The British Empire? No, it was really the SCOTTISH Empire.
Before Scotland joined the Union in 1707 (when it was just England and Wales together) Britain was less imperialistic than it was AFTER Scotland joined.
The Scots, not the English or anyone else, controlled India.
What does that tell you?
Enlightenment Myths and Highland Realities
Before the American War of Independence there had been an attempt by English ideologues of Empire to bypass the specific Scottish component of Britishness, by extending the notion to everyone within the imperial territory. After 1784 and the detachment of the biggest component of the Empire to whose inhabitants the notion of Britishness could seriously be extended, this was no longer possible. The Scots may therefore have the Americans to thank, at least in part, for inadvertently assisting them to adopt the British identity that the Americans had wished to deny them. If Scottish participation in the Empire was the key external factor in constructing both forms of national consciousness, there was, however, another, internal factor of significance: the changing perceptions of the Highlanders within Britain itself. We have followed the inhabitants of the Highlands in their role as conquerors and settlers of the British Empire, and seen how both this contemporary role and their past reputation were incorporated into a mythical version of Scottish history. How did the changing pattern of social life in the Highlands itself affect the construction of the dual Scottish-British identity?
One way was fabricated, not in the Highlands, but in Edinburgh. Two enthusiasms of the Enlightenment thinkers embroiled them in an unresolved ideological tension. On the one hand, Scottish history is dismissed because of the failure to overthrow feudalism through resources internal to the nation. On the other, the literature associated with feudal society is celebrated precisely because it is the most - perhaps the only - distinctively Scottish culture capable of commanding international respect. The first is a realistic historical assessment pointing towards 'Britishness'. The second was a romantic mythology emphasising 'Scottishness'. Sir Walter Scott embodied this contradiction. Unlike the German Romantics who followed and, to a large extent, were inspired by him, Scott had no interest in building a Scottish nationalist movement among his fellow-Scots, but he was certainly interested in developing a Scottish national consciousness among them. In 1527 Hector Boece had attempted to persuade his fellow-Lowlanders to look upon the Highlanders as models for their own conduct. Now, the virtues of their society could be acknowledged, if only in retrospect. In this sense Scott provided the ideological link between the contemporary deeds of the Highland soldiers and those of their clan ancestors. The combination of the Lancashire kilt and the tartan in the dress of the Highland regiments ensured not merely their survival but their absorption into an emergent Scottish mass culture. It would appear that differentiated 'clan' tartans, far from originating in antiquity, first became widely introduced to distinguish between different regiments and only subsequently adopted generally by the clans that spawned them. Trevor-Roper's summary of these events should be savoured in all its dark irony: '[The kilt] having been invented by an English Quaker Industrialist, was saved from extinction by an English imperialist statesman [i.e. Pitt the Elder].' It perhaps goes without saying that the new-found admiration for Gaelic culture among the ruling class did not extend to recognising the wishes of any actual Gaelic speakers. Nevertheless, the Highlanders were now considered part of the Scottish and British nations, as can be seen by comparing the Scottish Highland experience of the 'potato famine' during the 1840s with that of the Irish.
Phytopthora infestans affected potato crops across Western Europe during 1840s and early 1850s, but Ireland and the Scottish Highlands suffered to a greater extent than elsewhere in two respects. In terms of both duration of the blight and extent of the crop failure, the Highlands were actually in a worse situation than Ireland, yet the outcome in Ireland in terms of mortality was of a qualitatively different kind. The population of Ireland in 1841 has been calculated at 8.1 million. Even if we exclude 'averted births', the overall excess mortality between 1841 and 1851 amounted to perhaps 1,082,000 people. In addition, between 1845 and 1855, 2.1 million people emigrated. In the Highlands, although a crisis of mortality was feared during 1847 and, to a lesser extent, 1848, it never transpired. During this time higher than normal numbers of deaths were reported in seven parishes, but only seven people were reported to have died directly from starvation and, after judicial investigation, the number was reduced to two. Nor does it appear that death from starvation was 'displaced' from the Highlands themselves by migration abroad or to the Lowlands. Why was there such a difference between outcomes in two areas, both supposedly integral to the United Kingdom? The native Irish and the Scottish Highlanders were both heavily dependent on the potato as a staple crop. Both were ruled by a class which had almost in its entirety embraced the principles of the Rev. Thomas Malthus, according to which populations unable to provide for themselves - even through no fault of their own - were literally redundant and could not be helped without violating the laws of Political Economy. Most crucially of all, both populations had been regarded as cultural and social inferiors by the Anglo-Scottish ruling class. Ireland was not part of the British nation (but was part of the UK), the Union simply masked the prevailing colonial relationship; the Highlands of Scotland were part of the nation, and the treatment it received in this period of crisis reflected that fact. If the British ruling class had been intent on perpetuating racism against the Highlanders in the same way as they were against the Irish, it is unlikely that the 'common stock' of which Macaulay speaks would ever have come into existence. The native Irish remained an ever-present threat to the integrity of the British state, which the Highlanders were no longer. Indeed, many Highlanders themselves expressed this racist opposition to the Irish. Hugh Miller, the writer and geologist from the Black Isle in Cromarty, noted in his autobiography what he called the degradation of the new working class 'which is scarcely less marked than that exhibited by the negro' and partly blamed the Irish.
