Jenny Wormald, Editor

SCOTLAND: A HISTORY

New York. Oxford University Press. 2005. xxi. 380 pp.

Reviewed by Patrick Killough



  I. Review for http://www.barnesandnoble.com

 Your Title: Scotland: A History

Your Rating: * * * *   (FOUR STARS)

Here is how your review will appear on the title page:
Patrick Killough (patrickkillough@charter.net), (into Sir Walter Scott's Scotland), May 18, 2006, 

Review's Title: The Saga of Scottish Identity Through Time

The more a reader already knows about Scotland, the more SCOTLAND: A HISTORY by Jenny Wormald (ed.) will be valued, by filling in blanks in personal knowledge and serving up new slants on old data as well as by providing 'new' trivia to a non-Scots reader. New to me, for example, was the fact that Scotland had a foundation myth in which Scota, a Pharaoh's daughter, and her Greek husband Gathelus settled in Spain. Later their descendants moved through Ireland to Scotland in 330 BC. This myth trumped an English rival involving Brutus the Trojan, great grandson of Aeneas, coming into the British Isles (p. 323).

Much of Scotland's self-identification entails not being English. Scottish identity also wrestles with how to unify Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and Islanders with Scots-speaking immigrants pushing up for centuries from the north of England into the lowlands. Most of the time, the Scots hit upon kingship as their unifier in the face of great landed nobles threatening chaos. The fact that the Scottish pantheon contains two contrasting heroes: the non-noble William Wallace and the king Robert the Bruce argues that the simple folk of Scotland (devotees of Wallace) increasingly had a voice in national history.

SCOTLAND: A HISTORY is the able product of eleven much-published scholars based in Scotland, England and the USA. The first two chapters present Scotland to 1100, Chapter 3 brings affairs up to 1500. Then come four chapters covering, one by one, Centuries 16, 17, 18 and 19. Chapter 8 brings us from 1900 till a few years beyond the restoration of Scotland's parliament in 1999. The ninth chapter looks at 'The Scottish Diaspora,' with such surprising destinations as Poland and Sweden along with better known places such as Canada, the United States and Australia. The most literary chapter, 10, 'Scotland's Stories,' reviews home-grown written attempts from the Middle Ages through John Knox and others to make sense of Scotland as a part of Britain and of Europe. Up to the minute chapter-by-chapter recommendations of 'Further Reading' will send readers to their favorite bookstores for years to come. A helpful 18-page Chronology of Scotland ends the text.

If there was ever a deep layer of fun-loving in a nation's psyche, its transformation through John Knox of Roman Catholicism into a Presbyterian Kirk knocked most of of the joy out of being Scottish. As I. G. C. Hutchison of Stirling University argues in Chapter 7 'Workshop of Empire: The Nineteenth Century, modern Scots proved great at recognizing new techniques and using them to open global markets. 'Some ascribed these strengths to Presbyterianism: hard work, self-analysis, sturdy independence, and a willingness to take risks, fortified by belief in divine support for the elect, were seen as fostered by Calvinism' (p. 213).

SCOTLAND: A HISTORY is a very good read. Not ponderous. Often provocative and lively. The differing viewpoints of its eleven writers invite the reader to clarify his own thinking about a nation which, like the Vietnamese, has declined to be culturally obliterated by a larger neighbor on its border.

-OOO-
   
    Also recommended:
--Sir Walter Scott, THE TALE OF OLD MORTALITY.
--James Buchan, CROWDED WITH GENIUS: THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT: EDINBURGH'S MOMENT OF THE MIND.
--Arthur Herman, HOW THE SCOTS INVENTED THE MODERN WORLD.
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 II. REVIEW for http://www.amazon.com

BOOK REVIEWED: SCOTLAND: A HISTORY

Reviewer's Rating: * * * *  (Four Stars)

Title of this Review: Scotland: wee giant of the British Isles, May 18, 2006
Reviewer:    T. Patrick Killough (Black Mountain, NC United States) - See all my reviews
  
What is an American reader who is neither a Scot nor a scholar of Scotland likely to know about that country? That there are highlanders who wear kilts and eat haggis. That Shakespeare's Macbeth was once Scotlands's king. That Robert the Bruce learned patience watching a spider weave its web. That John Knox brought a dour Calvinism to the Kingdom, at the same time putting the skids under Mary Queen of Scots. That Walter Scott and George Gordon Lord Byron (who had a titled Scottish mother) wove long narrative poems and Scott also wrote IVANHOE and other novels about the past of England and Scotland. Maybe an American reader has also seen movies such as KIDNAPPED, ROB ROY, BRAVEHEART and the TV series THE HIGHLANDER.

That seems very little but is enough to assure that a reader will both enjoy and benefit from SCOTLAND: A HISTORY. MacBeth is in its pages as well as the murdered Duncan and his sons and the beginning of the three-century plus Stewart/Stuart dynasty. King Robert the Bruce and the initially obscure William Wallace contend for the mythic soul of Scots both high and low. John Knox's Kirk definitively colors Scotland's religion and politics for over 400 years. Professor Richard B. Sher of Rutgers University concludes his dazzling Chapter 6, "Scotland Transformed: The Eighteenth Century," this way: "By the end of the eighteenth century, Burns was dead and Ferguson, Mackenzie, and Blair in retirement, but the age of Walter Scott was about to begin" (p. 208).

Throughout, the eleven authors narrate with color and precision. That John Knox wrote in the vernacular is no surprise. Much earlier in the same 16th century Gavin Douglas in his ENEADOS had translated Vergil's AENEID into Scots, even before anyone did it in southern English (p. 319). It is striking that in their "diaspora" (Chapter 9) Scots appeared in some numbers in Prussia, Poland, Russia Sweden and South Africa. Scots also left their mark as military and civil officers in British India.

There is a consensus among the editor and authors that for too long Scottish history was almost a monopoly of Presbyterian writers. Their slants were important but tended to obscure the case for other persuasions and values, such as the more fun-loving English and their taste for "cakes and ale." Scots are also great story tellers and chroniclers and it is important that 21st century scholars have revisited critically and displayed anew the old sources. This they do convincingly in SCOTLAND: A HISTORY.

-OOO-

Black Mountain, North Carolina
May 19, 2006