By the beginning of the twelfth century Scotland was well established as the second most powerful kingdom in the British Isles, but it was still a multi-ethnic state - there was no Scottish nation. The English of Lothian still thought of themselves as being English, the Britons of Strathclyde still thought of themselves as being Britons. As for the Scots, they still considered themselves to be Irish. The forging of a common identity probably began during the reign of David I (1124-53). David spent his formative years in England and he achieved high office in the government of Henry I before inheriting the Scottish throne in 1124. David had been impressed by the power of the English monarchy and he began to introduce Anglo-Norman practices into Scotland, beginning the dilution of the Celtic character of his kingdom. David’s Anglo-Norman friends, members of the Bruce family among them, were granted feudalised lordships, many of them in areas where royal authority was still weak, such as Galloway and the Highlands. English and Flemish burgesses were also invited to settle in Scotland to promote trade and urbanisation. Under David, Scotland got its first native coinage. This settlement greatly raised the status of English, which became the language of the court and began to replace Cumbric in Strathclyde and Gaelic in Fife and Angus. As a result of these changes, Scots began to reject their Irish origins as they became increasingly aware of themselves as a distinct people in their own right. The Irish too noticed the change and began to see the Scots as foreigners. In modern times, this rejection of Irish origins has led to a rehabilitation of the Piets as the authentic ancestors of today’s Scots, while their takeover by the MacAlpin dynasty is presented (for nationalistic reasons) as a cosy consensual union, rather than the bloody conquest it clearly was.
There remained a deep, and often troublesome, division in Scotland between the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and the feudalised English-speaking Lowlands, but a sense of common nationhood was confirmed by the experience of the wars of independence from England (1296-1328). In the twelfth century Anglo-Scottish wars were usually caused by the Scots trying to push their borders south into northern England, but in the thirteenth century peace generally prevailed and relations between the two kingdoms became friendly and cooperative. This ended abruptly when Edward I’s high-handed mediation in a succession dispute alienated the Scots and permanently embittered Anglo-Scottish relations. Although neither of the two main leaders of Scottish independence, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, were Celts, the Highlands proved crucial to Scotland’s survival as an independent kingdom. The English could and did achieve military dominance of the Lowlands but they lacked the resources to dominate the Highlands, which were home to nearly half the population of medieval Scotland. With this secure reservoir of manpower behind it, Scotland was effectively unconquerable. After his victory at Bannockburn in 1314 united the Scots behind Robert Bruce, it was only a matter of time before the unsupportable financial and political burden forced the English to recognise Scotland’s independence.
If the Highlands were a great asset to the kings of Scotland in times of war with the English, they could also be a considerable problem at other times. The same geographical and economic factors that made it difficult for the English (and before them the Romans) to campaign in the Highlands also made it difficult for the king of Scots to impose his authority effectively on the independent-minded Gaelic chiefs of the region. The relative poverty of the Highland economy was an almost insuperable obstacle, as there was no chance that the subjugation of the region would pay for itself by increasing the slender resources of the Scottish state. Even the fertile island of Islay, which the crown acquired in the 1490s, proved economically almost worthless. The cost of moving the island’s considerable food rents (cattle and grain) to the Lowlands was so ruinous that the crown simply sold them straight back to its tenants. Islay was soon granted to a clan chief. Perverse though it might seem, Celtic Scotland survived in large part because it was poor.
World History
