The Scottish Nation: A History, 1700-2000 (Paperback)

by T. M. Devine (Author) "On 5 February 1705 the House of Commons in London passed legislation which would help to shape the entire future history of the United Kingdom..." (more)
Key Phrases: crofting society, crofting region, cottar families, Church of Scotland, Free Church, Labour Party (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Scotland had long been a de facto colony of England by the time the Act of Union between the two countries was signed in 1707. Even so, writes historian T.M. Devine, it was a colony that proudly refused to consider itself anything other than a separate nation, one that bound itself to historical fact and invented traditions alike in an effort to retain national identity. Scotland, Devine writes, fell to England for many reasons, not least of them its small and scattered population. Keenly aware of its status as a subject nation, Scotland still contributed greatly, and disproportionately, to the development of the British Empire--not only by sending its Highland regiments off to battle in distant lands and its people to colonize large parts of the world, but also by committing itself to industrial and technological development, a contribution that created great commercial fortunes in Edinburgh and London alike.

Devine charts the uneasy relationship between Scotland and England, focusing closely on the growth of Scottish ideas of independence and self-rule through the last three centuries. Those ideas, he notes with satisfaction, led in July 1999 to the meeting of the first Scottish parliament since 1707. His epic, forward-looking historical study is without peer, and students of Scotland's past and present will find much of value in its pages. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Nearly 300 years after the Scottish parliament voted itself out of existence in 1707 as the ruling classes in Edinburgh and London forged a marriage of convenience, history has come full circle: in July 2000, the first Scottish parliament in nearly 300 years will convene amid a growing movement for partial autonomy or even independence from England. Devine (The Great Highland Famine), director of research at the Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, charts Scots' ambivalent relationship to Britain, from 1700 through the Victorian era, when Scottish pride rested on identification with union and empire, to disillusionment with England during the Thatcher years and the new service-based economy of the 1990s. Since the mid-19th century, Scotland has been one of the world's most urbanized societies, with the vast majority of its people living in the industrialized Lowlands, not in the Highlands romanticized by Robert Burns and others. To Devine, a central paradox is why Scotland, one of the most prosperous industrial and agricultural success stories after 1860, lost millions of people through emigration. The answer, he believes, is to be found in gross inequality of income and the overcrowding, squalor and epidemics to which the unlucky many were exposed. His survey explores how Scottish national identity has continually refashioned itself, from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which spawned Adam Smith and David Hume, to the adaptive creativity exemplified by poet Hugh MacDiarmid, architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh and even rock bands like the Proclaimers. The pace sometimes bogs down under the weight of statistics, but for its size and ambition, this is a graceful synthesis of economic, social and political history that gives readers a wonderfully rich portrait of Scotland.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141002344
• ISBN-13: 978-0141002347
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #449,836 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mmmm...., November 17, 2003

By	AE (USA) - See all my reviews

Well, this review might be crap compared to the others, but I do have a few useful things to say about this book.

I picked it up knowing next to nothing about Scottish history during the years of topic. If you said Jacobite I might have known what you were talking about, but I certainly couldn't have explained the risings of the eighteenth century to you.
Now, I can.

I found this book not only easy to read, but comprehensive, and best of all.....INTERESTING. That's quite a big compliment considering that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are not desirable at all to me, even as a student of history.
Yes, very easy to read, but not simplistic. And best of all, it is free of the sarcasm and haughtiness I've found in works like the Penguin classics book on Scottish history, and in essays by well known and respectable historians!!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The road to home rule, October 7, 2003

By	James Ferguson (Vilnius, Lithuania) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is an excellent account of the long and troubled road for Scotland under the rule of Great Britain. Beginning with the Union of 1707, which Scotland pretty much got railroaded into, Devine charts the meandering path toward Home Rule in 1999. Along the way he touches on the cornerstone events which shaped modern day Scotland such as the Crofters' War, the Highland Clearances, the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. It is amazing to read just how vital the Scots were in the expansion of the British empire, yet Scotland remained subordinate to England throughout this period.

Devine focuses primarily on the social and economic history of Scotland, noting how the failure of the Scots to construct a link between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean at the isthmus of Darien led to a financial crisis which England was able to exploit, thereby forcing Scotland to submit to its will in 1707. However, England still had a difficult time suppressing the Jacobeans in Scotland, which continued to mount resistance movements throughout the 18th century.

