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  • The Union of 1707: Why and How?
  • Christopher A. Whatley
The Union of 1707: Why and How? By Paul Henderson Scott. Pp. 85. ISBN: 0 854511 097 6. Edinburgh: Saltire Society. 2006. £6.99.

Paul Scott’s trenchant views on the union of 1707 are well-known, primarily through his much-admired book, Andrew Fletcher and the Treaty of Union (Edinburgh, 1992). This latest publication offers little that is new, but it is concise. In nine short chapters the reader is taken from Scotland’s difficult experience as the junior partner to England under the Union of the Crowns, through the failed but profoundly patriotic Company of Scotland’s venture at Darien, to the angry upsurge of nationalist sentiment that followed in its wake. Chapter eight, written by J. G. Pittendrigh, an accountant by training, provides some fresh insights on the Equivalent, the sum of £398 085 10 shillings sterling that was to be paid to the Scots at the union for assuming a share of England’s national debt, as compensation for Company of Scotland investors and to cover the costs of standardising the Scottish coinage with that of England. Scottish public debts – mainly salary arrears for military officers and government officials – were also to be paid. The catch was that the Scots were to repay this apparent largesse through the increased customs and excise duties that were to be imposed after 1707. The pamphlet concludes with Scott’s explanation of why Scottish MPs voted for union in 1706–7: ‘they had been persuaded by financial inducement of one kind or another’ (that is bribes, which included the Equivalent); and the threat of invasion from England.

For the complexities and contradictions inherent in most historical events, including the 1707 union, Scott has little time. England and the English are portrayed as single, undifferentiated – and hostile – political entities. No hint is given that the attitudes of English Whigs and Tories differed, or that it was Queen Anne who was pressing hard for union. Nor is there any suggestion that responsible politicians on both sides of the border had watched alarmed as their respective countries came close to armed conflict in 1704–5, and sought anxiously a peaceful solution to the succession crisis. If there had been bloodshed in 1706 or 1707, in part at least this would have been because of civil war in Scotland, certainly involving English troops, but fought between sizeable numbers of Scottish Presbyterians and the Jacobites whose aim was to restore the Catholic pretender. Scotland was a nation divided, over religion, dynasty and where the country’s best future lay. For Scott, the union was an unmitigated disaster, for the economy for fifty years after 1707, and Scottish society until 1999 when the devolved Parliament was established in Edinburgh. Actually the economy as a whole began to strengthen, perhaps from the 1730s and certainly the 1740s. It is altogether wrong to portray the seventeenth century a period of ‘steady economic decline’; decline was relative and there was much change and achievement. Scotland’s elite looked abroad and wanted more, materially and culturally. For some Scots, union was a means by which economic modernisation, self-consciously the policy of the vulnerable Scottish state after the Glorious Revolution, could actually be realised in what was an era of muscular mercantilism. If the threat from aggressive Catholic France was to be contained and the prospect of the pretender with the Scottish crown on his head dispelled, the support and assistance of a powerful state – England – seemed highly desirable. In these respects independence in name was a price worth paying, although few Scots felt comfortable with what they were to lose.

Few historians will quibble with Scott’s emphasis on the strength of popular opposition to the proposed union, although unacknowledged is the existence [End Page 158] of many early eighteenth century ‘don’t knows’, who engaged in earnest bouts of prayer for guidance. Indeed, too often the author provides only a partial account. Yes, the end of the Darien venture in 1699 reinforced ‘the conviction that Scotland had to free herself from English control and assert her independence’, and revealed once again the disadvantages for Scotland of...

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