Adjustment and Integration: The Scottish Representation in the British House of Commons, 1707–14*

The small minority of Scots who entered the house of commons in 1707 were slow to make their mark. Besides lack of numbers, they suffered several significant disadvantages. The Westminster scene was strange, and the style and tone of debate more vigorous and informal. Moreover, the aristocracy had dominated the unicameral Scottish parliament, and commoners found it difficult to emancipate themselves from noble tutelage. Most importantly, Scottish politics did not yet reflect the two‐party system dominant in England. Thus in the first sessions the Scots were unable to make headway in the essential business of parliament, legislation. Scotland suffered in comparison with the English provinces, and even the Irish, who were able to muster a more effective lobby. Soon, however, a new generation of debaters appeared, able to use their wit to discomfit English antagonists, and a new class of ‘men of business’ who grasped the rules of the legislative game. The fortuitous deaths of leading magnates and the polarisation of sectarian antagonisms in Scotland permitted the coalescence of the Scottish representation into two broad factions allied with the English parties. It was with English tory support that bills were passed to benefit the sectional concerns of Scottish episcopalians, accompanied by other measures of a more general nature. The combined attempt by Scottish peers and MPs in 1713 to secure the repeal of the union does not point to a lasting breakdown in Anglo‐Scottish relations, since it was also a manifestation of political opportunism by English whigs and discontented tories, and their Scottish allies. But the dawn of a party system in Scotland was dispelled by the death of Queen Anne and the ensuing jacobite rebellion. The complicity of tories in the Fifteen resulted in the destruction of the party in Scotland, and the construction of a whig hegemony.     

Protecting the honour of the daughters of Eire: welfare policy for Irish female migrants to England, 1940–70

Across the middle decades of the twentieth century, approximately 500,000 people left Ireland for Britain. Around half were young, single females migrating alone. Drawing on archival material in Ireland and England, this paper analyses the ways in which Catholic and secular agencies became aware of female Irish migrants; and how they understood and responded to their needs. Catholic organisations focused on maintaining religious belief and practice as a means of avoiding social problems in migrants. Some female migrants, such as nurses, were considered exemplars of Catholic and Irish femininity. However, female sexuality was problematised when associated with single motherhood, prostitution and cohabitation. The Irish hierarchy expected to lead policy development for migrant welfare. The framing of female migrant social needs within a moral and religious discourse led to solutions prioritising moral welfare delivered by Catholic priests and volunteers. Both the Irish government and British institutions (state and voluntary) accepted the centrality of Catholicism to Irish identity and the right of the Catholic Church to lead welfare policy and provision for Irish female migrants. No alternative understanding of Irish women's needs within a secular framework emerged during this period. This meant that whilst the Irish hierarchy developed policy responses based on their assessment of need, other agencies, notably the British and Irish governments, did not consider any specific policy response for Irish women to be required.     

试析爱尔兰多元民族认同形成的原因

16、17世纪,在不列颠和爱尔兰群岛这个大的历史语境中,爱尔兰形成了三种不同的民族认同：天主教盖尔民族认同、新教英爱民族认同和长老会一苏格兰民族认同。在后来的历史中,这三种民族认同一直用不同的甚至是对立的政治权力观念和财产神话表现出来,成为爱尔兰内乱和分裂的主要原因。正确认识爱尔兰多元民族认同的影响,对于彻底解决爱尔兰问题有非常重要的意义。     

Language as a public good and national identity: Scotland's competing heritage languages

The preservation of one or several historically and culturally important languages may be a salient political issue in some polities. Although they may not be used as an active means of communication, these languages can also serve a symbolic identitary function. These ‘heritage’ languages can be seen as ‘public goods’ and that even non‐speakers of these languages can have opinions regarding their importance to national identity. In the Scotland example, while Gaelic has been the focus of proactive government legislation and education initiatives, Scots is still struggling for status as a recognised language. Both languages are in some way constituent parts of Scottish identity that at times may seem in competition with one another. Using original survey data, we delve deeper into questions of language, identity and politics in Scotland. First, we describe how public opinion is divided over the importance of Gaelic and Scots to Scottish identity. Second, we use attitudes towards these languages as a dependent variable looking at Scottish identity and attachment. Finally, we use these attitudes towards Gaelic and Scots as an independent variable in models for party identification in Scotland.     

