A
set of quite unlikely historical circumstances led to Scotland becoming
part of the United Kingdom. The first of these was that Henry VIII’s
sister, Margaret Tudor, married James IV of Scotland, who died fighting
the English at Flodden. The second unlikely circumstance was that none
of Henry VIII’s legitimate children gave birth to an heir. This despite
him being married so many times. What this meant was that the
descendants of Margaret Tudor, through her son James V, her
granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots and her great grandson James VI and I
eventually gained the throne of England. It was as much as anything a
Scottish takeover, owing to the succession crisis left by Elizabeth I
choosing to be known as the Virgin Queen.
Two
other European countries were also experimenting with a union of the
crowns at around the same time as these events in Scotland and England.
The Portuguese King Sebastian I died in battle in 1578 without an
immediate heir. This led to a succession crisis, which eventually, after
the War of Portuguese succession (1580-1583) led to the Union of the
crowns of Portugal and Spain, with Philip II of Spain king of both
countries. This union however, did not last. The Portuguese revolted in
1640 and fought a long restoration war with Spain, leading to the
eventual Spanish recognition of Portuguese sovereignty in 1688. It is
for this reason that Spain and Portugal are today two nation states
rather than one.
It
is entirely an accident of history that Scotland likewise, is not a
separate nation state from England. The Union of the crowns in 1603 was
an unlikely end to a series of unlikely events. Moreover, it might well
have broken up, especially because, owing to the execution of Charles I
in 1649, there was a time when the Union of the crowns was broken. For
six years Britain was ruled by Cromwell’s Protectorate. At this point it
is easy to imagine how history might have played out differently. With
civil war being fought throughout Britain there must have been times
when it seemed unlikely that a Stuart king would again rule the whole of
the UK. There was nothing inevitable also in the eventual political
union of Scotland and England. At any point Scotland could have gone the
way of Portugal and reasserted full sovereignty.
What
would have been the result of this? Scotland’s position would be rather
similar to that of Portugal today. The Portuguese speak a language
which is similar to Spanish, but it is not fully comprehensible to
Spaniards and thus has to be translated. If Scotland had not joined the
Union, or if the Union had broken up, the Scots language would have
remained the spoken and written language of daily use for Scots living
in the Lowlands, as it was prior to the Union, and would have diverged
further from English. Scottish Gaelic would also have remained an
important feature of the life of the Highlands. After all, as late as
the 18th century over 20% of Scots were monolingual Gaelic speakers.
Without the pressure and influence of the English language, which came
with the Union, Scotland would have been very different linguistically
from the place we know today. We would have been a bilingual society,
speaking the historic languages of Scotland.
Describing
this Scotland that might have been is to describe something romantic
that appeals to a Scottish sense of patriotism. But it is also to
describe a place and a people which are unfamiliar to us. I grew up
speaking Doric, the form of Scots used in Aberdeenshire, but I struggle
to understand the Scots that was common even in the 18th and 19th
centuries, let alone earlier. When I read Walter Scott I frequently need
to use the glossary. The vocabulary of Burns is quite remote from the
language we hear on the street today. Like the vast majority of Scots I
hardly speak a word of Gaelic. But, even as we regret how the language
of the Gaels has been lost, it is also necessary to recognise that when
Scotland was a bilingual society, it was also a very divided society.
The division between the Highlands and the Lowlands was a real one with
mutual misunderstanding and mistrust. A Lowlander considered a kilt to
be the proper dress of a thief. Which side a person took during the
Jacobite rebellions was to a considerable extent determined by which
language he spoke.
The
language, which I speak and to a large extent the culture that I
recognise as mine, would have been massively different without the
accident of history which saw Scotland join the Union. It might have
been, under those circumstances, that we would now be learning English
as a foreign language in order to do business in a language the rest of
the world could understand. Three or four centuries of being in a Union
with the other parts of the UK have influenced us in ways that we are
hardly even aware of. To wish that the Union had never happened is to
wish that I am someone other than I am. The Scot who would be today if
the Union had never happened would be someone I might even struggle to
converse with. There is no resurrecting that Scotland, because it really
has been lost, not least because it has few connections with who we are
today.
To
deny that our language and our culture has been shaped by the Union is
to suppose that the Scottish people have not changed since 1707, have
not grown and developed and been influenced by our historical
circumstances. But once we recognise that our language and our culture
has to a large extent been shaped by the Union, it begins to seem
strange that we should want to break up the very thing which has most
influenced how we are today. It’s as if nationalists look back to a
period remote from nearly everything we are today, a period we can
barely comprehend, seeking to recreate a land that was lost. But even if
we could recreate that lost Scotland, we could not understand anyone
who lived there. It would be quite foreign to us. Like it or not, the
Union has made us British. The Scotland that would have existed without
the Union is another country, where we have never lived and where we
would struggle to recognise ourselves. The denial of our Britishness,
which is at the heart of the independence campaign, is to deny how we
have been changed by the Union. It is really to deny ourselves and to
resent or regret a part of each of our identities.
Scotland
is part of the UK due to an accident of history, but that accident has
had consequences and has changed each and every one of us. If Henry
VIII’s sister had married someone else and Scotland had remained
independent, the Scotland of today would have been massively different
from the Scotland that we actually live in. It would have been as
different as Portugal and Spain. The gap between these two Scotland’s is
the amount that the Union has influenced us in terms of language,
culture and history. It is the measure of our Britishness. To deny this
is to deny even the language with which I write, what is familiar to me,
and what I know of my culture. All of this has been influenced by the
Union, all of this would not have been without the Union. Scottish
nationalists would cut each of us off from a part of ourselves, for each
of us is the product of the Union, influenced and changed by the common
history that we share with the people in the other parts of the UK. The
accidents of history have made us what we are. We are Scottish, but we
are also British. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand
Scotland, its history and its people.
