A new series of the Scottish antiquary established 1886.

A major interpretation of the 1707 Act of Union and the making of the United Kingdom.

The Anglo-Scottish union crisis is used to demonstrate the growing influence of popular opinion in this period.

Feeling British argues that the discourse of sympathy both encourages and problematizes a sense of shared national identity in eighteenth-century and Romantic British literature and culture. Although the 1707 Act of Union officially joined England and Scotland, government policy alone could not overcome centuries of feuding and ill will between these nations. Accordingly, the literary public sphere became a vital arena for the development and promotion of a new national identity, Britishness. Feeling British starts by examining the political implications of the Scottish Enlightenment's theorizations of sympathy the mechanism by which emotions are shared between people. From these philosophical beginnings, this study tracks how sympathetic discourse is deployed by a variety of authors - including Defoe, Smollett, Johnson, Wordsworth, and Scott - invested in constructing, but also in questioning, an inclusive sense of what it means to be British.

This book traces the background to the Treaty of Union of 1707, explains why it happened and assesses its impact on Scottish society, including the bitter struggle with the Jacobites for acceptance of the union in the two decades that followed its inaugur

Public opinion in Scotland in 1707 was sharply divided, between advocates of Union, opponents, and a large body of "don't knows". In 1706-7 it was party (and dynastic) advantage that was the main reason for opposition to the proposed union at elite level. Whatever the reasons now for maintaining the Union, they are in some important respects different from those which took Scotland into the Union, such as French aggression, securing the Revolution of 1688-89 and the defence of Protestantism. This new edition assesses the impact of the Union on Scottish society, including the bitter struggle with the Jacobites for acceptance of the union in the two decades that followed its inauguration. The book offers a radical new interpretation of the causes of union. Now, as in 1706-7, some kind of harmonious relationship with England has to be settled upon. There exists, on both sides of the border, mutual antipathy but also powerful bonds, of language, kin, and economics. In the case of Scotland there is a strong sense of being "different" from England--a separate nation. But arguably this was even more powerful in the mid-19th century when demand grew not for independence but Home Rule. As in 1707, economic considerations are central, even if the nature of these now are different--the Union was forged in an era of "muscular mercantilism". Perceptions of economic gain and loss affected behaviour in 1706-7 and continue to affect attitudes to the Union today. This new edition lends historical weight to the present-day arguments for and against Union.

The History begins with the first full-scale critical consideration of Scotland's earliest literature, drawn from the diverse cultures and languages of its early peoples. The first volume covers the literature produced during the medieval and early modern period in Scotland, surveying the riches of Scottish work in Gaelic, Welsh, Old Norse, Old English and Old French, as well as in Latin and Scots. New scholarship is brought to bear, not only on imaginative literature, but also law, politics, theology and philosophy, all placed in the context of the evolution of Scotland's geography, history, languages and material cultures from our earliest times up to 1707.

Modern Scottish History: 1707 to the Present was published in five volumes in 1998 as a collaboration between the University of Dundee and the Open University in Scotland. Written by leading academics for the Distance Learning course run by the two universities, the series is aimed also at a wide readership anyone with a serious interest in Scottish history and presents the fruits of the latest research in a readable style. The volumes can be read singly, or as a series. Now come the first two volumes of a further five-volume series, Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707, due for completion on the 300th anniversary of the parliamentary union of Scotland with England in 2007. The new series aims to show the importance of Scotland's relationships to Europe and its part in a broader European story, as well as, like the first series, to dispel long-established myths and preconceptions which continue to exert a firm grip on public opinion. Especially in a post-devolution era, Scottish history and Scotland deserve better than this. A word about the title of the new series, Scotland: The Making and Unmaking of the Nation, c.1100-1707. It is certainly designed to provoke but need not be taken to indicate a nationalist view of 1707 as a moment of eclipse. Scotland's history, like all histories, resists simple generalisations. Were it otherwise, its study would not be so rewarding.

Alvin Jackson examines the two Unions - the Anglo-Scots Union of 1707 and the British-Irish of 1801 - comparing their background, birth, and survival. In sustaining a comparison between the Unions, he illuminates the long history and current state of the United Kingdom.

The Price of Scotland covers a well-known episode in Scottish history, the ill-fated Darien Scheme. It recounts for the first time in almost forty years, the history of the Company of Scotland, looking at previously unexamined evidence and considering the failure in light of the Company's financial records. Douglas Watt offers the reader a new way of looking at this key moment in history, from the attempt to raise capital in London in 1695 through to the shareholder bail-out as part of the Treaty of Union in 1707. With the tercentenary of the Union in May 2007, The Price of Scotland provides a timely reassessment of this national disaster. REVIEWS Douglas Watt has brought an economist's eye and poet's sensibility in the Price of Scotland... to show definitively... that over-ambition and mismanagement, rather than English mendacity, doomed Scotland's imperial ambitions. - THE OBSERVER The Price of Scotland treats Darien as a financial mania. - THE FINANCIAL TIMES Exceptionally well written, it reads like a novel. As I say - if you're not Scottish and live here - read it. If you're Scottish read it anyway. It's a very, very good book. - i-on magazine The must-have book on the events in advance of the Act of Union that brought Scotland and England together in 1707 is Douglas Watt's The Price of Scotland. It's a fantastic run-through of the "catastrophic failure" of the Darien Scheme - the creation of the Company of Scotland to establish a Central American colony. THE FINANCIAL TIMES