Imperial Caledonia
From their initial point of entry in the Americas the Scottish bourgeoisie spread themselves outwards, and indeed they were forced to do so. The liberation of the American colonies in 1783 meant that it was in India that the greatest opportunities were to be found for relatively impoverished Lowland landowners - or at any rate, their younger sons - to elevate themselves. As Walter Scott complained in 1821: 'Our younger children are as naturally exported to India as our black cattle were sent to England before the Southron [i.e. the English] renounced eating roast-beef, which seems to be the case this year.' Indeed, one might hypothesise that, because of the more established patterns of capital accumulation which prevailed in England, the uncertainties involved in subduing and exploiting North America or South Asia held considerably less appeal there than they did for the Scots, for whom these territories might have provided the only possibilities of speedy advancement. The field was therefore open to Scots on the make in a way that would be closed once the boundaries of Empire became more established and the typical British ruler became the imperial bureaucrat - the 'box-wallah' later disdained by Rudyard Kipling - rather than the merchant adventurer.
By the mid-18th century 60 per cent of British imports regularly came from Bengal. Trade was controlled by a small number of merchant agencies. At their height, in 1803, there were only twenty-three based in the regional capital of Calcutta, of whom the six most important were dominated by Scots. Of the five agencies involved 'at least three' were Scottish and these also exercised a degree of political power unknown to their colleagues in Calcutta - not least because of their willingness to supply funds to the ruling East India Company in times of crisis. The Company itself, which had successfully campaigned to prevent the Scots from establishing their own colony at Darien, now found themselves subverted from within. In 1772 Scots in the company represented one in nine of its civil servants, one in eleven of its common soldiers, and, already, one in three of its officers. The most important economic consequence of the Scottish presence in India was the investment in Scotland of the wealth accumulated by the nabobs upon their return. India had an impact upon eighteenth-century Scotland out of proportion to the number of Scots who went there. One might also say that Scotland had an impact on India out of proportion to the number of Scots who went there, although this is an impact the Indians might well have done without. It was not 'English capitalism' which caused the bones of countless Bengalis to bleach in the sun, but a fully integrated British capitalism in which the Scots played a leading role. Indeed, the capitalist class in Scotland was at the forefront, not only of colonial expansion, but also of the overseas investment characteristic of the imperialist stage of capitalism: during the late Victorian period Scotland invested abroad on a scale per head with no parallel among the other nations of the United Kingdom.
On the threshold of the nineteenth century, the Scottish bourgeoisie could legitimately have cried: yesterday, America; today, India; tomorrow, the world. By 1858, with Pax Britannica - or perhaps one should say Pax CALEDONIA - at its height, William Burns, a tireless campaigner against real or imagined English slights to Scotland, compiled a comprehensive account of how much the Empire owed to his native land:
Allow us to ask. What portion of our present colonial possessions belonged to England PRIOR to her union with Scotland? We know of none, except one or two West Indian islands - very profitable appendages they are! - and some narrow strips on the sea-board of Hindustan. Our Indian empire has risen under the joint energies of Scot, Irishman and Englishman; as the names of such men as Munro, Malcolm, Wellington, Dundas, Stewart, Burness, Napier, Dalhousie, and the recorded exploits of Scottish soldiers assure us. Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, Malta, Gibraltar, our Chinese establishments, are all in the same position. The remark, however, applies particularly to Canada, Nova Scotia, and our other North American possessions. Canada was conquered by Scotsmen; Scotsmen were the pioneers of all our operations, and now form the staple of society in that great country.
But by this time the imperial component of the Scottish national identity was firmly established.
Conclusion
What does this history mean for socialists in Scotland today? The attitudes fostered by our imperial role survive even though the Empire itself is largely - and thankfully - history. But the militarism, racism and xenophobia that so disfigure Scottish society - overlaid and strengthened by our very own traditions of Protestant bigotry - are not superficial aspects which can be discarded by the establishment of border posts along the Tweed. They are part, you might say, of our 'ethnicity'. I am not arguing that Scotland should not secede from England, incidentally - that is a decision which the Scots have every right to make if they wish - simply that it is complacency of the highest order to imagine that secession alone, without a deeper transformation of values, will remove the darker side of our national psyche: in a nation formed by Empire it could scarcely be otherwise. Against this, we have a reservoir of other traditions, radical and socialist traditions, upon which to draw; but we will have to draw on them, because we can be sure that the imperial legacy will not be expunged without our conscious intervention.
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