This primer covers Scottish independence from the Roman era to the Jacobite revolts, the 2014 referendum and Brexit
Though many of the issues debated around the time of the 1707 Acts of Union are no longer relevant, Bowie says the events of the 18th century hold valuable insights for the current independence movement. “The union comes out of a ten-year context,” she explains. “That longer-term context of the union of crowns not working very well applies, but it had gotten particularly bad in the last ten years before 1707, so it’s in response to quite short-term pressures.”
While the formation of the United Kingdom yielded “great fruitfulness” in many areas, including the development of a shared British identity, the historian adds, “There’s nothing immutable or inevitable about it.” Says Bowie, “This is probably the fundamental moral. If it’s not inevitable, then that means it’s a construct. And for it to last, it has to work. […] Like any relationship that needs to be maintained and sustained, if it starts to break down, it can potentially be recovered, but effort has to be put into that.”