Scotland political division of Great Britain (1991 pop. 4,957,000), 30,414 sq mi (78,772 sq km), comprising the northern portion of the island of Great Britain and many surrounding islands. Scotland is separated from England by the Tweed River, the Cheviot Hills, the Liddell River, and Solway Firth. It is bounded on the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and on the east by the North Sea. The capital is Edinburgh and the largest city is Glasgow .

Scotland, England, and Wales have been united since 1707 under the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. They share a national parliament but Scotland has its own system of laws (based on Roman law rather than the common law of England), banking (including its own banknotes), and education. In 1999 the Scottish Parliament, which had been dissolved with the Act of Union, was reestablished; it is responsible for Scottish domestic affairs, including taxes.

Land and People

Scotland may be divided into three main geographical regions, which are divided politically (since 1996) into 32 local council areas. The southern uplands, a region of high, rolling moorland cut by numerous valleys, comprises the areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders. The central lowlands, Scotland's most populous district and the locus of its commercial and industrial cities, includes the areas of South, East, and North Ayrshire, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, West and East Dunbartonshire, Glasgow, North and South Lanarkshire, Falkirk, West Lothian, Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian, Argyll and Bute, Stirling, Clackmannanshire, Perth and Kinross, Fife, Dundee, Angus, and Aberdeen. Separated from the lowlands by the Grampian Mts. are the Highlands of the north, a rough, mountainous area divided by the Great Glen and containing Ben Nevis (4,406 ft/1,343 m) the highest peak in Great Britain. The Highland areas are Highland, Moray, and inland Aberbeenshire. The Orkney and Shetland islands lie off the northern coast of the mainland and the Hebrides off the western; most are north of the central lowlands. The Orkney and Shetland islands each comprise a council area; the Outer Hebrides comprise the area of the Western Isles, and the Inner Hebrides are divided between Highland and Argyll and Bute.

Because of Scotland's highly irregular outline (its breadth ranges from 154 mi/248 km to only 26 mi/42 km) and the deeply indented arms of the sea—usually called lochs when narrow and firths when broad—it has c.2,300 mi (3,700 km) of coastline. Scotland's principal rivers are the Clyde, the Forth, the Dee, the Tay, and the Tweed. The largest freshwater loch is Loch Lomond.

The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, is established, but there are no restrictions on religious liberty. English is the nearly universal language. Fewer than 1,000 people, primarily in the far north, still speak only Gaelic, and fewer than 60,000 speak Gaelic in addition to English. Among Scotland's universities, St. Andrews (the oldest), Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Strathclyde have their origins in institutions established before 1800.

Economy

Most Scottish industry and commerce is concentrated in a few large cities on the waterways of the central lowlands. Edinburgh, on the Firth of Forth, is a cultural center, the administrative capital of Scotland, and a center of paper production and publishing. Glasgow, one of the largest cities in Great Britain, lies on the Clyde; it is Scotland's leading seaport and a center of shipbuilding and it supports numerous light industries. Although heavy industry has declined, the high-technology "Silicon Glen" corridor has developed between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Tourism is also very important.

The significance of coal, once Scotland's most important mineral resource, has declined. Oil, however, gained prominence in Scotland's economy during the 1970s, with the growth of North Sea oil extraction companies. Natural gas is also abundant in the North Sea fields. Aberdeen is the center of the oil industry. Other important industries are textile production (woolens, worsteds, silks, and linens), distilling, and fishing. Textiles, beer, and whisky, which are among Scotland's chief exports, are produced in many towns. Salmon are taken from the Tay and the Dee, and numerous coastal towns and villages are supported by the herring catch from the North Sea. Only about one fourth of the land is under cultivation (principally in cereals and vegetables), but sheep raising is important in the mountainous regions. Because of the persistence of feudalism and the land inclosures of the 19th cent. (see History, below), the ownership of most land in Scotland is concentrated in relatively few hands (some 350 people own about half the land). In 2003, as a result, the Scottish parliament passed a land reform act that empowered tenant farmers and communities to purchase land even if the landlord did not want to sell.

History

Early History

The Picts , of obscure origin, inhabited Scotland from prehistoric times. The Romans attempted vainly to penetrate Scotland, and their successive lines of forts and walls proved inadequate to contain the northern tribes of Picts and Celts. Although the Romans had little influence on Scottish life, Christianity had been introduced into Scotland before they left by St. Ninian and his disciples in the 5th cent. In the century and a half after the Roman evacuation (mid-5th cent.), four Scottish kingdoms came into being—that of the Picts in the north; that of the Scots who came from Ireland and founded Dalriada in what is now Argyll and Bute; that of the Britains in Strathclyde ; and that of Northumbria (which also included northern England), founded by the Angles and settled largely by Germanic immigrants.

The mission of St. Columba (563) from Ireland reintroduced Christianity to Scotland. The usages of the Celtic Church differed in various details from those of Rome, introduced in the south of Britain by St. Augustine. Conflict between the two was settled in favor of Roman usage decided at the Synod of Whitby in 663, but Scottish Christianity only slowly adopted the Roman forms. After the decline of the Northumbrian power in Scotland began the raids of the Norsemen, who harried the country from the 8th to the 12th cent. In 794 they attacked the islands off Scotland and soon returned to live in the Hebrides; by 870 they were established in what came to be Caithness and Sutherland. In the mid-9th cent. Kenneth I established his rule over nearly all the land N of the Firth of Forth. His descendants pushed into Northumbria and by the 11th cent. ruled all of present Scotland except N Pictland and the islands.

Under Malcolm III , who married St. Margaret of Scotland (an English princess), there began a reorganization of the Scottish church and a gradual anglicization of the Lowland peoples. Malcolm invaded England after rejecting the claim of William II of England to sovereignty over Scotland, but peace followed the marriage of Malcolm's daughter to Henry I of England and allowed the process of feudalization in Scotland to continue. Although the clan system, based on blood relationships and personal loyalty to a chieftain, survived in the Highlands, feudal property laws were generally adopted in the Lowlands in the 11th and 12th cent. David I (1124–53) supported feudalism with land grants from the crown, encouraged the growth of self-governing burghs, and backed his bishops in their refusal to recognize the supremacy of the archbishop of York.

The Struggle with England

In the reign of William the Lion Scotland became a fief of England by a treaty extorted (1174) from William by Henry II. In 1189 Richard I sold the Scots their freedom, but he couched the agreement in ambiguous terms that allowed later English kings to revive the claim. The Norsemen were gradually pushed out of Scotland and finally defeated in 1263; only the Orkneys and Shetlands remained in Norse hands until the 15th cent. When Alexander III died in 1286, his heiress was the infant Margaret Maid of Norway ; she was betrothed to the son of Edward I of England but died (1290) as a child. In the ensuing struggle among many claimants to the throne, Edward I declared for John de Baliol (1249–1315), who was crowned (1292), with Edward acknowledged as overlord of Scotland.

In Edward's war (late 13th cent.), with Philip IV of France, the Scots allied with Philip, thus beginning the long relationship with France that characterizes much of Scottish history. Edward won Scottish submission, but Scotland rose in revolt, first under Sir William Wallace , then under Robert the Bruce (later Robert I ). Robert was crowned king at Scone in 1306, recaptured Scottish castles and raided across the English border, and finally defeated Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314. Edward III in 1328 signed a treaty acknowledging Scotland's independence, but during the troubled minority (1329–41) of David II he supported the pretender, Edward de Baliol , and invaded Scotland.

The reigns of David II and his successors (of the royal house of Stuart ) were years of dissension and turbulence among the nobles and royal heirs and of repeated attacks from England. Social chaos was compounded by the scourge of the Black Death plague epidemic, which killed nearly a third of the population. In 1424 James I , who had spent his youth a prisoner at the English court, returned to Scotland. James vigorously attempted to revamp the laws and to establish control over his nobles. His murder in 1437 threw Scotland back into the old pattern of civil conflict during long royal minorities over the next century (see James II , James III , and James V ). A brief respite of internal peace in this period of strife was provided by the reign of James IV , who perished with the flower of Scottish nobility at the battle of Flodden Field (1513).

