Etymology
Dalriada 700AD
is derived from the Latin
Scoti, the term applied to
Gaels, people from what is now Scotland and Ireland, and the Dál Riata (
(also Dalriada) who are thought to have originated from Ireland and migrated to western Scotland. Accordingly, the
Late Latin word
Scotia ("land of the Gaels") was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest,
Scotia was being used to refer to (Gaelic-speaking) Scotland north of the
river Forth, alongside
Albania or
Albany, both derived from the Gaelic
Alba. The use of the words
Scots and
Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the
Late Middle Ages.
History
Early history
Repeated glaciations, which covered the entire land mass of modern Scotland, destroyed any traces of human habitation that may have existed before the Mesolithic period. It is believed that the first post-glacial groups of
hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, as the
ice sheet retreated after the
last glaciation.
Groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9500 years ago, and the first villages around 6000 years ago. The well-preserved village of
Skara Brae on the
Mainland of
Orkney dates from this period.
Neolithic habitation, burial and ritual sites are particularly common and well-preserved in the
Northern Isles and
Western Isles, where a lack of trees led to most structures being built of local stone.
The discovery in Scotland of a 4000 year old tomb with burial treasures at
Forteviot, near
Perth, the capital of a Pictish Kingdom in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, is unrivalled anywhere in Britain. It contains the remains of an
early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white
quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves.
Scotland may have been part of a Late Bronze Age maritime trading culture called the
Atlantic Bronze Age that also included the other
Celtic nations, England, France, Spain and Portugal.
Roman influence
The written
protohistory of Scotland began with the arrival of the
Roman Empire in southern and central Great Britain, when the Romans occupied what is now England and Wales, administering it as a
province called
Britannia. Roman invasions and occupations of southern Scotland were a series of brief interludes.
According to the Roman historian
Tacitus, the
Caledonians "turned to armed resistance on a large scale", attacking Roman forts and skirmishing with their legions. In a surprise night-attack, the Caledonians very nearly wiped out the whole
9th Legion until it was saved by Agricola's cavalry.
Vallum of the Antonine Wall, near Falkirk
The Roman military occupation of a significant part of northern Scotland only lasted about 40 years, although their influence on the southern section of the country, occupied by
Brythonic tribes such as the
Votadini and
Damnonii, would still have been considerable between the first and fifth centuries. The Welsh term
Hen Ogledd ("Old North") is used by scholars to describe the North of England and South of Scotland during its habitation by
Brythonic speaking people around AD 500 to 800. In the 400s,
Gaels from Ireland established the kingdom of
Dál Riata.
Medieval period
The Kingdom of the Picts as it was in the early 8th century, when
Bede was writing, was largely the same as the kingdom of the Scots in the reign of
Alexander (1107–1124). However, by the tenth century, the Pictish kingdom was dominated by what we can recognise as
Gaelic culture, and had developed a traditional story of an Irish conquest around the ancestor of the contemporary royal dynasty,
Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth MacAlpin).
From a base of territory in eastern Scotland north of the
River Forth and south of the
River Oykel, the kingdom acquired control of the lands lying to the north and south. By the 12th century, the kings of Alba had added to their territories the
English-speaking land in the south-east and attained overlordship of
Gaelic-speaking
Galloway and
Norse-speaking
Caithness; by the end of the 13th century, the kingdom had assumed approximately its
modern borders. However, processes of cultural and economic change beginning in the 12th century ensured Scotland looked very different in the later Middle Ages.
The impetus for this change was the reign of
King David I and the
Davidian Revolution.
Feudalism, government reorganisation and the first legally recognised towns (called
burghs) began in this period. These institutions and the immigration of French and Anglo-French knights and churchmen facilitated cultural osmosis, whereby the culture and language of the low-lying and coastal parts of the kingdom's original territory in the east became, like the newly acquired south-east, English-speaking, while the rest of the country retained the Gaelic language, apart from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, which remained under Norse rule until 1468. The Scottish state entered a largely successful and stable period between the 12th and 14th centuries, there was relative peace with England, trade and educational links were well developed with the Continent and at the height of this cultural flowering
John Duns Scotus was one of Europe's most important and influential philosophers.
The death of
Alexander III in March 1286, followed by that of his granddaughter
Margaret, Maid of Norway, broke the centuries-old succession line of Scotland's kings and shattered the 200 year golden age that began with
King David I.
Edward I of England was asked to arbitrate between claimants for the Scottish crown, and he organised a process known as the
Great Cause to identify the most legitimate claimant.
John Balliol was pronounced king in the Great Hall of
Berwick Castle on 17 November 1292 and inaugurated at
Scone on 30 November,
St. Andrew's Day. Edward I, who had coerced recognition as
Lord Paramount of Scotland, the feudal superior of the realm, steadily undermined John's authority. In 1294 Balliol and other Scottish lords refused Edward's demands to serve in his army against the French. Instead the Scottish parliament sent envoys to France to negotiate an alliance. Scotland and France sealed a treaty on 23 October 1295, that came to be known as the
Auld Alliance (1295–1560). War ensued and King John was deposed by Edward who took personal control of Scotland.
