Glenrothes by-election

[geni]

Scotland managed pretty well as an independent nation.

First problem is that scotland as a nation is somewhat questionable. There was a single king parliment yes but the degree of autonomy by some of the highland clansmen was beyond what the lords of other kingdoms would enjoy.

As for how well it managed. An unexceptional economy with depelopments stuggeling to keep pace with england dispite the massively damageing Wars of the Roses.

Like I said, it all comes down to what Essex man failed to achieve, and 1601.

Elizabeth was in her 60s at that point so an heir would have been unlikely. In any case by that point England had begun the rise from low to mid ranking power to major power. There was no conciveable way for scotland to match that rise. In the enviroment of the next few centuries the best an independent scotland could have hoped for would have been irrelivence.

 

[CapelDodger]

Questionable. From the POV of England Scotland was a lot less tempting than northern France.

The English succumbed to temptation, and wasted blood and treasure on the Hundred Years War (and even longer in the Gironde) fighting a war they could never win.

The highlands in particular were full of mountians and people who tried to kill you.

The Lowlands, on the other hand, are just like England, and who actually gives a toss about the sparsely-populated barbarian wasteland beyond? Lowland Scots have had more in common with the English than they've ever had with the Highlanders. Scottish Kingship has always been based on the productive Lowlands and the excellent North Sea ports (Edinburgh in particular), and regarded the Highlanders as a problem.

While some of the more ambitious english kings had a go at the place the general aproach appears to have been to rely on the northumbrians to keep the scots out on a day to day basis and more southern forces when they invaded in significant numbers.

This is because English power was being wasted on quixotic exercises in France. Victory after glorious victory, and never an end to the war. Even if an English King (Henry V, say) had become King of France the English would have rebelled against the combined kingdom within a generation or two because its centre of gravity would have been in Paris, not London (let alone York or Cardiff).

The full potential of Lowland Scotland wasn't something that the Wardens of the Marches wanted any English king to appreciate. The Percy family in the East (Earls of Northumberland, "Kings of the North"), the Nevilles in the West, and the bandit families of the Border country (Kennedys, Nixons, Armstrongs ...) they were intimately connected with in between. It was very much in their interests for the king's eyes to be turned in a completely different direction.

It took a Scot on the English throne to tell the Marcher Lords to "get tae f@&!, y'English ponce" and to put the Border Reivers in their place (which meant enlistment or transportion to the American Colonies).

Where the English did project power advantageously to the Continent was in the Netherlands, and it wasn't as conquerors. It was based on shared interests.

 

[CapelDodger]

Really, I know the English curriculum doesn't really cover the other home nations very much prior to the various Unions, but stick with the programme; we were being bankrupted because the English state blockaded trade with European ports, our principal trading partners.

Scotland's principal trade was with fellow Protestants around the North Sea. Without England's input there wouldn't have been any. That may have been missed in your Scottish curriculum.

Likewise because we were allied with same we were denied access to English colonies in North America.

It was because of being Scottish, not because of Scotland's allies. Scottish is not English, and these were English colonies. Incorporated, invested in, and fought for all under the seal of the English Crown and the money of London. Scots were just as excluded as Dutch and Turks.

Independence cuts both ways.

 

[Darat]

As Admin:

The "History...." section is somewhere over in that direction!