Probably the most notorious period was in the 19th century, when English landowners with the help of Scottish landowners forced the Highlanders off their grazing lands and made them to settle along the coastline. What began as a method of suppressing the remaining Gaelic culture, became a major relocation project that destroyed what remained of clanship in Scotland. It lived on in name only.

Devine notes how Queen Victoria, a Jacobean at heart, revived Highland pride during her reign by establishing an estate at Balmoral. This along with the historical novels by Sir Walter Scott helped rekindle an interest in ancient Scotland and led to a cultural renaissance.

With the industrial revolution, Glasgow usurped Edinburgh as the leading city in Scotland, irrovocably altering the way of life for most Scots. Devine charts the rise of the political movements in Scotland, which began to push for greater home rule, feeling that Scotland was still be overlooking by the Parliament. The rise of the Labour Party was instrumental in the drive for Home Rule. Devine also notes the troubled relationship between Scots and Irishmen, particularly in Northern Ireland. A once similar culture now found itself at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Devine takes in a big sweep of Scottish history, referencing early aspects of history, but focuses on the 300 years of Union with Great Britain. It is rich in reference notes, pointing the way to further reading on the subject. This is the culmination of his work on Scottish history, which he began with his book, Clanship to the Crofters War.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Re-emergence, July 12, 2003

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

In 1999, Scotland experienced a momentous event, when after several centuries, a Scottish Parliament was convened in Edinburgh. Scotland is thus in a unique position at the beginning of the twenty-first century to enter a new era of self-determination and national pride such as has not been seen since 1707 (the year of the last Scottish Parliament) or since the times of the Stuart reign.

T.M. Devine, professor of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, has put together the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Scottish nation during this 'non-parliamentary' (and, thus perhaps one might consider, non-sovereign) period in a generation. Scotland, as Devine explains in 'The Scottish Nation: A History 1700-2000', has almost always been misunderstood by the outside world. Thought of Scotland today (by those outside) conjure up visions of green sweeping Highland views, quaint tartan-patterned objects, kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and a wild rusticity that is quite at odds with the modern, urbanised character that is more typical of Scottish life today. As any good Scotsman will tell you, Scotland had seven universities when England had only two; even in the nineteenth century as London reigned supreme on the world stage politically and, in many ways, economically, Scotland was an industrial pioneer, providing much of the backbone for British success.

'For historians of Scotland the last three decades have been an exciting time. Research has boomed, established views are vigourously challenged and entirely new fields of investigation opened up which were uncharted in the older historiography.'

Devine commends the modern trend toward further investigation and research in Scottish and other non-England nations of the British Isles, but worries that most of this research is being shared and read only with professional peers rather than the general public. His book, The Scottish Nation is intended to be (and, in my opinion, succeeds at being) an accessible resource for the casual reader while being authoritative and thorough enough for the scholar to find it valuable.

Devine breaks the history of Scotland into four broad ranges: 1700-1760; 1760-1830; 1830-1939; 1939-2000. These periods roughly correspond to the eras of consolidation of political domination by England, the growing urbanisation of Scotland and attendant decline of Clanship, the period of immigration and Highland clearances , and finally the resurgence of Scottish nationalism in the wake of Irish independence and the aftermath of the second world war.

Devine examines the breakdown of traditional Scottish government in the aftermath of the ouster of a hereditary Stuart king in favour of William and Mary; Devine examines both English efforts to consolidate political and economic hegemony over Scotland (which included a movement in 1705 to declare all Scots aliens, thus subject to import duties and taxes that would be ruinous to the Scottish economy) as well as the Scottish problems of maintaining their own institutions in the face of English power. This is a different perspective than most will be used to, as history (traditionally written by the victors) has usually been stated 'authoritatively' from Oxford or Cambridge, not from Aberdeen or Edinburgh.

Following issues that are economic, military, social and political, Devine traces the various strands of Scottish history through to the present Parliament, detailing the London Parliament's intriguing struggle to deal with the issue of devolution and maintenance of the union through the post-war period. Devine devotes attention to aspects of family life, the role of women at various points in Scottish history, the development of educational systems, church/state relationships, and the status of the royals in Scotland -- again, any good Scotsman will tell you, it is inappropriate to say the present reigning monarch is Elizabeth II in Scotland, because Elizabeth I was never queen there.

This is a rather hefty book for light reading, but is quite enlightening for those of us with Scottish background (my family background includes many strands).