James V perpetuated the French alliance by marrying Mary of Guise , who brought a large French contingent to Scotland with her. The Reformation came to Scotland primarily through the efforts of John Knox (1505–1572; see also Presbyterianism and Scotland, Church of ). The religious issue was inextricably connected with opposition to the French Roman Catholic party of Mary of Guise (queen regent after James's death in 1542) and of her daughter Mary Queen of Scots , who lived in France as dauphine and then as queen.

By the time Mary Queen of Scots arrived (1561) in Scotland, Catholicism had almost disappeared from the Lowlands. The turbulent career of the young queen hinged primarily on her personal involvements and on the conflict between the crown and the nobility, now divided into pro-French (Catholic) and pro-English (Protestant) parties. Elizabeth I of England maintained the Protestant party with money and arms. Mary's struggle ended in her loss of the throne (1567), imprisonment in England, and execution (1587). Her son, James VI, broke away from his guardians in 1583 and accomplished the difficult task of subduing the nobility and establishing once and for all the supremacy of royal authority. In 1603, on Elizabeth's death, he succeeded to the English throne as James I of England. United under one crown, Scotland and England were finally at peace.

Scotland to the Union

Scotland enjoyed comparative peace for a few years, as many of the nobility followed the court to England. Presbyterianism and its maintenance now became the great question. The desire to bar episcopacy (governance of the church by bishops), which was favored by the Stuarts, shaped every political move of the Scottish Parliament (Estates). The Covenanters declared their opposition to the liturgical forms imposed by Charles I and stoutly resisted his attempt to bring them to heel in the Bishops' Wars (1639–40). These wars led directly to the English civil war .

Although Scotland, like England, was somewhat divided in opinion, the great majority opposed the king, and Charles's efforts to win the Scots by yielding rights to Presbyterianism in 1641 came too late to sway the 8th earl of Argyll and his Covenanters. Yet James Graham, earl of Montrose , almost succeeded, with his wild Highlander troops, in winning Scotland for the king in 1644–45. Meanwhile, the Covenanters sought to force Presbyterianism on England, and the English Parliament proclaimed that form of religion in 1643. But the English army under Oliver Cromwell ultimately prevailed over Parliament, and the Scottish religion gained only toleration, not supremacy, in England.

Charles I surrendered to the Scots, who handed him over to the English Parliament. Scottish sympathies shifted to Charles, however, and their army fought for him in 1648. The execution of the king in 1649 caused a revulsion of feeling in Scotland, and the junction with England imposed by Cromwell (see Protectorate ) was extremely unpopular. Many Scots rallied to Charles II , who was crowned at Scone in 1651, and the Restoration (1660) was cause for great rejoicing. The Stuarts, however, sought once more to restore episcopacy, and the Covenanters were, for many decades, subjected to severe persecution.

The Scots hated the Roman Catholic James II even more bitterly than the English did, and the accession in 1689 of William III and Mary II was met with widespread support, if not enthusiasm. With the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), Presbyterianism once more became the national church. But the Jacobites , supporters of the exiled Stuarts, caused great disruption, particularly in the Highlands, and the massacre of a Highland clan at Glencoe (1692) tended to discredit the new government. Scotland's commercial interests nursed economic grievances against William, primarily for his failure to support the Darién Scheme and for the discriminatory Navigation Acts .

Constitutional union of England and Scotland, which had been considered ever since the junction of the crowns, was rejected at this time by the English, but its desirability became increasingly apparent. The question of succession to the throne was a burning issue in the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14), whose children predeceased her, in face of assiduous Jacobite activity in both kingdoms. Finally, in order to assure the Hanoverian succession (provided in the Act of Settlement, 1701) after Anne's death, the union was voted by both Parliaments in 1707, providing for Scottish representatives in a Parliament of Great Britain. Equality of trading privileges and toleration of episcopacy, along with recognition of a Presbyterian Established Church of Scotland, were among the terms of the union. The Jacobites attempted in 1715 and again in 1745 to destroy the union, but without success, and Scotland had peace at last.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In the 18th cent. Scotsmen such as David Hume and Adam Smith stood in the forefront of the European Enlightenment. Educational standards, from elementary to university level, were high, and many English religious dissenters, barred from Oxford and Cambridge, received excellent educations in Scotland. From its intellectually vibrant atmosphere came many practical inventions to further the Industrial Revolution, including the work of James Watt . The economic results of the union eventually proved wholly favorable to Scotland, and the people gradually enjoyed a higher standard of living. Feudal land tenure slowly gave way to modern leases. Thriving commerce within the British Empire led to expansion of shipping and shipbuilding, and Glasgow achieved eminence as a commercial center.

The increasing market for meat and wool spurred new developments in agriculture and cattle breeding but unfortunately led also to the dispossession of a large part of the population in the Highland grazing lands during the inclosure actions of the later 18th and early 19th cent. The resultant emigration of Highlanders to Canada, the United States, and Australia nearly depopulated parts of Scotland. Early in the 18th cent. linen manufacture and, to a lesser extent, woolcloth manufacture, came to be of major importance in the Lowland towns. Toward the end of the 18th cent. cotton spinning and weaving on the new power machinery of the Industrial Revolution became Scotland's leading industries.

By the end of the 19th cent., metallurgical industry had come to dominate the economy; the exploitation of rich coal and iron fields resulted in a concentration of heavy industry in a central belt running from Ayrshire to Fife. The rise of a new middle class and an urban working class necessitated the same reform of corrupt and outmoded local institutions that occurred in England. Industrialization also produced severe social and economic distress, for which traditional private philanthropy proved inadequate, and led to outbreaks of unrest in city and countryside alike—such as the Crofters' War of hard-pressed tenant farmers in the 1880s. From Scotland emerged some of the first leaders of the British labor movement. Under Alexander MacDonald a powerful miners union developed in the 1860s. The first labor representatives in Parliament came from Scottish mining areas. James Keir Hardie , founder of the Independent Labour party, and James Ramsay MacDonald , first Labour prime minister, were Scotsmen.

Modern Scotland

Concentration on heavy industry meant that Scotland was an important arsenal in World War I. It also meant that Scotland suffered heavily in the depression between the wars. In World War II, despite the fact that its industry supplied a great deal of the British war material, Scotland was not extensively damaged by bombing. After the war the steady exodus of population from the Highlands continued; in an effort to make the Highlands again profitably habitable, a program of reforestation and hydroelectric development, begun in a small way as early as 1922, was increased. Immigration from Ireland added to Scotland's urban population. Many new diversified industries, especially high-tech industries, were started to relieve the strong emphasis on heavy industry that had unbalanced the Scottish economy. Efforts to attract tourists led to the construction of many modern hotels and the development of the Edinburgh festival of arts.

These improvements did not lessen a persistent nationalist movement that urged greater autonomy for Scotland. The movement became prominent with the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s and gained momentum in the 1980s when many Scots felt the government of Margaret Thatcher was unresponsive to them. When Tony Blair became prime minister in May, 1997, he made the devolution of authority one of the principal objectives of his government. In Sept., 1997, Scottish voters approved the establishment of a parliament to run their domestic affairs, with the power to make laws and set taxes. Elections were held and the body began sitting in 1999. The Labour party won the most seats, although not a majority, and established a coalition with the Liberal Democrats; the proindependence Scottish Nationalist party (SNP) became the principal opposition. The Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition remained in power after the 2003 elections, but the SNP won a plurality in 2007 and formed a minority government; it retained power with majority after the 2011 vote, and subsequently began development plans for a referendum on Scotland's status with respect to the United Kingdom. Alex Salmond, of the SNP, is the current Scottish first minister. See also Great Britain .

Bibliography

The oldest detailed history of Scotland is W. Robertson, The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI (1759). Two standard general histories are by P. H. Brown (3 vol., 1900–1909) and A. Lang (4 vol., 1900–1907). Invaluable also are four studies by W. L. Mathieson—Politics and Religion: A Study in Scottish History (1902), Scotland and the Union (1905), The Awakening of Scotland (1910), and Church and Reform in Scotland (1916). Six self-contained volumes (1935–41) by A. M. Mackenzie make up a history of Scotland to 1939. There are several good short histories, among them those by A. M. Mackenzie (rev. ed. 1957), J. D. Mackie (1964), E. Linklater (1968), and R. Murchison (1970).

