The Union of 1707
After the Darien disaster, the Scottish and English parliaments merge to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, with Scotland keeping its own Kirk, law and schools.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- The Darien Scheme — National Museums Scotland
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Two kingdoms, one awkward crown
For a century after 1603 Scotland and England shared a monarch but little else. Scotland was poorer, its trade was squeezed by English laws that treated it as a foreign country, and its kings now lived in London. The 1690s were disastrous: harvests failed in the “ill years”, and famine killed a sizeable share of the population in some regions.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- Scotland: A New History — Michael Lynch, Pimlico (1992)
Darien
Scotland’s answer was a bold attempt at its own overseas empire. The Company of Scotland, funded by investors across the country, sent colonists in 1698 to found “New Caledonia” on the isthmus of Darien in Panama, to control trade between the Atlantic and Pacific. Disease, poor planning, Spanish hostility and the refusal of English colonies to help destroyed it within two years. Some 2,000 people died, and according to National Museums Scotland the failure cost Scotland about a quarter of its liquid capital.
- The Darien Scheme — National Museums Scotland
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2003)
The deal
England, at war with France, wanted to be sure that Scotland would not choose a different, Catholic Stuart monarch when Queen Anne died. Scotland’s elite wanted access to English and colonial markets. Commissioners negotiated a treaty in 1706: one Parliament of Great Britain at Westminster, where Scotland would have 45 MPs and 16 peers; free trade across the new kingdom; and a payment, the “Equivalent”, partly to compensate Darien investors. Scotland’s Presbyterian Kirk, its legal system and its schools and universities were guaranteed.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
The treaty was deeply unpopular outside Parliament. Petitions poured in against it and there were riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow. But it passed the Scottish Parliament in January 1707, and the Union took effect on 1 May. Money was certainly paid to some members, and Robert Burns later wrote that Scotland had been “bought and sold for English gold”. Historians such as Christopher Whatley argue that bribery mattered less than economic interest, fear of the alternatives and genuine Protestant commitment to the Hanoverian succession.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography — Robert Crawford, Jonathan Cape (2009)
After 1707
The early decades were hard, and Jacobite risings exploited the discontent. But by the later eighteenth century Glasgow’s tobacco merchants, Scottish soldiers and administrators, and Scottish industry were thriving inside the Union and its empire. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most Scots were comfortable being both Scottish and British.
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- Scotland's Empire 1600–1815 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2003)
Scotland never became simply “North Britain”, though. It kept its own law courts, Church, banks and education system, its own newspapers and, later, its own football league. That institutional distinctiveness kept a national identity alive, ready to become political again in the twentieth century. When the new Scottish Parliament first met in May 1999, its oldest member, the veteran nationalist Winnie Ewing, declared that the Scottish Parliament, adjourned in March 1707, was “hereby reconvened”.
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
- History of the Scottish Parliament — The Scottish Parliament
A pragmatic, mutually beneficial partnership. Scotland gained access to English and colonial markets, security and a share of the empire, while keeping its distinctive institutions; within a few generations the Union underpinned Scotland's spectacular prosperity.
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- The Scottish Nation 1700–2000 — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (1999)
A deal done over the heads of the people by a small, partly bribed elite, against widespread popular opposition, which ended Scotland's independence and has left it outvoted at Westminster ever since. As Burns put it, Scots were "bought and sold for English gold".
- The Scots and the Union — Christopher A. Whatley, Edinburgh University Press (2006)
- Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present — T. M. Devine, Allen Lane (2016)
For English ministers the Union was a wartime security measure, guaranteeing the Protestant Hanoverian succession and closing England's "back door" to France; over the next century a shared Protestantism, empire and war with France forged a common British identity on top of the old ones.
- Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 — Linda Colley, Yale University Press (1992)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Why it matters today
The Union is the central fact of modern Scottish politics. Whether it was a sensible partnership that made Scotland rich, or a betrayal by a bribed elite, is still argued in pubs and parliaments. The institutions Scotland kept in 1707, its own law, Church and education, are a big part of why it never stopped feeling like a nation.
For England the Union was mainly about security: making sure Scotland could not take a different, Catholic king and side with France. It created Great Britain, and with it a British identity that many English people have since used interchangeably with English, often to the irritation of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. As Scottish and Welsh home rule grew, English people have been left asking what Englishness means within the Union.