Andrew Moray and
William Wallaceinitially emerged as the principal leaders of the resistance to English rule in what became known as the
Wars of Scottish Independence (1296–1328).
The nature of the struggle changed significantly when
Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick, killed rival
John Comyn on 10 February 1306 at
Greyfriars Kirk in
Dumfries. He was crowned king (as Robert I) less than seven weeks later. Robert I battled to restore Scottish Independence as King for over 20 years, beginning by winning Scotland back from the Norman English invaders piece by piece. Victory at the
Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 proved that the Scots had regained control of their kingdom. In 1315
Edward Bruce, brother of the King, was briefly appointed
High King of Ireland during an ultimately unsuccessful Scottish invasion of Ireland aimed at strengthening Scotland's position in its wars against England. In 1320 the world's first documented
declaration of independence, the
Declaration of Arbroath, won the support of
Pope John XXII, leading to the legal recognition of Scottish sovereignty by the English Crown.
However, war with England continued for several decades after the death of Bruce, and a civil war between the Bruce dynasty and their long-term Comyn-Balliol rivals lasted until the middle of the 14th century. Although the Bruce dynasty was successful,
David II's lack of an heir allowed his nephew
Robert II to come to the throne and establish the
Stuart Dynasty. The Stewarts ruled Scotland for the remainder of the
Middle Ages. The country they ruled experienced greater prosperity from the end of the 14th century through the Scottish Renaissance to the
Reformation. The
Education Act of 1496 made Scotland the first country since
Sparta in
classical Greece to implement a system of general
public education.
[55] This was despite continual warfare with England, the increasing division between
Highlands and
Lowlands, and a large number of royal minorities.
This period was the height of the Franco-Scottish alliance. The Scots Guard – la
Garde Écossaise – was founded in 1418 by
Charles VII of France. The Scots soldiers of the Garde Écossaise fought alongside
Joan of Arc against England during the
Hundred Years War. In March 1421 a Franco-Scots force under
John Stewart, 2nd Earl of Buchan, and Gilbert de Lafayette, defeated a larger English army at the
Battle of Baugé. Three years later, at the
Battle of Verneuil, the Scots lost around 6000 men, but the Scottish intervention bought France valuable time and likely saved the country from defeat.
Early modern era
In 1502,
James IV of Scotland signed the
Treaty of Perpetual Peace with
Henry VII of England. He also married Henry's daughter,
Margaret Tudor, setting the stage for the
Union of the Crowns. For Henry, the marriage into one of Europe's most established monarchies gave legitimacy to the new Tudor royal line. A decade later James made the fateful decision to invade England in support of France under the terms of the
Auld Alliance. He was the last British monarch to die in battle, at the
Battle of Flodden. Within a generation the
Auld Alliancewas ended by the
Treaty of Edinburgh. France agreed to withdraw all land and naval forces and in the same year, 1560, the revolution of
John Knox achieved its ultimate goal of convincing the Scottish parliament to revoke papal authority in Scotland.
Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic and former queen of France, was forced to abdicate in 1567.
In 1698, the Scots attempted an ambitious project to secure a trading colony on the
Isthmus of Panama. Almost every Scottish landowner who had money to spare is said to have invested in the
Darien scheme. Its failure bankrupted these landowners, but not the burghs, which remained cash rich. Nevertheless, the nobles' bankruptcy, along with the threat of an English invasion, played a leading role in convincing the Scots elite to back a union with England.
The deposed
Jacobite Stuart claimants had remained popular in the Highlands and north-east, particularly amongst non-
Presbyterians. However, two major
Jacobite risings launched in 1715 and 1745 failed to remove the
House of Hanover from the British throne. The threat of the Jacobite movement to the United Kingdom and its monarchs effectively ended at the
Battle of Culloden, Great Britain's last
pitched battle. This defeat paved the way for large-scale removals of the indigenous populations of the Highlands and Islands, known as the
Highland Clearances.
The
Scottish Enlightenment and the
Industrial Revolution made Scotland into an intellectual, commercial and industrial powerhouse. So much so that
Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation." With the demise of Jacobitism and the advent of the Union thousands of Scots, mainly Lowlanders, took up numerous positions of power in politics, civil service, the army and navy, trade, economics, colonial enterprises and other areas across the nascent
British Empire. Historian Neil Davidson notes that “after 1746 there was an entirely new level of participation by Scots in political life, particularly outside Scotland.” Davidson also states that “far from being ‘peripheral’ to the British economy, Scotland – or more precisely, the Lowlands – lay at its core.”
19th century
Scottish diaspora
Scots born migrants also played a leading role in the foundation and principles of the United States (
John Witherspoon,
John Paul Jones,
Andrew Carnegie,
John Muir), Canada (
John A MacDonald,
James Murray,
Tommy Douglas), Australia (
Lachlan Macquarie,
Thomas Brisbane,
Andrew Fisher), and New Zealand (
James Mckenzie,
Peter Fraser).
Ka'anapoli Beach to Black Rock
Ka'anapoli Beach with Molokai
our room