SCOTLAND

SCOTLAND. In 1500 Scotland was a small, poor, and peripheral country on the northern fringe of Europe. Its economy was largely agricultural, its religion unremarkably Catholic, its political leanings toward France, its military and commercial significance minor, its people largely illiterate. By 1800 Scotland was a European leader in the fields of agriculture and commerce; it had long been self-consciously, perhaps aggressively, Protestant; its philosophers had changed the face of European thought; its inhabitants, by now among the best educated in Europe, saw themselves as Scots, but also as Britons; its people, practices, and ideas had left a stamp on the whole British, European, and Atlantic world.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

The first step in this progression was the Reformation. Politically it was made by Scotland's separate Parliament, at grass roots principally by urban middle classes, and in popular memory by John Knox (1513–1572). Where the Scandinavian and German lands espoused the Word according to Martin Luther, Scotland followed the Swiss model of John Calvin, which also appealed to the northern Netherlands and certain parts of what is now France. To make a political statement against Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587) and her French connections, Scotland's Parliament introduced in 1560 an assertive Calvinist Confession of Faith. Within a generation or two, Protestantism's institutions were firmly established in the Lowlands, and within three or four generations it had become the faith of most of the country.

Pockets of Catholicism survived into the eighteenth century, but the principal religious battles in the generations after the Reformation were fought over church organization: should it be presbyterian or episcopalian? Bishops and presbyteries coexisted unhappily from 1560 until 1689. The Scottish Revolution of 1638, which eventually led to an invasion of England and the overthrow of Charles I, and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688–1689 were sparked by Presbyterians; powerful ties existed between Scottish Presbyterians and radical English Puritans in the period up to 1646. Late-sixteenthand early-seventeenth-century Scotland was a hotbed of revolutionary religious and political ideas.

The political origins and standing of the Church of Scotland gave it power almost unique in Europe, for example allowing it to control the moral and religious behavior of all Scots through parish "kirk sessions." Yet this was fatally weakened by a Toleration Act in 1712 and by further splits between Protestant denominations (for example, in 1733), which continued to fragment the faith into the mid-nineteenth century. Vocal and sometimes violent anti-Catholicism also persisted throughout the early modern period.

Calvinist reformers placed education at the top of their agenda. A national system of parish schools was established by Parliament during the seventeenth century, giving Lowland Scots among the highest literacy levels in Europe by the mid-eighteenth century. Scots came to value education highly. Around 1790 Scotland had the highest ratio of universities per million inhabitants in Europe (3.3 per million; the figure was 0.2 for England, Wales, and Ireland, 0.9 for France). Early growth in university numbers was fueled by demand for training in Protestant theology, while its eighteenth-century expansion was principally associated with legal and medical education—Scotland's universities produced nine out of ten British medical graduates between 1750 and 1800. Student numbers rose from just over 1,000 to 4,400 between 1700 and 1820. Young men were attracted to Scotland's institutions of higher learning by important changes in teaching methods and curricula, and by the fact that Scotland was almost the only country in Europe where it became cheaper in real terms to attend university over the course of the eighteenth century. Thus Scotland's universities were much less elitist than Oxford or Cambridge and were becoming more socially inclusive during the eighteenth century.

Scotland's eighteenth-century universities represented the country to the world. Yet from the 1707 Union of Parliaments until 2000, Scotland had no representative assembly. At one level the Union of 1707 was part of a process of growing integration with and dependence on England. Links with England, regarded since the Middle Ages as the "auld [old] enemy," had been enhanced by the Union of the Crowns in 1603. James VI of Scotland (ruled 1567–1625) became James I of England (ruled 1603–1625) after the extinction of the Tudor dynasty with the death of Elizabeth I. James left the old royal palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh for the decidedly more lavish setting of London. From 1603 to 1714 the house of Stuart reigned over Scotland (as it had since 1371), England, Wales, and Ireland, albeit with a shift in the line of succession in 1689 when James VII of Scotland (James II of England) fled to France. The Union of the Crowns brought about important changes in the status of the border counties of England and Scotland, pacifying and integrating them into unified government structures, but in all other regards the nations remained distinct. The most important event integrating them was the Union of Parliaments in 1707.

Earlier attempts at integration, for example by the crown with its disastrous attempt to impose an Anglican prayer book on Scotland in 1637–1638 and by the Republican Oliver Cromwell with his forced union in the 1650s, had met with failure. In the early 1700s the mood of Scots remained decidedly Anglophobic, and the Union was constructed by elements of the ruling elite. "We are convinced that an Union will be of great advantage to both. The Protestant religion will be more firmly secured, the designs of our enemies effectually disappointed, and the riches and trade of the whole island advanced." So argued supporters of the Union. In exchange for giving up their own Parliament, they got 45 members in the 513-strong House of Commons and 16 representative peers in the House of Lords, both in London. Scotland was thereafter part of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain" and was managed by a succession of aristocratic patrons, notably the dukes of Argyll. For all that Scots prized an egalitarian ethos, theirs was not a politically democratic society. Scotland had only 3,000 county electors in 1788, and the burgh franchise was confined to town councils; Edinburgh's member of Parliament was elected by just thirty-three men.

While Queen Mary (wife of William of Orange and co-ruler with him 1689–1702) was a Stuart, the change of monarch in 1689 left many Scots (and some English) uneasy, feelings accentuated by the arrival of a Hanoverian monarch (George I) in 1714. This discontent provided support for the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Glorious failures as they may have been, the rebellions bound Scotland ever more closely into the political, military, and imperial destiny of her nearest neighbor.

SOCIETY

The defeat of the '45 also signaled important social changes. Lowland society had long been a "modern" one. Landowners were the elite. Land-ownership was concentrated in a few hands, and the "lairds" dominated the hierarchies of wealth, status, and political power. The men who attended Scotland's Parliament until 1707 were members of the landed nobility. Beneath them in the social hierarchy came the tenant farmers, along with their subtenants or "cottars" and servants, who worked the land that provided the bulk of wealth and wellbeing. In the Lowlands approximately a fifth of late-seventeenth-century rural dwellers were craftsmen and tradesmen. Until the eighteenth century the "middle class" was made up of prosperous tenants and small landowners in the countryside and the merchants of the larger towns. Then professionals came into their own—lawyers, doctors, and educators—along with the increasingly confident merchants and manufacturers spawned by the industrial and commercial revolutions.

Highland society was distinctive until the eighteenth century. The structure of landholding was superficially similar, but Highland society was based on very different premises, which were increasingly alien to Lowlanders and to the English. Highland nobles were not just landlords, but also chiefs, in charge of clans built on the bonds created by feuding and feasting. The crown used clan rivalries to extend its hold on the Highlands, most notably in the notorious massacre of MacDonalds by Campbells at Glencoe in 1692. Weakened by political and economic change since the sixteenth century, the cultural framework of clans was not finally dismantled until after the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rising. In its aftermath the wearing of Highland dress and the carrying of bagpipes were banned, except for Highland regiments abroad.

The early modern Highlands were densely peopled, and indeed the distribution of Scotland's population was very different from that of the present day. As late as the mid-eighteenth century more than half of Scotland's people lived north of an imaginary Highland Line drawn from just south of Aberdeen to just north of Glasgow. In common with most northern Europeans except the Dutch, Scots were country dwellers. Just 3 percent lived in towns of 10,000 or more in 1500. However, the rate of urbanization was the fastest in Europe in the eighteenth century. Just one Scot in twenty lived in a large town in 1700, compared with one in six by 1800. The most rapid eighteenth-century growth occurred in Glasgow and neighboring towns in the west-central Lowlands, the former on the back of the colonial tobacco trade, the latter mostly thanks to textile manufacturing.

Until the eighteenth century population figures are largely guesswork. Scotland may have had 700,000 people around 1500 and perhaps one million by about 1700, though most of the growth probably took place between about 1540 and 1640; the first accurate census in 1801 showed there were 1.6 million people. Scotland's population growth rate was slower than elsewhere in the British Isles—strikingly so in the eighteenth century because Scottish women married later than did their English and Irish counterparts, and a larger proportion never married during their childbearing years. Slow growth occurred despite the fact that adults began to live much longer in the eighteenth century. Life expectancy at the age of twenty-five years rose from twenty-eight years in the early seventeenth century to thirty-eight years by the end of the eighteenth century. Apart from low fertility and high mortality, the other reason was substantial emigration, this usually of young men for military or mercantile service. The North Sea and Baltic countries had always been important destinations for Scots (as had England), but the main goal in the seventeenth century was Ireland and in the eighteenth the Atlantic and Caribbean colonies.

