A Sunny Day in Glasgow
Scotland has a rich cultural history much of which is preserved in historic buildings throughout the country. Prehistoric settlements can be traced back to 9600 BC, as well as the famous standing stones in Lewis and Orkney. The Romans, fronted by Julius Caesar in 55 BC, made initial incursions but finally invaded Great Britain in 43 AD, moving into the southern half of Scotland, but not occupying the country due to the fierce resistance efforts of the native Caledonian tribes. The Romans named the mostly area of modern Scotland "Caledonia". Today, Hadrian's Wall to the south of the Scottish-English border is perceived by some as one of the most famous Roman remains in the world, arguably on a par with the 8-metre-arch on Naxos.
After the withdrawal of the machinery of the Roman Empire around AD 411, the so-called Dark Ages followed. However, since the Roman occupation affected mostly just the south of the island of Great Britain, Scotland was unaffected as it had been even at the great battle at Mons Graupius. Because the grip of Roman hegemony had now loosened, all sorts of invaders now saw the island as open season. So the Angles arrived on the east coast around North Berwick. It has to be said that the natives here fared rather better than their southern counterparts did at the hands of the Saxons, who, for example, sacked the Isle of Wight, such that not a native male Briton was left alive.
Scotland was believed to have been founded in 843 AD, and eventually expanded its borders to the area of modern day Scotland. The early history of the new nation was marked with many conflicts with the English, and also the Vikings who invaded the north of Scotland. Today the Shetland Islands retain a strong Viking cultural identity. Another powerful impact on Scotland's story has been religion. Events leading up to the Scottish Reformation of 1560, including the destruction of the cathedral at St. Andrews the year before, had a strong impact on life in the country, and led to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland taking over from the Roman Catholic Church as the established state religion. It was a more strict form of Protestantism than the Anglicanism that developed in England, and was influenced by the teaching of Jean Calvin which had been brought back by John Knox. Religion would lead to many later political and military clashes, such as the Bishops' Wars that were part of the wider civil wars in England, Ireland and Scotland in the 17th century.
Wars with the English would dominate Scottish history for hundreds of years until the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when the King of Scots, James VI, inherited the English throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth I (who had executed his mother, Mary I, Queen of Scots). While this put an end to armed conflict, there were still conflicts between the Scottish and English parliaments on which monarch should succeed and various commercial disputes such as the ill-fated "Darien Scheme" to establish a Scottish colony in Panama. The disaster of the Darien scheme was due partly to incompetence and partly to interference from England, which feared competition with its own colonies. Almost a quarter of the money circulating in Scotland at the time was invested in the scheme, and its failure caused an economic catastrophe amongst the nobility of Scotland. This was one factor leading to the Act of Union.
In 1701 England passed an act that meant that if King William III's successor died without children, the Crown would be passed on to a protestant German prince. In response to this, the Scottish parliament passed a law saying that the next King of Scotland would not be a King of England also, effectively ending the 100 year personal union. England retaliated with a trade embargo that would only be lifted if Scotland and England united in a political union. England also offered to pay off all of Scotland's debts from the failed Darien Scheme. Thus, on May 1, 1707, the Kingdom of Great Britain (it would not become the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" until the union with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1800) came into existence. Scotland and England retained their own religious, education, and legal systems (which is why these differ today). However, the union was very controversial, with the apparent bribing and promising of financial gain to the members of the Scottish Parliament (who were mostly nobility), and national poet Robert Burns famously saying that Scotland was "bought and sold for English gold". There were also many riots as the time and the decision was extremely unpopular with the general Scottish population. Despite the controversy, the Union provided a new stability and a climate in the 18th and 19th centuries in which commerce and new ways of thinking could flourish, and led to a major role for Scotland (and particularly its people) in the British Empire and the creation of the world we know today. Historian Simon Schama has written that "What began as a hostile merger, would end in a full partnership in the most powerful going concern in the world ... it was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history."
