects because I'm not so good with that stuff. I could postulate other things, but it'd really need a knowledge of what happens in your TL. If, say, the two rival "empires" got into a war, even very early or late on in the TL, then the result of the peace treaty would change my answers drastically...
 
I see first Spain and later France (and probably the United Provinces) feeding this rivalry in order to keep two rivals off the european and colonial theatre by supporting alternatively the losing side on this conflict.
 
Thank you for this insightful information :) It's given me a lot to think about with the TL.
I see first Spain and later France (and probably the United Provinces) feeding this rivalry in order to keep two rivals off the european and colonial theatre by supporting alternatively the losing side on this conflict.
Who do you think each nation would support? Personally I could see the Netherlands supporting the Anglo-Danish Union in this scenario, with Spain and France supporting Scotland.
 
Thank you for this insightful information :) It's given me a lot to think about with the TL.

Who do you think each nation would support? Personally I could see the Netherlands supporting the Anglo-Danish Union in this scenario, with Spain and France supporting Scotland.

Probably alliances would shift, and I doubt the Dutch would support the Anglo-Danes for long, considering that both of those countries threatened their trade hegemony more than France (Denmark for the Baltic only, a trading sphere the Dutch briefly tried to break). France wasn't exactly unknown in this era for supporting England when it suited them, they did it several times, usually offering them tiny pieces of the Spanish Netherlands as a bribe. The problem with assuming that the Spanish and French will do this to avoid the English getting busy with colonialism is that it works both ways - the French and Spanish can't really afford to keep pumping money into funding those wars, they don't really have the influence to provoke Baltic-based wars, and if they keep doing it the English and Swedes are going to interfere in their wars. The English of course will jump in any time the French try to dominate western Europe while after the 30 years war, the Swedes will have every incentive to fight against either of them controlling Germany. Also, if the French and Spanish keep doing this it might end up with an unwanted France v Spain war, which would likely give England every chance it would want to steal its colonies back and regain lost time. It's swings and roundabouts, and I wouldn't expect them to try it more than once a century at most.
 
The two countries almost cross each other in terms of trade routes and sea terriotory. They will be tremendously focused on each other, I think. I suspect the most reasonable results are either them breaking apart, so Sweden can concentrate on Russia, and England on the west. Possibly with Norway breaking loose earlier or staying with England.

Norway/England/Iceland would be interesting, and easier to defend than if you include Denmark.

Or the two countries join togther, pssibly dynastically, or through one being successful in war against the other.
If so, also expect the Baltic to become an angloscandian lake in short order.
 
Or the two countries join togther, pssibly dynastically, or through one being successful in war against the other.
If so, also expect the Baltic to become an angloscandian lake in short order.

I disagree. There are far too many competing powers in that era. Sweden would be extremely hard to overcome, and surely any attempt to do so would involve the rest of Europe. The only way to get in there, surely, would be to capitalise on a period of interregnum and the Swedes' elective monarchy, but it's highly unlikely the Swedes would vote for another Scandinavian union after hating the last one so much. You also have to take into account Muscovy/Russia which isn't going to like English dominance of the Baltic and, depending on its strength at the time, will either move to maintain the Gulf of Finland or more likely attempt to move into Finland and perhaps the Baltic states. There's also Poland-Lithuania which will not be happy to see their control of a portion of the Baltic contested, and finally you have the German states. There's just too many important countries. On top of this you have to consider that the English Parliament detested land commitments, it loved being an island nation and wanted to preserve their own nautical aloofness. They ensured that the first chance to sever the link with Hanover resulted in the separation of the thrones and post about 1700 they constantly rejected any opportunity to control any part of mainland Europe, save for Gibraltar which was seen as an impenetrable fortress. They would not want to have to do the hard work in taking over the Baltic because they were far more interested in controlling the rest of the world. British trade came to dominate the Baltic for a while anyway, and since the Parliament rightly saw England's destiny as a merchant empire, they would view a trading hegemony as enough and refuse to do more.
 
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