The redistribution of population to the west central Lowlands in general and the rise of Glasgow in particular marked a profound shift in the economic focus of Scotland's wealth and overseas trade. In the Middle Ages both had centered on the east coast, Scots looking to the North Sea and the Baltic; then the emphasis changed to the west, focusing on the Atlantic economies. Scotland's agriculture had always been less developed than that of England, but the second half of the eighteenth century saw dramatic improvements in arable farming, which brought rural productivity onto a par with the best in Europe. Industry, until then located mainly in the countryside, became more identifiably urban and began to diversify from textiles and other "organic" economies (using, for example, leather and wood) into mineral-based production of coal and metals. Scotland had already become more dependent on her southern neighbor for trade by the end of the seventeenth century, and experienced agricultural and industrial revolutions at the same time as England a century later.

Yet for all the convergences of experience, Scotland was in many ways a very different country from England even in 1800. There was fiscal integration with England from 1707, but Scotland's legal systems, educational framework, religious establishment, and even currency—the pound (£) Scots was worth about one twelfth of the pound (£) sterling and the Bank of Scotland was a separate foundation in 1695.The trading privileges of her royal burghs were preserved distinct from England's at the Union of Parliaments. Key social institutions also differed. For example, poor relief was discretionary and recipients had less clearly defined rights than in England; it was usually supplementary and therefore meager; there were fewer institutions like work-houses, which existed mainly in some of the larger towns.

CULTURE

Within Scotland's borders considerable social and cultural diversity also persisted. Highland literacy was much lower than Lowland because most people there spoke Gaelic, not Scots (a West Germanic tongue similar to English). Gaelic was the first language of half of Scotland in the fifteenth century, a third in 1689, but just a fifth in 1806. Linguistic variety did not end there, for all of Scotland was becoming more Anglicized. Scots itself had flourished as a literary medium in the late Middle Ages (c. 1480–1520) but was in retreat thereafter as standard court Scots fragmented into regional dialects after the departure of James VI in 1603. Anglicization of language and culture proceeded in the eighteenth century. The literati of Enlightenment Edinburgh aspired to pronunciation and orthography that conformed to the best London practice, and it was English rather than Scots that became the tongue of Scotland's landed, professional, and aspirant mercantile classes.

Edinburgh was the crucible of the Scottish Enlightenment, which also flourished in the universities, drawing rooms, and clubs of Glasgow and Aberdeen. Scotland's enlightened thinkers and writers—Adam Smith and David Hume, to name but two—were of worldwide significance, bound together by a shared faith in the improvability of individual and society through education, reason, and discussion. They celebrated and promoted commercial change, including an early consumer revolution, by arguing that economic cooperation and exchange would promote sociability, refinement, and "taste." Scotland's Enlightenment was far more vigorous, socially diverse, and influential than England's.

While Scotland ended the early modern period closely integrated with England and tied up in its industrial, commercial, and imperial future, its independent evolution and effects on England (and Ireland) in the early modern period illustrate that different parts of the United Kingdom influenced each other's development. Through contacts with Europe and the Atlantic world, Scotland also exerted a wider influence over space and time. Aspects of the educational system developed in the seventeenth century, political theories expounded at the Reformation and after, the ideas aired in the Scottish Enlightenment, and Scotland's interpretation of Calvinist theology and some of the practices of church organization and discipline are all examples of an enduring international impact of her early modern development.

See also Calvinism ; Edinburgh ; England ; Hume, David ; Knox, John ; Jacobitism ; James I and VI (England and Scotland) ; Puritanism ; Smith, Adam ; Stuart Dynasty (England and Scotland) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Houston, R. A., and W. W. J. Knox, eds. The New Penguin History of Scotland: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London, 2001. A comprehensive, up-to-date and readable overview.

R. A. Houston

Scotland [L Scotti, Irish]. Constituent country of the United Kingdom, occupying 30,405 square miles in northern Great Britain. Slightly smaller than Ireland, it has the largest population of all Celtic lands, more than 5,200,000; yet not all Scottish persons are of Celtic heritage. Known as Alba in ancient times, still its name in Scottish Gaelic, Scotland was not always distinguished from the rest of Britain until the Romans failed to conquer it and tried to close it off with walls, Hadrian's in AD 122 and the Antonine Wall further north in AD 138. The native populations of what was then Alba/Scotland, the Caledonii or the Picts, spoke P-Celtic languages related to what was to become Welsh. One of the greatest poems from early Welsh tradition, Y Gododdin, is represented as taking place partially in what is now Scotland; Kenneth Jackson (1969), perhaps mischievously, called it ‘the oldest Scottish poem’.

Scotland takes its name from Irish [L Scotti] invaders who migrated in large numbers to Argyll [ScG Oirer Ghaidheal, coast of the Gael], establishing the small kingdom of Dál Riada. After many a century of armed struggle with the Picts and the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde, the leader of the Q-Celtic, Goidelic Scotti, Cináed mac Ailpín [Kenneth MacAlpin] (d. 858), merged the three forces into one nation, called Scotland after its most powerful component. In the following centuries the Gaelic language [ScG Gaidhlig] spread across much of Scotland, except for parts of Norse-dominated Caithness and the islands of Orkney and Shetland to the north and the English-dominated regions like Roxburgh and Berwick to the south-east. But pressure against Gaelic began at the top of the power pyramid, as English became the language at court during the reign of Malcolm III, 1058–93, under the influence of his Wessex-born wife, (St) Margaret. Over the next nine centuries English and the English-related Scots dialect (the language of Robert Burns) superseded Gaelic gradually in all but the Hebrides and those parts of the Highlands beyond the Grampian mountains, i.e. the former counties (until 1974) of Argyll, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, and portions of Perthshire. Called the Gaidhealtachd [Gaelic-speaking area], this region occupies portions of the post-1974 counties of Strathclyde and Highland. The Act of Union (1707) with England somewhat diminished the Scottish sense of nationhood. Far more damaging to Highland culture was the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion (1745–6) and the subsequent suppression of the Gaelic language and culture of those who had supported it. Much of the 19th century saw mass migration from the Gaelic Highlands, some of it forced through clearances, in which crofters (tenant farmers) were driven from small farms to be replaced by herds of sheep. At the end of the twentieth century, Scottish Gaelic is spoken by about 65,000 people in Scotland and fewer than 5,000 in Nova Scotia.

Although Scottish Gaelic passages, linguistically distinguishable from their Old Irish parent, appear in the 12th-century Gaelic notes to the 9th-century Book of Deer, the first extensive record of Scottish Gaelic tradition is found in the Book of the Dean of Lismore (1512–26), in which the spellings are rendered as they would sound phonetically in English, much as Manx is. The Scottish Gaelic bardic tradition continued into the 19th century under clan patronage, producing such distinguished poets as Iain Lóm (c.1625–c.1710), Alastair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c.1695–c.1770), Rob Donn (1714–78), and Donnachadh Bàn Mac-an-t-Saoir [Duncan Bàn Macintyre] (1724–1812). Despite the differences in geography and political history, not to mention the Norse invasions and the Reformation, much of Scottish Gaelic tradition remained linked to Ireland. Many Scottish Gaelic stories are parallels of Irish stories and have Irish settings. Characters in Irish stories, such as Deirdre or Cúchulainn, travel to Scotland and appear familiar with its geography, although often Scotland is seen as a place of magic and adventure, like other foreign countries. From medieval through to early modern times, commerce and social intercourse continued between Gaelic Scotland and Ireland: large numbers of Highland mercenaries, the galloglasses [Ir. gall, stranger; óglach, soldier] migrated to Ireland, and Irish Franciscan missionaries resisted the tide of Calvinism in the Highlands. The now archaic English word for Scottish Gaelic, Erse [Irish], signals a historical perception of this unity. But in the mid-18th century the enormously popular ‘translator’ James Macpherson (1736–96) promoted the still-persistent canard that Scottish Gaelic tradition was separate from and older than its Irish roots. Macpherson's Poems of Ossian (1760–3), drawing on unacknowledged Scottish Gaelic ballads, purported to be a lost epic, contemporary with the ancient classics. The widespread acceptance of this imposture promoted an international interest in Irish and other Celtic traditions. By the mid to late 19th century, informed collectors had assembled large collections of Scottish Gaelic tradition: John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols., Paisley, 1861); Archibald Campbell, Waifs and Strays in Celtic Tradition (4 vols., London, 1889–91); Alexander Cameron, Reliquiae Celticae (2 vols., Inverness, 1894). OIr. Albu, Alba; ModIr. Alba(in); Manx Nalbin; W Alban; Corn. Alban; Bret. Bro-Skos.