The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.     

Family stories,public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second‐generation Irish in England

Formal narratives of history, especially that of colonial oppression, have been central to the construction of national identities in Ireland. But the Irish diasporic community in Britain has been cut off from the reproduction of these narratives, most notably by their absence from the curriculum of Catholic schools, as result of the unofficial ‘denationalisation’ pact agreed by the Church in the 19th century (Hickman, 1995). The reproduction of Irish identities is largely a private matter, carried out within the home through family accounts of local connections, often reinforced by extended visits to parent/s ‘home’ areas. Recapturing a public dimension has often become a personal quest in adulthood, ‘filling in the gaps’. This paper explores constructions of narratives of nation by a key diasporic population, those with one or two Irish‐born parents. It places particular emphasis on varying regional/national contexts within which such constructions take place, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews for the ESRC‐funded Irish 2 Project in five locations — London, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry and Banbury.     

Negotiations of Irish identity in the wake of terrorism: the case of the Irish in Birmingham 1973–74

This article explores the Irish migrant experience in Birmingham during and in the wake of terrorist campaigns carried out in Britain between 1969 and 1975 and attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Beginning with a discussion of the competencies with which Irishness was associated at the close of the 1960s in England, many of which were hinged on a notion of the Irish predisposition towards violence, the article continues on to take the political, cultural and religious “temperature” of the Irish community in Birmingham between 1969 and 1975, and follows on with a discussion of the specific strategies sought out by Irish immigrants to come to terms with the effect of events such as the “Birmingham Bombings” on their daily lives. Principle findings that emerge from the study indicate that IRA terrorism forced the Irish in Birmingham to engage with and adopt a number of distinct linguistic and cultural strategies in the post-1974 period, the cultivation of which indefinitely altered their relationship with Ireland as “home”, their visibility in the public British sphere and their associational patterns and practices within the migrant enclave.     

Studies in British imperial history. Essays in honour of A.P. Thornton

This article examines the disputes amongst Irish Presbyterians about the teaching of moral philosophy by Professor John Ferrie in the college department of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in the early nineteenth century and the substantive philosophical and theological issues that were raised. These issues have largely been ignored by Irish historians, but a discussion of them is of general relevance to historians of ideas as they illuminate a series of broader questions about the definition and development of Scottish philosophy. These are represented in the move from two philosophers who had strong connections with Irish Presbyterianism—Francis Hutcheson, the early eighteenth-century moral sense philosopher and theological moderate from County Down, and James McCosh, nineteenth-century exponent of modified Common Sense philosophy at Queen's College Belfast and a committed evangelical. In particular, this article addresses three important themes—the definition and character of ‘the Scottish philosophy’, the relationship between evangelicalism and Common Sense philosophy, and the process of development and adaptation that occurred in eighteenth-century Scottish thought during the first half of the nineteenth century.     

