WI: Scottish Empire

Can anybody create a Plausible What If scenario for a Scottish Empire that at the height of its power in the late 15th century controlled; Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and France
 
Can anybody create a Plausible What If scenario for a Scottish Empire that at the height of its power in the late 15th century controlled; Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and France

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, maybe. But Spain and France? Outta the question. On the other hand, why not try something unique and go after East Prussia? :D
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Ireland and Norway I could see under the Scots with an early PoD. Just have them beat the English to Ireland (or have a PoD that stop English expansionism westwards). Norway is possible if the family ties between the royal houses in Scotland and Norway end up creating a personal union. Scotland keeping Cumbria is not completely impossible. With some imagination a strong Scotland could build some forts on the West African coast, and snatch some plantation islands in the Caribbean. If the Scottish- Norwegian Union also means Iceland and Greenland ending up Scottish, we could see some small colonies in Canada too.
 
Wasn't the otl british empire a defacto Scottish empire?
King James started off as king of the Scots and later became also king of england & Ireland.
 
Ireland and Norway I could see under the Scots with an early PoD. Just have them beat the English to Ireland (or have a PoD that stop English expansionism westwards). Norway is possible if the family ties between the royal houses in Scotland and Norway end up creating a personal union. Scotland keeping Cumbria is not completely impossible. With some imagination a strong Scotland could build some forts on the West African coast, and snatch some plantation islands in the Caribbean. If the Scottish- Norwegian Union also means Iceland and Greenland ending up Scottish, we could see some small colonies in Canada too.

Scotland-Norway is possible, but getting the most populated country in Europe post-plague under it? ASB; France would dominate the union just as England did.

Wasn't the otl british empire a defacto Scottish empire?
King James started off as king of the Scots and later became also king of england & Ireland.

De jure; plus, England had more resources and political power. The British Empire didn't use Scots, but English.
 
Ireland and Norway I could see under the Scots with an early PoD. Just have them beat the English to Ireland (or have a PoD that stop English expansionism westwards). Norway is possible if the family ties between the royal houses in Scotland and Norway end up creating a personal union. Scotland keeping Cumbria is not completely impossible. With some imagination a strong Scotland could build some forts on the West African coast, and snatch some plantation islands in the Caribbean. If the Scottish- Norwegian Union also means Iceland and Greenland ending up Scottish, we could see some small colonies in Canada too.

I fully agree with this.

An early enough POD could add parts of northern England to Scotland, increasing the population base of the "motherland".

If you add either Spain or France to that, the Empire will not be centred in Scotland anymore. And the same should also hold for Denmark or Sweden.
 
I fully agree with this.

An early enough POD could add parts of northern England to Scotland, increasing the population base of the "motherland".

If you add either Spain or France to that, the Empire will not be centred in Scotland anymore. And the same should also hold for Denmark or Sweden.

The Scottish could likely keep Cumberland, with more success and a weaker English crown.
 
Um, no. Hell, even Norway is not so very much smaller than Scotland, and being also much further from us than from Denmark in a literal and figurative sense, a Scottish-Norwegian Union wouldn't be a Scottish Empire, it would just be a personal union.

Some actual examples of Scottish empire-building:

1) The Bruces in Ireland. For us to actually conquer the island would require a great deal of luck, of course, but the intent was there. Maybe we could have kept a sphere of influence in Ulster?

2) Nova Scotia in the 1620s: the project was doomed as it was, but I wonder whether it might have succeeded if the politics had been different so that France was more friendly and had there been less migration to Ulster from the southwest - so, say England stays Catholic and there is less Planting.

Even if somebody else takes over, you might at least get some sort of coherent lowland-Scots community in the region.

3) The Company. Darien, of course, was a hare-brained scheme, but the Company hadn't been founded with anywhere particularly in mind. A couple of West African trading posts might just about stick: all sorts of odd people had them.
 
Wasn't the otl british empire a defacto Scottish empire?
King James started off as king of the Scots and later became also king of england & Ireland.

By descent, but what about the German kings? It's true that Scots were overrepresented in various arms of the elite especially in the 18th century, but the very people who joined the elite were people who were enthusiastically embracing North Britishness. The rhetoric of the state was never Scots and the Scots elite were in many ways Anglified.

Scotland was in the empire and Scots were on equal terms with Englishmen and important all around the empire in various roles - but nobody ever calls the Russian Empire Ukrainian.

If you wanted a scenario in which Scotland is at least seen be resentful Englishmen on the other side to have "conquered Britain", we'd want the *Wars of the Three Kingdoms to end in Presbyterianism all round.
 
Can anybody create a Plausible What If scenario for a Scottish Empire that at the height of its power in the late 15th century controlled; Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and France
The first three, maybe, at a stretch. Spain and France though? As soon as the ruler of Scotland gains the throne of either of them they're going to bugger off to the larger, richer, more influential - and warmer ;) - continental country. Scotland would become a backwater. Hell, just look at James I. Sure he was Scottish and originally James VI of Scotland but practically the minute he gained the English throne he was heading south so that over time the centre of power was eventually concentrated in London.
 
I don't where we get the idea that the Nordic countries were ripe for the taking. Both the Swedish and Danish monarchies were more powerful than Scotland individually. Denmark by itself, without its possessions, is the size of Scotland and a lot easier to run.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The only way Scotland could ever gain control of France and Spain would be through a series of marriages combined with ill-times deaths that somehow resulted in the Scottish monarchy being the next-in-line for a combined Franco-Spanish throne.

But if the stars aligned in such an unlikely way, Scotland would just become a province of a Franco-Spanish kingdom. As already pointed out, when a Scottish king became the King of England, it essentially resulted in England taking control of Scotland, not the other way around.
 
But if the stars aligned in such an unlikely way, Scotland would just become a province of a Franco-Spanish kingdom. As already pointed out, when a Scottish king became the King of England, it essentially resulted in England taking control of Scotland, not the other way around.

Only not very. :p

What happened from 1603 is that the Stuart monarchy increasingly became that of England and Scotland increasingly made do with an absentee monarchy. The Scottish elite continued to run Scotland (that is to say, various parts of the Scottish elite cut one-another's throats trying to become the rulers of Scotland) and in fact largely carried on doing so after 1707.
 
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