A landmark study which reconsiders in fresh and illuminating ways the classic themes of the nation's history since the sixteenth century, as well as a number of new topics which are only now receiving detailed attention. Places the Scottish experience firmly in an international historical experience.

Today, Scotland's history is frequently associated with the clarion call of political nationalism. However, in the nineteenth century the influence of history on Scottish national identity was far more ambiguous. How, then, did ideas about the past shape Scottish identity in a period when union with England was all but unquestioned? The activities of the antiquary Cosmo Innes (1798-1874) help us to address this question. Innes was a prolific editor of medieval and early modern documents relating to Scotland's parliament, legal system, burghs, universities, aristocratic families and pre-Reformation church. Yet unlike scholars today, he saw that editorial role in interventionist terms. His source editions were artificial constructs that powerfully articulated his worldview and agendas: emphasising Enlightenment-inspired narratives of social progress and institutional development. At the same time they used manuscript facsimiles and images of medieval architecture to foreground a romantic concern for the texture of past lives. Innes operated within an elite associational culture which gave him access to the leading intellectuals and politicians of the day. His representations of Scottish history therefore had significant influence and were put to work as commentaries on some of the major debates which exorcised Scotland's intelligentsia across the middle decades of the century. This analysis of Innes's work with sources, set within the intellectual context of the time and against the antiquarian activities of his contemporaries, provides a window onto the ways in which the 'national past' was perceived in Scotland during the nineteenth century. This allows us to explore how historical thinkers negotiated the apparent dichotomies between Enlightenment and Romanticism, whilst at the same time enabling a re-examination of prevailing assumptions about Scotland's supposed failure to maintain a viable national consciousness in the later 1800s.

This book examines the power of the past upon the present. It shows how generations of Scots have exploited and reshaped history to meet the needs of a series of presents, from the conquest of the Picts to the refounding of Parliament.Dauvit Broun, Fiona Watson, and Steve Boardman explore the violent manipulations of the past in medieval Scotland. Michael Lynch questions well-entrenched assumptions about the Scottish Reformation. Roger Mason looks at the transformation of 'Highland barbarism' into 'Gaelicism'. Ted Cowan examines the 'Killing Times' of the covenanters, and David Allan the seventeenth century fashion for creative family history. Colin Kidd discovers the victims of Pictomania in Scotland and modern Ulster, and Murray Pittock uncovers the comparable mania driving Jacobitism. Richard Finlay links the cult of Victoria with the queen's idea of herself as the heiress of the Scottish monarchy. Catriona MacDonald considers the neglect of women and the dangers of reconstructing history to suit modern sensitivities. Finally David McCrone provides a sociologist's perspective on the continuing dialogue between the past and the present.By exploring how the people of Scotland have variously understood, used and been inspired by the past this book offers a series of insights into the concerns of previous generations and their understanding of themselves and their times. It throws fresh light on the evolution of history in Scotland and on the actions and ambitions of the Scots who have formed and reformed the nation.

Why did large numbers of Scots leave a temperate climate to live permanently in parts of the world where greater temperature extreme was the norm? The long nineteenth century was a period consistently cooler than now, and Scotland remains the coldest of the British nations. Nineteenth-century meteorologists turned to environmental determinism to explain the persistence of agricultural shortage and to identify the atmospheric conditions that exacerbated the incidence of death and disease in the towns. In these cases, the logic of emigration and the benefits of an alternative climate were compelling. Emigration agents portrayed their favoured climate in order to pull migrants in their direction. The climate reasons, pressures and incentives that resulted in the movement of people have been neither straightforward nor uniform. There are known structural features that contextualize the migration experience, chief among them being economic and demographic factors. By building on the work of historical climatologists, and the availability of long-run climate data, for the first time the emigration history of Scotland is examined through the lens of the nation’s climate. In significant per capita numbers, the Scots left the cold country behind; yet the ‘homeland’ remained an unbreakable connection for the diaspora.

Island Stories looks at the multiplicity of myths that issue from the 4 nations that make up Great Britain. His perspective brings new meaning to the idea of history revealing how nations use their past to give meaning to their present and future.

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland's national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism.Whereas current, popular orthodoxy claims that 19th-century Scotland was a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows that Scotland's national heroes embodied a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. From the potent legacy of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, through the controversial figure of the reformer, John Knox, to the largely neglected religious radicals, the Covenanters, these heroes once played a vital role in the formation of the virtues that made 19th-century Britain great. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers a reading of Scotland's past entirely opposed to the now dominant narratives of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery.

Scottish Nationalism and the Idea of Europe offers fresh insights into the 'pro-European' dimension of Scottish nationalism and its implications for the UK.

This is a reassessment of the moral and theological foundations of modern Europe. It challenges a number of deeply rooted assumptions about the basis of both Scottish culture and of Enlightenments in general. It argues that the formidable dual influences of humanism and Calvinism forced a discussion about the essentially moral function of scholarship and learning to the very centre of intellectual debate in early modern Scotland, and that this in turn led to the growth of an "e;enlightened"e; community amongst the Scottish literati. As such, the text is a direct challenge to conventional accounts of the Scottish Enlightenment as an unanticipated, short-lived explosion of ideas.

Why did Scots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries know so little about their past and even less about those who controlled their history? Is the historical narrative the only legitimate medium through which the past can be made known? Are novelists and historians as far apart as convention has it? In an age when history grounds any claims to national status, these are important questions and they have implications for how Scottish history has evolved, and how Scottish identity has been understood up to the present day. Scottish history is not simply the distillation of Scotland's past: authors shape what we know and how we judge our forebears. This book investigates who decided which Scottish voices of the past would be heard in history's pages and which would ultimately be silenced. It sketches a picture of a narrow and privileged cultural elite that responded belatedly to a more democratic age and only slowly embraced women writers and the interests of 'average' Scots. Integrating historical fiction and popular histories in its appreciation of the Scottish historical imaginary, it most importantly tells the story of why, despite the interests of politicians and others, a truly British history has never emerged. 'A brilliant, scholarly yet highly readable work which enlarges our understanding of what Scottish history is, and reinforces why it really matters' - James Robertson