RIPON AND THE SCOTTISH RAIDS, 1318–1322

Abstract

In the turbulent years following the English defeat at Bannockburn, Ripon was one of scores of towns and villages that were vulnerable to Scottish raiders. Most histories of the minster contain a similar version of events: the Scots enter the town and the townspeople take refuge in the minster, an agreement is reached whereby the Scots will spare the town for a ransom of one thousand marks, and later the Scots return to set fire to the town and the minster. While Ripon Minster’s historians have been quick to repeat this episode, none of them has ever produced physical evidence of fire damage to the minster. This evidence is not forthcoming because, as closer examination of textual evidence indicates, the nature of the Scottish raids has been exaggerated by Ripon’s historians. This article begins by showing how the accepted version of events passed from one author to the next, from the beginning of the eighteenth century down to the present. As the discipline of architectural history developed, the early claims for total destruction of the minster by the raiders should have been critically reconsidered. However, they were retained and simply modified to suit other evidence. Moreover, the partial destruction of the minster has been taken for granted by historians to the extent that they have used this assumption to interpret other evidence regarding the building and its history. Having demonstrated the persistence of this particular interpretation in the minster’s historiography, I will then re-examine all the textual and documentary evidence regarding the raids and offer a new interpretation.     

Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

Fortresses and fashion statements: gentry castles in fourteenth-century Northumberland

The fourteenth century saw a dramatic upsurge of new castle building in northern England. Not unreasonably, historians have associated this with the Scottish wars, seeing this proliferation as a direct response to Scottish raiding, and assuming that these castles were designed and built solely to perform a defensive military function. However, recent work on castles has questioned such purely functionalist interpretations. This article examines the castles built in the fourteenth century by the ‘gentry’ of Northumberland, the most exposed of all the border counties to Scottish attack, and sets them in their local and national contexts. Were these castles just built as defensive fortresses, or did they also serve a more symbolic role, in a society which had rapidly become militarised with the onset of war in 1296? Were they in fact intended as much to keep up with the neighbours as to keep out the Scots?     

Border crossings: new approaches to the Irish border

This paper explores and extends recent work on the Irish border that has sought to redress the relative lack of attention to the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the border in contrast to its intense political symbolism. In particular it addresses the theme of border crossing as a way to consider the border in terms of its everyday dimensions and in terms of questions of conventional and reconfigured categories of identity shaped by borderland life. The first section of the paper outlines recent approaches to the Irish border and their relationships to the field of border studies. The second section uses new research material to explore the ways in which the border was experienced on the ground in the lives of those most directly subject to its changing nature over the course of the twentieth century. The final part of the paper addresses recent suggestions that those experiences may form the basis of new cross-border and cross-community ‘border identities’. The term ‘border crossing’ in the paper's title thus stands both for the issue of physically crossing the border whose difficulties and effects have been central to the lives of those who have lived near the border, and for recent arguments that shared experiences of the impact of the border may be the basis for new senses of identity and commonality that imaginatively cross the borders of old categories of religion, culture and political affiliation. Recent efforts to reconceptualise border identities are emerging within a context still dominated by more polarised perspectives on identity and history, but they represent one significant strand of engagement with the Irish border. They suggest possibilities for forms of border identities that co-exist with, run counter to or cross cut old categories of division and difference.     

The Scottish Covenanters and the Borough of Sunderland, 1639–1647: A Hidden Axis of the British Civil Wars*

Few sources have survived relating to the borough of Sunderland in the seventeenth century. However, during the Civil Wars Sunderland was noticed for its support of Parliament and the Scottish Covenanters. A Puritan elite, led by George Lilburne, had established Sunderland as a radical borough by the 1630s. Good relations between Sunderland and the Covenanting Scots began in 1639 and continued throughout the Bishops’ Wars (1639–41) and the first British Civil Wars (1642–46). This was unusual in the North East of England as most of County Durham, Northumberland and Newcastle upon Tyne would remain loyal to King Charles I. A trade blockade of Newcastle, Sunderland and Blyth during 1643–44 was quickly lifted at Sunderland after the Scots garrisoned the town in March 1644. This gave Sunderland a temporary, but advantageous, lead over their rivals in Newcastle. Sunderland’s port was crucial for supplying the Scottish Covenanting army and Parliamentarian forces during 1644–46, and the coal mines along the River Wear proved a vital source of revenue for paying the army. The borough’s leaders were well rewarded for their loyalty and, unlike other leading supporters of Parliament in the North, they did not object to paying for the Scottish occupation of the North East.     

