Scottishness and the growth of the British Empire in the 19th century

When we do walk away from this Union, it will end the concept of Britishness. We Scots will still be British in one sense as we will still be residents of the island of Great Britain and I have never seen any suggestion that name should be binned. There will be no Team GB, however, and British will have to mean whatever the English, Welsh and Northern Irish want it to mean. British justice will cease to exist but then it never really happened anyway as Scotland has always had a distinct legal system, even if Tony Blair did impose a UK Supreme Court on us.

So let me continue with trying to define the 20-plus primer things with the format of asking the questions.

Are we not a colonised people, the last empire country? There are still people who peddle the myth that Scotland is England’s last colony. That is utter tosh because until recently in historical terms, Scotland was very much part of the process that created the British Empire. But the empire is over, long over, except in the twisted minds of English nationalists for whom the word British has always meant English. At the moment we are still in a union. If, however, Boris Johnson and his government continue on their way of No-Deal Brexit, attacking devolution and creating a new “British Together” brand that utterly reeks

of wretchedly clinging to the past, then unless we regain independence we will indeed be a colony of England. And Hell mend us if we allow that to happen.

Why do some people say they are Scottish and British? It is here that I must address one of the most fascinating aspects of Scotland’s history since the Union – the politics of identity. One of the most curious aspects of the growth of the empire in the 19th century was how it dovetailed with what I like to describe as the growth of “Scottishness”.

The rich and wealthy had no problem in becoming “British” and going off to rule entre countries in the empire. But as I wrote last week, other Scots had no choice but to become involved in Empire-building as the ruling class used the under-classes for everything from cannon fodder to human drudgery and enforced emigration saw Scots in all corners of the empire – not necessarily by choice, but they usually made a decent fist of things when they got there, as shown by the very place names in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Writer and academic Malory Nye of Glasgow University wrote about what the empire meant for Scotland: “There were definitely an aristocracy and upper-class in Scotland who became Anglicised within the British union and empire. Many of these became very wealthy from the various projects of empire — trade, plunder, and enslavement.

“But this is not the whole story. Scotland in general benefited from empire, particularly the industrialised and mercantile central belt. Of those displaced by the Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries, if they remained in Scotland they ended up in work in Glasgow and its surrounds, in industries created on the back (and in the heart) of the empire.

“When the Scottish Labour movement developed in the 19th century, it never became a movement for independence. This cannot solely be explained by the political dominance of England. There was no mass political movement for Scottish independence until the early 21st century. Long-running and widespread sympathies did develop, but the benefits of empire largely kept Scots within the British union.”

But don’t take Malory’s and my word for it. Scotland’s foremost historian Professor Sir

Tom Devine wrote in The Nation: A Modern History about how Scotland was very much part of the imperial project: “Scottish talents had been displayed on the global stage through the contribution of the nation to the development of the greatest terrestrial empire on earth. The British Empire did not dilute the sense of Scottish identity but strengthened it by powerfully reinforcing the sense of national esteem and demonstrating that the Scots were equal partners with the English in the great Imperial mission. It was commonly emphasised at the time that the empire was born after 1707 and could only have been achieved through a joint enterprise between the two nations.

“Empire for the Scots was a route to self-respect as well as to enhanced prosperity.”

Interestingly, Devine points out that one of the top experts on the empire, Professor Linda Colley, maintains that English and

foreign observers both then and now often refer to the island of Great Britain as England, but never describe the empire as anything other than British.

Devine adds: “Within the imperial relationship the Scots could feel that they were the peers of the English. Not only that but the Scots have been conspicuously successful as empire builders … Empire building was depicted as something peculiarly Scottish and as the fulfilment of a national destiny.”

It took a huge amount of propaganda work over the best part of a century to achieve the concept of British as an empire. Yet ironically, it was the possible loss of Scottish identity being subsumed into Britishness which brought Scottishness into being as a concept in Victorian Britain.

WHAT do you mean by Scottishness? For me the problem of being Scottish and British can be summed up neatly in just two words – North Britain. That term was used as long ago as the reign of King James VI and I who established the first Union flag in 1606 and said it joined his subjects of “South and North Britain”, ie England and Wales were the former and Scotland was the latter.

