While we are waiting for Beta... When you go to Edinburgh, you're visiting Scotland, but you are visiting Lowland Scotland. Historically Scotland has been two cultures, the culture of the lowland cities, commercial, financial, manufacturing and oriented to England. This was the Whiggish part of Scotland, as Richmond puts it, the part that accepted the Whig Revolution of 1688, that fought on the side of the English at Culloden, that helped defeat Charles I in the civil war, and that conducted the Highland Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries. The part that bankrupted the country in the Darien Expedition. Then you have the highland culture, which was the culture of the clans and subsistence agriculture and the 'King over the Water'.
The 18C Jacobite rebellions (or as Richmond might put it, the wars of national liberation!) were basically continuations of the English Civil war. The Tories were High Church or Anglo Catholic, sympathetic to Royal Absolutism, and mainly of the rural interest. The Whigs were the city and commercial interest, parliamentary, and mainly centrist Church of England in religion, who later became the Liberals. The Church of England was very broad, and the result was that the state could exile what were felt to be the extremes, in one direction the protestant sects which had furnished the wild men of the English Revolution, and in the other, the supporters of James II's hopeless attempt to roll back the Reformation in England. The Jacobites (and the Tories in the 18C) could never really make up their minds if they wanted to have an absolute Catholic monarchy for the whole of the UK, or independence for at least most of Scotland, whether absolutist or not. The historical memory of all this has also inextricably confused regional highland nationalism and class issues. It was the regional aristocracy, often absentees in London, that conducted the clearances, and this is something that the regional nationalist memory has trouble with because its orientation is region rather than class. If you've a long flight to get there, you could do worse than to read Prebble's book on the Highland Clearances. The Highland Clearances from 1800-1850 were the final stage in the process. After that, and after the Reform Bill of 1832, the UK became recognizably modern Britain, and the Scots became full participants in the great Victorian imperial adventure. The exiles from the clearances became the Scottish diaspora, and that's where the substantial Scottish heritage in Canada (and perhaps now, Bulgaria?) derives from. Be aware though that Prebble, though vivid, is limited, idiosyncratic, and has a definite ideological perspective. Boswell's account of his journey with Dr Johnson to the Highlands and Western Isles in the late 18th century is also very interesting reading. Richmond will probably have other suggestions. But whatever you do, don't think you are visiting all Scotland when you go to Edinburgh, and if you go north to the Highlands, well, take history with you. It is invisible unless you look under the tins of shortbread and plaids, but its all around you. Peter _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