Compare and contrast: understanding Irish migration to Britain in a wider context

This article explores the potential for comparative research across different migrant groups. Research on migration is often weakened by the marked tendency to use a single ethnic/national group as the unit of analysis. Analysing migration from the experiences of a particular ethnic group may exaggerate ethnic exceptionalism and understate the extent to which experiences are shared across different migrant groups. My recent experiences on a range of research projects with diverse migrants to London made me think about similarities with the Irish, but each in different ways. However, there is a dearth of comparative analysis in relation to the Irish experience in Britain. On the one hand, there are many studies of Irish migrants, but these tend to focus solely on the Irish or else examine the relationship between Irish migrants and the ‘native’ British population. There has been little work on how the Irish relate to other migrant groups within British society. On the other hand, studies of other migrant communities rarely refer to the Irish as a comparative group. The article explores the reasons for the dearth of comparative work involving Irish migrants in Britain. In so doing, it considers some of the benefits and challenges of going beyond the ‘ethnic lens’. What would be gained but also lost by viewing Irish migration to Britain through a more comparative perspective? I explore how such comparative analysis might contribute, firstly, to a wider understanding of migration processes, experiences and inter-migrant relations, and, secondly, to a fuller appreciation of varied dimensions of migratory experiences in Britain. These issues are considered through a comparison of Polish and Irish migration to Britain.     

Playing with Fire: The 4th Duke of Hamilton's Jacobite Politics and the Union

James Hamilton, duke of Hamilton and the Scots jacobites are generally linked in analyses of the final years of the Scots polity. Indeed, Hamilton is often presented as the leader of the jacobite party in the Scottish parliament. Yet both contemporaries and historians have been unsure what to make of his on-again, off-again, conduct with respect to the exiled Stuarts and France. This has fuelled an ongoing debate about Hamilton's erratic and highly enigmatic behaviour during the winter of 1706–7, when the Union was passing the Scottish parliament. Was he genuinely opposing the Union? Was he duped by the court? Or was he, ‘bought and sold for English gold ’? This essay takes a fresh look at the duke and his part in the Union crisis in the light of new and previously underused jacobite sources with a view to better understanding Hamilton's aims, objectives, and influence with this crucial group. Only the jacobites and the Cameronians were potentially willing to take their opposition to the Union to God's Acre. But neither party immediately flew to arms in response to passage of a union they both believed was a betrayal of everything they held dear, and Hamilton was a major factor in their failure to do so. This essay thus takes a close look at the duke's part in preventing a major national uprising against the Union in the winter of 1706–7 and advances a new interpretation of his conduct and significance throughout the Union crisis.     

The tyranny of transnational discourse: ‘authenticity’ and Irish diasporic identity in Ireland and England

Through the prism of current state discourses in Ireland on engagement with the Irish diaspora, this article examines the empirical merit of the related concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Drawing on recent research on how Irish identity is articulated and negotiated by Irish people in England, this study suggests a worked distinction between the concepts of ‘diaspora’ and ‘transnationalism’. Two separate discourses of authenticity are compared and contrasted: they rest on a conceptualisation of Irish identity as transnational and diasporic, respectively. I argue that knowledge of contemporary Ireland is constructed as sufficiently important that claims on diasporic Irishness are constrained by the discourse of authentic Irishness as transnational. I discuss how this affects the identity claims of second‐generation Irish people, the relationship between conceptualisations of Irishness as diasporic within Ireland and ‘lived’ diasporic Irish identities, and implications for state discourses of diaspora engagement.     

