Scotland was first
populated by hunters who arrived from England, Ireland and Europe
some 6000 years ago. They brought the Neolithic Age with
them, introducing stockbreeding, trade, agriculture, an organised
society and a thriving culture. The remains of passage tombs, stone
monuments and domestic architecture, like those found on the Orkneys,
reveal that this was indeed a vigorous civilisation. Later arrivals
included Europe's Beaker people, who were the first to introduce
bronze and weapons, while the Celts brought iron. The Romans
were unable to subdue the region's inhabitants, their failure symbolised
by the construction of Hadrian's Wall. Christianity first
arrived in the guise of St Ninian, who established a religious centre
in 397. Later, St Columba founded a centre on Iona in 563,
still a place of pilgrimage today.
In the 7th century, Scotland's population comprised a constantly
warring mix of Picts and Gaelic-speaking Scots in
the north, Norse invaders in the island territories, and
Britons and Anglo-Saxons in the Lowlands. By the 9th
century, the Scots had gained power over the Picts, whose only visible
legacy today is the scattering of symbol stones found in many parts
of eastern Scotland. In the south, Anglo-Norman feudalism was introduced,
and by the early 13th century an English commentator, Walter
of Coventry, remarked that the Scottish court was 'French in
race and manner of life, in speech and in culture'. Despite some
bloody reactions, the Lowlanders' tribal-based society melded
with feudalism, creating enormously powerful family clans.
The Highlanders were another matter entirely. In 1297 William
Wallace's forces fought the English at the Battle of Stirling
Bridge, but after a few more skirmishes Wallace was betrayed
and executed by the English in London in 1305. He's still remembered
as a great hero and the epitome of patriotism of the resistance
movement.
Robert the Bruce tried for Scottish independence
next, when, a year after Wallace came to his end, he murdered a
rival and had himself crowned King of Scotland. In the same
year, he went up against the English, but they defeated his forces
at Methven and Dalry. He had to wait until 1314, when at the Battle
of Bannockburn he defeated the English. This was perhaps the
turning point in Scotland's fight for independence. A barrier developed
between Highlander and Lowlander, marked symbolically by the Highland
Boundary Fault, running between Fort William and Inverness.
Highlanders were known as Gaelic-speaking pillagers by the Lowlanders,
who spoke Lallans and led a less rigorous and urban existence.
In the 16th century, Scottish royal lineage was blurred by opposing
lines of descent and the jockeying of English and French interests.
Fierce resistance to the English and monarchic squabbles led to
virtual civil war, where very few monarchs managed to die a natural
death.
The 17th century also experienced by civil war, spurred by the thorny
issue of the religious Reformation. Despite all the anti-English
sentiment, the Act of Union of 1707 saw the Scots persuaded
to disband parliament, in exchange for preservation of the Scottish
church and legal system.
Attempts were made to replace the Hanoverian kings of England with
Catholic Stuarts, although the Jacobite cause lacked support outside
of the Highlands due to the suspicions of Catholicism. James
Edward Stuart, known as the Old Pretender and son of
the exiled English king James VII, made attempts to regain
the throne, but fled to France in 1719. In 1745, his son, Bonnie
Prince Charlie and the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland
to claim the crown for his father. His disastrous defeat in 1745
at Culloden moved the government to ban private armies, the
wearing of kilts and the playing of the pipes. Coinciding with the
changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, the bans caused the
disappearance of a way of life and the quelling of the Highlanders.
In the south, the Industrial Revolution brought towns and expanding
populations, the creation of industries such as shippingbuilding
and cotton, and booming trade. The spread of urban life coincided
with the Scottish Enlightenment, as people fed the energy they'd
previously spent on religious issues into money-making activities.
Literature in particular began to blossom. Life for the privileged
became bourgeois, while the poor got poorer, suffering typhoid epidemics
and other effects of their overcrowded tenement life. Cities grew
bigger following one of the bleakest events in the north's grim
history: the Highland Clearances that started in the late 1700s
and continued for more than a century. Overpopulation, the potato
famine and the collapse of the kelp industry caused landlords to
force people from the land. Waves of Scots emigrated to North America,
Australia and New Zealand, taking with them their reputation for
thrift and hard work. The few who remained were pushed onto tiny
plots called crofts.
Industrial prosperity lasted through World War One, but the world
depression of the 1930s struck a big blow. Aberdeen was the only
city to show prosperity in the 20th century, thanks to North
Sea oil and gas discoveries in the 1970s. Economic hardship,
unemployment, the depopulation of rural areas and lower standards
of health and housing than those experienced in England had led
to a loss of confidence.
Strongly Labour, Scotland smarted through the 1980s and '90s under
Britain's Conservative government, which had scant regard for Scotland's
desire for self-rule. The Labour victory in the 1997 general election
resulted in the loss of all Conservative seats in Scotland and the
creation of a Scottish Parliament, which first convened in
1999. |