Bibliography

See also Charles W. J. Withers , Gaelic in Scotland, 1698–1981: A Geographical History of a Language (Edinburgh, 1984);
Derick S. Thomson (ed.), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland (Oxford, 1983; Glasgow, 1994).
See Bibliography under ‘Scottish Gaelic’ for collections of Scottish Gaelic traditions.

Scotland Northern part of the main island of Great Britain, and a constituent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the capital is Edinburgh. The largest city is Glasgow. In 1996, Scotland divided into 29 new unitary authority areas and three island authority areas. Its jagged coastline features many islands (including the Orkney and Shetland Islands), lochs (including Lomond and Ness) and firths. Major Scottish rivers include the Tay, Clyde, Dee, and Forth. Scotland broadly divides into three geographical regions: the Southern Uplands, immediately n of the English border, which are sparsely populated, hilly moorland; the Central Lowlands, where the majority of the population live; and the Highlands, including Ben Nevis. In pre-history, Scotland was inhabited by the Picts. In ad 843, Kenneth I united the lands of the Picts and the Scots. In 1174, with the development of feudalism, Scotland became a fiefdom of England. Richard I granted Scottish freedom in 1189, but the enmity between England and Scotland continued. Edward I forced the Scots to submit, only for William Wallace to lead a Scottish revolt. Robert I (the Bruce) recaptured much Scottish land and defeated the English at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314); this led to England's recognition of Scottish independence in 1328. Internal factionalism and weak government characterized the 15th century. James IV and many Scottish nobles died at the Battle of Flodden (1513). The Protestant Reformation quickly took root in Scotland via the preaching of John Knox. In 1538, James V cemented the French alliance by marrying Mary of Guise, a French Catholic. When her daughter, Mary, assumed the throne in 1561, England supported the Scottish Protestants, and France backed the Catholics. The Protestant faction forced Mary to relinquish the throne in 1567. Her son, James VI, assumed the Scottish crown, and in 1601 he was also crowned James I of England, thereby uniting the English and Scottish thrones. The Scots opposed Charles I in the English Civil War, but the King's concessions to Presbyterianism won the support of the Covenanters. The Glorious Revolution (1688) re-established Presbyterianism as the Scottish national Church. The massacre of the Macdonald clan by William III at Glencoe in 1692 tarnished enthusiasm for his rule, and Jacobite agitation prompted the constitutional union of the two crowns in the Act of Union (1707). At Culloden Moor (1746), the Jacobite insurgency was finally suppressed with the defeat of the Highlanders led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart. (See United Kingdom for subsequent history).

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk; http://www.scotland.co.uk

Scotland The northern part of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom. Sparsely populated until Celtic peoples arrived from the Continent during the Bronze and Early Iron Age, the inhabitants of Scotland were named the Picts by the Romans, who established a northerly line at the ANTONINE WALL for about 40 years. An independent country in the Middle Ages, after the unification of various small Dark Age kingdoms of the Picts, Scots, Britons, and Angles between the 9th and 11th centuries, Scotland successfully resisted English attempts at domination but was amalgamated with her southern neighbour as a result of the union of the crowns in 1603 and of the parliaments in 1707. Broadly divided into Highland and Lowland regions, Scotland has a heavily indented west coast with numerous islands to the west (Inner and Outer Hebrides) and north (Orkney and Shetland Islands). The Highlands to the north and the Southern Uplands north of the English border are sparsely populated, the greater proportion of the Scottish population being concentrated in the Central Lowlands between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Oil and natural gas, agricultural produce, timber, textiles, whisky, paper, and high-tech electronic goods are amongst its chief industrial products. Scotland is divided into 32 administrative regions (unitary authorities). A referendum on devolution was held in 1997 in which the electorate overwhelmingly voted in favour of a measure of devolution. This included a Scottish parliament with 129 MPs elected by proportional representation in elections that took place in May 1999. Power was transferred to the new body in July 1999, with Labour's Donald Dewar (1937– ) as first minister. The Scottish parliament has powers to make laws on domestic matters and to vary the basic rate of income tax by up to 3p.

Scotland, Australia, Canada, UK, USA UK: named after the Scots, Celts who came from northern Ireland (which was then called Scotia) in the 5th century to settle in what was then Caledonia. This name comes from the Caledonii, a tribe who lived in the far north and which was the first to be met by the Romans. The name of their area, Caledonia, then spread northwards to the sea. The Gaelic Kingdom of Alba came into existence in 843 when the separate kingdoms, Picts and Scots, united under Kenneth I MacAlpin (d. c.858); this was the forerunner of modern Scotland. The British Kingdom of Strathclyde was brought into the fold in 1034, but attempts to expand into northern England failed. In 1603 England and Scotland were joined in a personal union, although separate kingdoms were maintained, when James VI of Scotland became James I^† of England. In 1707 the Act of Union between the two kingdoms created, together with Wales, the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Scottish Parliament was dissolved and was not re‐established until 1999 in an act of devolution from the British government.

Scotland

CULTURE NAME

Scottish or Scots; Scotch is considered antiquated and belittling.

Alternative Names

Historically, Scotland was referred to as Caledonia and by the Gaelic name Alba.

Orientation

Identification. An imaginary line running roughly from Aberdeen to Glasgow separates the Highlands in the north and west from the Lowlands in the south and east. This line still distinguishes a more Gaelic and rurally oriented Highland cultural sphere from a more hybrid and urban Lowland culture. Gaelic traditions and language are strongest on the northwest coast, especially in the Hebridean Islands. The Northern Islands, Orkney and Shetland, with strong historical ties to Norway, are culturally distinct from the Highlands. To the south, the heavily urbanized Central Belt encompasses Dundee, Edinburgh, Saint Andrews, Stirling, Paisley, and Glasgow. The premier cities of Edinburgh in the east and Glasgow in the west embody important cultural contrasts and antagonisms within this urban frame. The more mountainous Borders region to the south and east of this belt is more rural. There is population flow between Scotland and England and between Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. There is a small Asian Muslim community.

Location and Geography. Scotland occupies approximately the northern third of the United Kingdom's (UK) mainland, encompassing 7.5 million hectares. The area of Scotland is 29,795 square miles (77,168 square kilometers). The climate is cool, wet, and often windy. Much land in the Highlands and Borders is rugged and difficult to cultivate, but the Lowlands and parts of the Borders include prime agricultural land. Scotland is surrounded by the North Sea, offering fish, oil and natural gas, and potentially tidal and wave power.

Demography. In 1997, the population was 5,122,500, with over 3 million persons in the Central Belt. This distribution shows the effects of rural depopulation, especially during the "Highland Clearances" (c. 1790–1830), when landlords forced tenants off their land to modernize the economy, especially through sheep raising. Some tenants were resettled in coastal villages and encouraged to supplement farming with fishing, linen weaving, and kelp manufacture, while many others migrated to the Central Belt or emigrated abroad. Industrialization led to massive urbanization in the nineteenth century during which the population increased from around 1.5 million to 4.5 million, with the growth concentrated in and around Glasgow. Immigrants from the Highlands and Ireland played a major role in this growth. Today there are around sixty-five thousand native Gaelic speakers. There are approximately twenty thousand Pakistanis, ten thousand Indians, ten thousand Chinese, six thousand blacks (Africa, Caribbean, other), four thousand five hundred "other" Asians, one thousand one hundred Bangladeshis, and eight thousand five hundred from other ethnic groups. There are many people of Italian and Polish extraction. People raised in Scotland will often identify as Scottish, regardless of non-Scottish ancestry.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Gaelic spoken in Scotland derives from Q-Celtic. Only a portion of the Highland-Island population speaks it as a first language in a bilingual milieu, although those areas have bilingual education and road signs and Gaelic newspapers. Major governmental policy statements and the slogans and publications of political parties are translated into Gaelic.

