Scotland 2002

Abstract

Introduction‘…it was not thought consistent with political wisdom, to draw the attention of the Scots to the ancient honours of their independent monarchy’ (on the proposal in 1780 to found a Society of Antiquaries for Scotland)Archueologia Scoficu 1 (1792): ivFrom the Parliamentary Union with England of 1707 until the establishment of the new devolved parliament (although still within the Union) in Edinburgh in 1999 under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, Scotland was a nation with a ‘capital’ and its own legal system; neither a colony nor sovereign: an active participant in rather than a victim of 19th-century imperialism (Davidson 2000). Since the Union the writing of the history of Britain has been a more or less political process (Ash 1980: 34), the viewpoint of the historian depending on the individual’s position on the meaning and consequences of the Union and on the process of securing the creation of ‘North Britain’ and ‘South Britain’ — ‘the wider experiment to construct a new genuine British identity which would be formed from the two nations of Scotland and England’ [Finlay 1998). A small country sharing a small island with a world power will never have a quiet life (as Pierre Trudeau described Canada’s relationship with the USA — ‘being in bed with an elephant’).