Anglo-Scottish Culture Clash: Scottish Identities and Britishness, c.1520-1750

When discussing identity, particularly perceptions of identity, one immediately enters into something of an academic minefield. Nonetheless there are good reasons to review the issues of identity in a British context, not least as a result of the ongoing debates which have been raging about the subject since the opening of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999. One thing that seems clear from this scholarly (and often less than scholarly) renewed interest is that there is an underlying assumption that a concept of Britishness emerged, developed and is now suffering from some sort of irreconcilable clash of cultures which pits the Irish, Welsh and Scot against the larger and more powerful neighbour of England. Yet throughout the early modern period we also witness an undeniable movement towards bringing Scotland and England closer together into what would eventually become Great Britain in 1707. That process took the better part of two centuries to come to fruition and only after numerous contesting claims and projections of British identities at local, national and supra-national level had been adressed.