Scots is a cognate of modern English with a strong Danish influence. Borrowings from Gaelic, Norse, and Norman French have created a diverse patchwork of regional dialects. However, extensive interactions with English and the urban mixture of regional dialects have yielded a Scots to Scottish-English continuum. Scots can be used situationally to emphasize cultural and political identification.

Symbolism. Dominant national symbols evidence a growing demand for political devolution and/or independence. The imagery stemming from the Wars of Independence (1296–1371) produced national heroes such as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. The images of the Scottish thistle, the lion rampant, and the Saint Andrew's cross (Saltire) on the national flags come from that period. Symbols that evoke the past of the Highlands include the system of clan tartans and bagpipes. Those images were incorporated into Scotland's modern martial traditions through the Highland regiments in the British Army. A third strain emphasizes Lowland Protestant political history since the Reformation, revolving around the national Presbyterian Church (the "Kirk"). Images of the national covenants from the seventeenth century protesting against interference in Scottish religious affairs are often invoked. The fortunes of the national soccer teams and the dramatic landscape are heavily invested with national meaning.

History and Ethnic Relations

Emergence of the Nation. In the eleventh century, the Scottish kingdom was a politico-ethnic patchwork of Scots, Picts, Angles, and Britons. Under Anglo-Norman feudal institutions, many cities were founded, often populated by Flemish, Norman, English, and Scandinavian immigrants recruited for craft and artisanal skills. These changes mark the growing cultural divergence between the Lowlands and the Highlands.

Between the late thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the political system became unstable and fragmented when the royal line died without a clear heir and rulership was contested, leading to the "Wars of Independence," during which the kings of England and rival Scottish noble houses competed for overlordship. The church went into a long decline, and urban growth set the stage for the Scottish Reformation (1560–67) and the establishment the Calvinist Kirk. Sustained in part by a new class alliance of lesser nobility (lairds), burghers, lawyers, and the ministers of the new Kirk, the authority of the Kirk spread rapidly throughout the Lowlands.

The links between Scotland and England were reinforced by dynastic strategy when King James VI of Scotland acquired the English throne as James I. The next century saw internecine religious war and a shift in power from the monarch and court to the parliaments. In 1707, the Scottish aristocracy agreed to a Union of the Scottish and English parliaments, securing Scotland's part in the coming British Empire. A crucial aspect of this treaty was the preservation of the autonomy of Scotland's Kirk, legal and educational systems, and organs of local government.

In its pre-Reformation conflicts with England, Scotland often sought an alliance with France. After 1707, aristocratic clan chiefs called Jacobites, with French assistance, attempted to reinstate the deposed Stuart royal line. The result of the defeat at the Battle of Culloden (1746) was the harsh oppression of Gaelic culture, including the outlawing of kilts, bagpipes, and the bearing of arms. The Highlands were treated by British and Scottish Lowland authorities as a culturally backward internal colony.

National Identity. Major processes shaping the national identity since 1707 have been Calvinist Protestantism, participation in the British Empire, a mixture of pride and shame involving the cultural and demographic decimation of the Highlands, the sense of a national working class, a weakening sense of attachment to the British Empire and Commonwealth, and an increasing orientation toward a larger European framework.

Ethnic Relations. Cultural tensions still exist between Catholics and Protestants and Highlanders and Lowlanders. However, the Labor Party has been a major force in integrating the Protestant and Catholic communities. There are ethnic tensions between the Scots and English in some areas over access to jobs and housing, and non-white Scots often encounter racism.

Urbanism, Architecture, and the Use of Space

Coastal fishing villages are oriented around a bay or inlet, and farm towns usually have a central "high street." Larger market towns are more free form and often contain the ruins of a castle or abbey. Such towns generally have an old central core of small stone residences and shops.

After World War II, many "New Towns" were established as a response to urban decay in the Central Belt and a way to attract new "lighter" industries. Generally inland, they often have a central business district and recreational spaces surrounded by low-lying, semi-detached suburban housing estates.

Suburban sprawl surrounds the two major northern cities of Inverness and Aberdeen. Glasgow is oriented around the Firth of Clyde, the focus of the declining shipbuilding industry. Its architecture reflects the investments of shipping and tobacco magnates. In the 1980s and 1990s the decaying town center was redeveloped. The architecture of Edinburgh retains the central core of the medieval city. The Georgian New Town, planned and built on a rectilinear design from the late eighteenth century, became a residential alternative for the new upper and middle classes.

Interspersed within and outlying these major cities are turn-of-the-century tenements, new suburbs, and newer but decaying housing estates where unemployment often runs around 50 percent. The poor quality of housing is a major concern. Despite numerous parks and outdoor areas, inclement weather encourages indoor socializing. The numerous public houses are major sites for socializing outside the home.

Food and Economy

Food in Daily Life. The diet features prepared foods and an expanded choice of fruits and vegetables. Meals such as mince and tatties (ground beef and boiled or mashed potatoes) and homemade curries are common, along with take-out options. Scots are heavy consumers of sugar, chocolate, salt, and butter, but recently they have begun eating less meat and more fish, whole-meal bread, and vegetables.

Food Customs at Ceremonial Occasions.

Whiskey often serves as a symbolic marker of special occasions. Christmas dinners tend to feature turkey, and haggis provides the centerpiece of the Burns Supper. There is also a strong baking tradition exemplified in tea room fare of fudges and scones.

Basic Economy. By 1900 the textile industry was eclipsed by heavy industries such as coal, iron, steel, engineering, and shipbuilding. Despite state support, the heavier industries have been in decline, increasingly being replaced by electronics and chemicals. Whiskey-making is a stable industry. Manufacturing's share of employment and gross domestic product (GDP) has declined, primarily replaced by the growth of services and the banking and financial sector. Tourism has stimulated the growth of the service sector. Agriculture makes only a modest contribution to employment and GDP. North Sea oil discovered in the early 1970s boosted the economy, but the development of cheaper sources elsewhere has halved production rates. There are chronically high unemployment rates. Manufacturing's share of employment and gross domestic product (GDP) has declined, primarily replaced by the growth of services in public administration and the banking and financial sector.

Land Tenure and Property. Formally, land ownership is still organized in a system of publicly registered feudal conveyances. Until the Succession Act (1964), male primogeniture governed land inheritance. In the 1970s, a process of phasing out feudal tenure and creating legal provision for direct title holding was begun, but there is pressure for the acceleration of land reform. Land ownership can be highly secretive and often is concentrated in a few absentee landlords. Recent moves by some local Highland and Island communities to "buy out" their owners and establish collective ownership have elicited widespread popular support. Historically, land issues have been particularly contentious in the Highlands.

Social Stratification

Classes and Castes. Scotland has a high proportion of the UK's hereditary nobility. By the turn of the century, the landed gentry and the industrial bourgeoisie were developing complex patterns of intermarriage and corporate ownership. The current class structure reflects deindustrialization. The transformation of the classic industrial working class into a more varied series of manual and non-manual occupational segments has made the distinction between working class and middle class difficult. Severe poverty is concentrated in public housing estates in the major urban areas.

The Catholic community is largely Labour-voting and urban working class. The rural and urban working and middle classes are associated more with Presbyterian Protestantism, and the aristocracy has a historical association with the Episcopal Church.

Symbols of Social Stratification. Speech is a key marker of class. Several rural and urban working-class varieties of Scots coexist with rural and urban middle class varieties. Linguistic convergence with received pronunciation English is viewed as a sign of education and middle to upper class status.

There is a strong tendency for Scots to identify as working class despite occupations and levels of education that indicate a middle class status. Scotland has a social democratically inclined middle class with a strong sense of its roots in the industrial working class and the formation of the welfare state; there is a widespread belief that egalitarianism is inherent in the national culture.