Archaeological Explorations of Cultural Identity and Rural Economy in the North of Ireland: Goodland,County Antrim

Renewed examination of an enigmatic settlement site perched atop a cliff above Murlough Bay in Goodland Townland, County Antrim, Northern Ireland calls into question long held ideas about Gaelic rural economy on the eve of the Ulster Plantation by reintroducing the complex cultural and political relationships between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles. Long interpreted as temporary post-medieval booley huts associated with seasonal transhumance, recent re-evaluation of the site suggests instead that Goodland represents a permanent seventeenth-century Highland Scottish village. Although the medieval linkages between the north of Ireland and the Scottish isles have long been acknowledged, twentieth-century sectarianism has subjugated awareness of the Highland (Roman Catholic) Scots focusing upon the legacy of the in-migration of Protestant Lowland Scots during the Ulster Plantation. Material evidence at Goodland re-introduces the Highland Scot to the contested landscape of contemporary Ulster identity, while also facilitating analysis of continuity, change, and cultural complexity in the rural economy of early modern Ireland.     

‘Filial son’, the family and identity formation among male migrant workers in urban China

This article is based on an ethnographic study of life histories of 28 rural–urban (internal) migrant men located within southern China. It explores their narratives with a particular focus on changing social relations within the family, from the perspective of migrant sons. It argues that traditional gender norms, such as those attached to being a ‘filial son’, are lived out, albeit reworked, among Chinese male migrant workers across generations. The men recount the role of traditional familial gender norms, which are central cultural resources in forging their ‘dislocated’ identities within specific temporal and spatial conditions. For example, being a ‘filial son’ has become an important reference point for these mobile male workers to actively negotiate their emerging masculine identities in the process of negotiating urban lives, while living away from their rural homes. The article also explores a more complex understanding of rural–urban migration in terms of critically engaging with the men's well-being as urban workers.     

Scottish Representation in the Protectorate Parliaments: The Case of the Shires

The 30 MPs elected for Scotland in the Cromwellian parliaments of 1654, 1656 and 1659 have often been seen as government‐sponsored placemen, foisted on constituencies by the military. Some were Scottish collaborators, but most were English carpetbaggers. Restrictions on voter qualifications, designed to weed out suspected royalists, and opposition to English rule among the Scots, further contributed to what has been described as the antithesis of representation, a ‘hollow sham’. This article revisits the question of Scottish representation in this period through the analysis of the surviving indentures for the shire elections of 1656. These documents – of which 17 of the 20 survive – give the date of election, the name of the presiding officer (usually the sheriff) and details of principal electors, often with signatures and seals attached. Four constituencies are used as case studies: Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, Perthshire, and Fife and Kinross. Each constituency had a distinct response to Cromwellian rule and to the parliamentary elections, but general themes emerge: the restrictions on voters were totally ignored; direct interference by the English authorities was rare; and the elections were dominated by local political and religious disputes between the Scots themselves. This analysis further suggests that there was no unified Scottish interest at this time, that local differences overrode other considerations, and that in many cases, choosing an Englishman as MP could be the least controversial option, as well as that most likely to secure influence at Westminster.     

Locating migrant Latinas in a diverse economies framework: evidence from Chicago

In this article I use an intersectional diverse economies framework and weak theory to build knowledge about migrant Latinas' economic spaces in Chicago. Drawing on qualitative data, I demonstrate how multiple and dynamic identities are linked to economic practices. I show that Latina migrants are not limited to capitalist or noncapitalist forms of economic engagement within neoliberal structures or to single spaces within or outside ethnic economies. Their multiple and dynamic practices shifted, as did their identities and geographies. I captured a snapshot of one migrant Latina economic community and provide insights about the nature and scale of its activities as well as the opportunities, and obstacles it faces. I propose future research and policy resulting from seeing economies differently. What kinds of programs might support collective economies and migrant Latina crafts? How might we re-envision workforce development programs if we see economies differently? What kinds of creative campaigns and advocacy do we need with new kinds of economies? More data and reflection on the nature and scale of intersectional identities within migrant (and other) economic communities and the geoeconomic ramification within those communities is needed. Furthermore, I call for the imagination of new global forms and practices that respond to the crisis that the current economic structures are facing.