North British tended to be

used by politicians and private companies trying to endear themselves to the pro-Union masses in the 19th century. The North British Railway was founded in 1846 and left the legacy of the magnificent North British Hotel above Waverley Station – it was officially renamed the New Balmoral by Sir Sean Connery in 1991.

The Free Church of Scotland had its own newspaper after the Great Disruption split the Kirk in 1843 – it was called the North British Review. In 1847 the North British Daily Mail was founded, forerunner of today’s Daily Record. North British as a designation entered public usage, with many Scots using NB in their postal addresses.

Edinburgh was particularly keen with the North British Distillery and North British Rubber Company examples of the trend.

So why didn’t this nation not just pack its bags and jump aboard the British Empire express? Why not just become North Britain? After all, many of the geniuses of the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century were not averse to the idea.

Looking at that period and the first half of the 19th century what kept Scotland from going under as North Britain was our culture and our sense of nationhood.

How did that happen? Robert Burns was among the first to assert that Scottishness was not only alive but was the natural condition of Scots – he that was a British customs officer was also the man who wrote Scots Wha Hae and A Parcel Of Rogues. It is difficult to understate Burns’s influence on the language and culture of this country in the 19th century. Suffice to say I think he almost single-handedly preserved the Scots language and aye, he did gie us a guid conceit o oorsels.

He was also appreciated globally – Abraham Lincoln was a huge fan and it’s a little known fact that he had ordered a passage to Scotland to pay tribute to Burns just a few days before his assassination.

Yet possibly even greater influence was wielded by Sir Walter Scott. This confirmed Unionist was nevertheless a Scottish patriot who really feared that Scotland was losing its sense of itself, so he sat down and wrote the poems and books, including Tales Of A Grandfather, that revived interest in Scottish history in this country and proved fascinating to many people well beyond these shores, just as the Ossian epics of James MacPherson had done in the 1760s and 1770s – albeit their provenance was dubious.

Scott pulled off the astonishing feat of promoting the empire and Scotland as part of that empire.

For instance, He really was one of the first civilians to visit the battlefield of Waterloo and wrote a poorly received would-be epic poem about the battle which featured Scottish regiments.

His biggest achievement was to organise the visit of King George IV to Edinburgh in 1822. Replete with clan chiefs whose ancestors had fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden, and the King himself arraigned in tartan and flesh-coloured tights, it was a grand pageant and celebration of the first visit by a Hanoverian monarch – only took them 108 years, it should be said.

In a flash, Scotland began to be seen as no longer the home of savages but a romantic country full of legend and history. Scott directly influenced PF Tytler’s astonishingly influential History of Scotland that was published in volumes over 15 years from 1828 and was a necessity in any middle-class home.

All it needed for this revival of Scotland was royal approval. When Queen Victoria came here in 1842 and her husband Prince Albert subsequently built Balmoral Castle, Scotland, and particularly the Highlands, suddenly became fashionable and very much part of the Union – the Union that was building the greatest empire ever known. Victoria considered herself very close to Scotland and the vast majority of the Scottish people were proud that their monarch took such an interest. And many of those who made their fortunes in the empire showed their wealth in building grand homes in what became known as the Scottish Baronial style.

Many Scots saw no distinction between Scottishness and Britishness, especially in a

century where Scotland elected Liberal Unionists for decades. But plenty of significant people in politics and business were all for further integration into the United Kingdom – why have our pound notes, our own courts, our separate rules of business?

All the time, the ordinary people of Scotland were mostly ignored by the upper classes. They were told great stores of Scottish achievement across the empire and for many decades they mostly swallowed them. Thus the success of the empire was as much a Scottish project as an English one.

Recent history writings have shown fairly conclusively that the Scottish national identity was not destroyed in the mid-19th century but as Professor Devine states “adapted itself to new circumstances”.

It is therefore not surprising that one particular figure became something of an icon to Victorian Scotland – Sir William Wallace. The building of the National Wallace Monument, paid for by public subscription, from 1861 to 1869 showed that Scottish nationhood was still alive and kicking.

But it was death, and plenty of it, that saw Scots really begin to question the empire and Scotland’s role in it.