Political Life

Government. Scotland is a nation within the multinational UK state, administratively distinct, with its own legislature. Since 1885, it has been administered through the Scottish Office, led by the secretary of state for Scotland, who is appointed by the UK Parliament. Beneath the Scottish Office are thirty-two local authorities that administer basic services, and a separate system of laws and courts. The Scotland Act of 1998 established the first modern parliament, which receives a yearly block grant from the UK treasury and has the power to vary the UK personal income tax rate. It legislates on health, education and training, local government, social work and housing, economic development and transport, law and home affairs, environment, agriculture, forestry and fishing, sport and the arts, and public registers and records. The UK Parliament retains power over defense, foreign affairs, central economic planning (including business taxation), social security, and immigration. The one hundred twenty-nine ministers to the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) are elected for fixed four-year terms through a system combining proportional representation and popular election. The first parliament included representatives from six parties and was 37 percent female.

Leadership and Political Officials. The thirty-two local authorities are coordinated through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), which has been increasingly Labour-dominated and includes large urban authorities with a "party machine" style of local politics. The Conservative Party is stronger in rural agricultural regions. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has rural and urban support but has had more success in rural areas. Because of its size and dominance, the Labour Party is more bureacratized than are the SNP, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats. The SNP, limited to Scotland, has been more informal and less professionalized.

Despite internal dissent, Labour has supported Scottish devolution since the 1980s. The SNP is a left-of-center social democratic party to the left of Labour. It supports full national independence for Scotland as a member of the European Union. The Conservatives lost control of all UK parliamentary seats in Scotland in 1997. Many Scottish Conservatives support moderate devolution and rejected the party's traditional resistance to constitutional change. The Liberal Democrats have maintained a commitment to federalism in Britain for over a hundred years. They tend to be liberal on both social and economic issues, though they favor more state intervention than do the Conservatives. Although small, the Scottish Socialist Party and the Greens managed to get one representative each elected to the parliament.

Social Problems and Control. The legal system combines civilian and common law traditions. Law is based on judge-made precedents, authoritative legal texts, and legislation. Judgments are made by a judge or a simple majority of a fifteen-member jury, depending on the magnitude of the crime. There are three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty, and "not proven," meaning the jury suspects guilt, but the evidence is not sufficient to warrant a guilty verdict. The courts are divided into civil and criminal systems, with overlapping judges. The highest civil court of appeal is the UK House of Lords, and for criminal cases it is the High Court of Criminal Appeal, which is Scottish. There are specialized tribunals presided over by laypersons and specialists to adjudicate minor juvenile offenses and industrial disputes. The former, called Children's Hearings, are primarily welfare-based rather than punitive. There is system of legal aid combined with various bodies that offer legal advice.

Drugs, especially heroin, and drug-related crime are a problem in larger cities. Police report an increasing frequency of fraud, auto theft, and violent crimes involving guns. Drunk driving has been reduced, and the use of a designated driver has become a common practice. There has been an effort to raise awareness of domestic violence against women.

Military Activity. Militarism has been an important stimulus for industry. Scotland was called "a landlocked aircraft carrier" because of its role as part of NATO's forward defense strategy during the Cold War. The nuclear presence has been reduced by popular anti-nuclear, anti-war pressures and a new NATO strategy oriented toward smaller-scale, non-nuclear capabilities. In the early 1990s around twenty-two thousand servicepersons were based in Scotland. However, restructuring of the military and related industries is leading to reductions in military jobs.

Social Welfare and Change Programs

Beyond the government, Scottish life is managed through a network of Scottish- and UK-based Non-Departmental Public Bodies (NDPBs, sometimes called "quangos") whose members are appointed and are responsible for various aspects of public spending and administration. Those concerned solely with Scotland are now accountable to the Executive of the new Parliament, while most cross-border public bodies are accountable to both the Scottish and UK parliaments. Most have executive or advisory functions, often linked to the National Health Service. Those responsible for local spending are concerned with education, local enterprise, and housing.

Nongovernmental Organizations and Other Associations

In the civil society, important players include the major churches (Church of Scotland, Catholic, and Episcopal), which often coordinate their efforts through ACTS (Action Together by Churches in Scotland), the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the Confederation of British Industry (Scottish branch), the Scottish Federation of Small Businesses, the Educational Institute of Scotland, the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organizations, other professional associations, interest groups, and around forty thousand smaller bodies concerned with the general public benefit. The political parties and COSLA mediate between civil society and the government. In conjunction with the political parties and campaigning groups, this network (with the general exception of business-oriented bodies) was crucial in achieving constitutional change in the late 1990s.

Gender Roles and Statuses

Division of Labor by Gender. Women are beginning to outstrip men as a percentage of total employees. Scottish machismo, bolstered by laborism, Calvinism, militarism, and soccer is adjusting to a world where the association of women with domesticity and reproduction and men with public life and paid employment are weakening. However, life chances are far from equal. Men far outnumber women in elected political offices, the legal profession, and managerial and administrative positions in business. Women earn 72 percent of what men earn on average, and are concentrated in certain economic sectors (shops, hotels, financial and business services, education, health, and social work) and the voluntary sector. Subject choices by sex in education suggest that gendered work expectations endure, with construction, engineering, manufacture and production, and transport being over-whelmingly male and personal care, office and secretarial, and social work overwhelmingly female.

The Relative Status of Women and Men. Men and women are notionally equal, but there is still room for reform. The feminist movement has opposed sex discrimination, fought to ensure greater participation by women in the new parliament, and had some success heightening awareness about violence against women. Still, many young men and women consider it acceptable to hit a woman or force her to have sex in certain circumstances. Women, especially as single parents and pensioners, are more vulnerable to poverty than men are, and the vast majority of single parents with dependent children are women.

Marriage, Family, and Kinship

Marriage. Over a third of marriages are civil rather than religious. Scots law requires that marriages be monogamous and be between consenting adults (over age 16) and provides for the recognition of marriage "by habit and repute."

Traditional weddings take place on Friday or Saturday, with the groom in formal attire (often kilted) and the bride usually in white, forbidden to see the groom until the ceremony. Weddings normally are conducted near the bride's home. The bride enters last and is "given away" by her father or a senior male relative. Divorce can be obtained on the bases of adultery, intolerable behavior, desertion, and de facto separation.

Domestic Unit. An increasing number of households (around 30 percent) contain a single adult, while those with one male and one female with children (around 20 percent) have been decreasing. Around a quarter include one male, one female, and no children, and just over 10 percent include three or more adults with no children. At least a third of households are headed by women, a fifth of those widowed or divorced, whereas two thirds of households are headed by men, over half of which are married.

Inheritance. Until the 1960s, the incomes, savings, and properties of both spouses were considered totally separate, with marriage conferring no claims. Parliamentary acts in 1964 and 1985 established equal claims at divorce on most property acquired during marriage, and household goods and savings from housekeeping allowances are equally shared. A peculiarity of Scots law is that minors can enter into binding contracts.

Kin Groups. The clan system today has significance primarily for historians and tourists. Ties of kinship are activated by conditions of class and economic opportunity, with poverty, family businesses, and extreme wealth tending to heighten the importance of kin group obligations. Scotland is a small country with a high degree of overlap in social and kinship networks. Thus, urban networks involving politics and public life can be very dense, creating a sense of familiarity across a wide social field.

Socialization

Child Rearing and Education. Child rearing is primarily women's work, sometimes aided by play groups. Mass literacy and education developed early, creating a popular conception of Scots as deeply commited to education, self improvement, and access to education. However, this tradition also produced the stern authoritarian "dominie" (parish teacher) teaching a narrow curriculum backed by corporal punishment. In recent decades, more child-centered teaching methods and diverse curricula built around national standards have developed. Scottish education is distinctive in its integration of denominational schools (almost all Catholic) into the broader system of public funding and management.

Higher Education. There are four ancient universities, four established in the twentieth century, fifty-four technical and vocational colleges of further education, and 16,233 adult community education groups. The university course lasts four years, not three as in most English universities. Scottish students used to make the transition from secondary to higher education at age 17; now most take an extra year to prepare for university.

Etiquette

Rules of etiquette are situational, affected by status, class, and familiarity. An initial reserve toward strangers is likely to be heightened if one party is of higher status. However, friendliness and verbal politeness are expected in everyday life. Light, humorous banter, often about soccer, facilitates such interactions. The notion that Scots are more friendly and open than the English is common. Similarly, many believe that people are more friendly in Glasgow than in Edinburgh. Two somewhat ritualized markers of politeness are the offering of tea, coffee, and sweets to house visitors and taking turns buying rounds of drinks at a pub.

Religion

Religious Beliefs. The Church of Scotland has around 770,217 members, and around 774,550 people are members of the Catholic Church. The Episcopalians have around thirty-five thousand communicants, with a similar number distributed among smaller Protestant denominations, including many strict Sabbatarians in the Highlands, Islands, and fishing ports of the northeast coast. There are around fifteen thousand to twenty thousand Muslims; a handful of Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhist; and four Jewish congregations.

Although mainstream church attendance is in decline, Scotland bears the impress of its Protestant history. Today's adherents range from scriptural fundamentalists to liberals who view the Bible interpretively. In addition to the Protestant distaste for symbolic elaboration and emphasis on the individual's personal relationship to God, a strong sense of guilt and righteousness pervades Presbyterian discourses. Traditional supernatural beliefs (ghosts, fairies, etc.) endure as literary themes and in revived forms in Celticist New Age beliefs. Belief in the gift of second sight persists among some Highlanders.

Religious Practitioners. Leading members of the Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopal churches regularly make public pronouncements in the media regarding social issues and government policies. In recent years, this has involved the critical rejection of some aspects of neoliberalism and support for devolution.

Rituals and Holy Places. Easter and Christmas are the major ceremonial occasions. Medieval sites of pilgrimage are visited primarily by tourists and antiquarians. The Scottish landscape, with ancient religious structures from stone circles to ruined abbeys, often is said to have a sacred quality. The Isle of Iona, the base for Saint Columba's early missions to Scotland in the fifth century, is home to the Iona Community, an ecumenical religious retreat founded in the 1930s.

Death and the Afterlife. Funerary practices normally involve a simple ceremony of blessings and remembrance by family members and friends in a chapel or funeral parlor, leading to interment or cremation. Until recently, women did not go to the gravesite, and in some parts of the western Highlands and Islands the postburial mean can still become an extended alcoholic ritual. Catholic ceremonies may be preceded by a traditional wake.

Medicine and Health Care

The National Health Service (NHS) was anticipated by the Highlands and Islands Medical Scheme, which subsidizes medical practices in the poor and sparsely populated Highlands. The NHS made general health care more available and, continues to enjoy strong popular support. Despite its strong medical tradition, Scotland has a long history of high morbidity and mortality as a result of the climate, the diet, and poverty-related diseases such as tuberculosis. High consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and fatty foods, along with a lack of exercise and an increasing incidence of cancer is creating a new profile of ill health.

Secular Celebrations

Christmas was hardly observed in the Lowlands after the Reformation but is broadly observed as a relatively secularized holiday. New Year's Eve, called Hogmanay, has long been the main midwinter celebration. Fairlike events and public gatherings for the changing of the year are promoted by major cities. Customarily, some entertained guests at home, while others went "firstfooting." First-footers carry a bottle of whiskey and perhaps some food and, if traditional, a lump of coal or something black.

Celtic seasonal rituals fused to medieval saints' days survive in modern secularized celebrations. Traditionally, Halloween (31 October) involved children "guising," or dressing up in costumes and entertaining for treats, engaging in mischief, and young girls performing divination to find out about their future spouses. The May Day celebration of Beltane, involving bonfires on hilltops, has seen a revival. Many towns have fairs and gala weeks, especially during the summer. Annual Highland Gatherings serve a similar civic function, as do the Common Ridings in the Borders towns, in which a horseback procession "beats out" the boundaries of the medieval burgh.

Saint Andrew's Day (30 November), named after the national patron saint, is not marked ritually, but events of national significance are often timed to fall on that day. Perhaps the most symbol-laden holiday is Burns Day (25 January), named after the "national" poet, Robert Burns. Set around a ritual "peasant" meal of haggis (a mixture of oats, offal, and seasonings boiled inside the lining of a sheep's stomach), neeps (turnips), and tatties (potatoes), accompanied by whiskey, the event involves an elaborate series of speeches and set readings from Burns's opus. This ceremony plays upon Burns's bawdy celebration of the common people and penchant for deflating the self-righteous and highborn. Traditionally very male-dominated and chauvanistic affairs, gender participation is now more equal, and even feminist readings of Burns's radicalism can be found.

The Arts and Humanities

Support for the Arts. The Scottish Arts Council is advised by specialist committees about funding for theaters, art galleries, musical and literary organizations, art centers, and major festivals. Almost half the budget goes to support the four national companies: Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, Royal National Orchestra, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Local authorities and economic development agencies have become major contributors. In the popular arts, self-financing and ticket charges are important.

Literature. Passion for the spoken word has arisen from linguistic diversity and the tradition of public oration and dispute on scriptural subjects. The ability to tell a good story or joke is prized. There are rich poetry and prose traditions in Gaelic, Scots, and Scots-inflected English. Gaelic literature derives from bardic verses celebrating heroes and political leaders. The development of Gaelic communities in the major cities, particularly Glasgow, around 1870–1914 stimulated new linguistic and literary awareness.

Scottish literature oscillates between romantic flourishes and mordant commentary, often suggesting a preoccupation with dialectical tensions: reason-passion, reality-fantasy, natural-supernatural, solemnity-satire. There was a notable revival after the World War I, spearheaded by the poet Hugh MacDiarmid. Many twentieth century prose writers wrote about Scottish locales and themes. Recent works such as Alasdair Gray's Lanark and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting combine gritty reality and wild imagination with Scots language and caustic visions of a deindustrializing world.

Graphic Arts. Scottish painting has struggled to establish a distinctive identity. Scottishness has been a question of subject matter more than style. Since 1900, French impressionism and post-1960s conceptual approaches have been influential. The absence of a major Scottish-based art market has tended to keep the fine arts semiprofessional.

Stylized animals and objects in bas relief on Pictish symbol stones mixed with the curvilinear designs of Celtic Christianity in the first millennium c.e. French and Flemish influences appear in medieval church sculpture. In the nineteenth century, neoclassical styles dominated. Only with the rise of modernism has the long connection between architecture and ornamental sculpture been broken, allowing freer, more experimental modes to develop.

At a more popular and functional level, jewelry and textiles sustain artistic traditions that often allude to Pictish and Celtic design themes. Major art colleges provide support, particularly in the area of textiles.

Performance Arts. The national ballet, opera, and orchestras and the Edinburgh festival ensure that a high art tradition is maintained. Traditional music and dance have had a revival, sustained by dedicated groups and associations, major nationwide competitive events, and a tradition of informal music-making in pubs, along with the new popularity of the Ceilidh, a public event of traditional set dances to fiddle tunes. There is an active folk scene, and a strong popular music scene. Since the 1970s there has been a flourishing of new theaters and companies performing new works in Scots and translations of plays into that language.

The State of the Physical and Social Sciences

Scotland was in the forefront of the development of the physical and social sciences, including ground-breaking work in the eighteenth century in mathematics by Colin MacLaurin, geology by James Hutton, and in chemistry by Joseph Black, sociological data gathering in the Statistical Account (1790s), and the moral philosophy and political economy of David Hume, Adam Smith, John Millar, and Adam Ferguson.

During the heyday of industrialization, Scotland became preeminant in the field of engineering, and the social sciences were eclipsed by the physical sciences, exemplified by the physicists Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) and James Clark Maxwell. The sciences atrophied during the post-World War I industrial decline. Since the 1960s, there has been a push to strengthen the role of physical sciences in higher education. Technology transfer between industry and university has been a core goal, supported by the establishment of university-associated research institutes. Offshore engineering, aquaculture, veterinary medicine, and computers are key research areas along with medicine. Scotland has been a leader in cloning research, and the school of linguistics at Edinburgh has stimulated work on the interface of speech and computers.

Whereas corporate funding has provided major support for the physical sciences, the social sciences have had to compete for funds from the Economic and Social Research Council and smaller sources. Political change has stimulated revivals in history and legal studies and reestablished Scotland as a topic for political and sociological study.

Bibliography

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——, and Paula Surridge. The Scottish Electorate: The 1997 General Election and Beyond, 1999.

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—Jonathan Hearn

See Also: United Kingdom

Scotland. ‘Land of the Scots’. The original ‘Scots’ were the Celtic 5th- to 6th-century settlers from Ireland. Scotia became the name of the whole country in the 9th cent. after the merger of the Scottish and Pictish kingdoms. The meaning of the tribal name is uncertain.

Scotland

SeeGreat Britain

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