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HISTORY
It's believed that the earliest settlement of Scotland was undertaken by hunters and fishers 6000 years ago. They were followed by the Celtic Picts, whose loose tribal organization survived to the 18th century in the clan structure of the Highlands. They never bowed to the Romans, who retreated and built Hadrian's Wall. Another Celtic tribe, the Gaels (Scotti), arrived from northern Ireland (Scotia) in the 6th century. By the time the Normans arrived, most of Scotland was loosely united under the Canmore dynasty.
Despite almost continuous border warfare, it wasn't until a dispute over the Can-more succession that England's Edward I attempted the conquest of Scotland. Beginning with the siege of Berwick in 1296, fighting finally ended in 1328 with the Treaty of Northampton, which recognized Robert the Bruce as king of an independent Scotland. Robert, more Norman than Scottish in his ancestry, cemented an alliance with France that would complicate the political map for almost 400 years.
In 1371 the Scottish kingship passed to the Fitzalan family. The Fitzalans had served William the Conqueror and his descendants as High Stewards, and Stewart (changed to Stuart following Mary's accession) became the dynasty's name.
In 1542 Scotland's James V died, leaving his two-week-old daughter Mary to be Proclaimed queen. Henry VIII of England decided she would make a suitable daughter-in-law, and his armies ravaged the Borders and sacked Edinburgh in a failed attempt to force agreement from the Scots (the 'Rough Wooing').
At 15, Mary married the French dauphin and duly became Queen of France as well as Scotland. Mary was later forced to abdicate in favor of her son, James VI. Mary was imprisoned but escaped and fled to England's Queen Elizabeth (her cousin), who locked her in the Tower of London. Nineteen years later, at the age of 44, Mary was beheaded for allegedly plotting Elizabeth's death. When the childless Elizabeth died in 1603, Mary's son united the two crowns for the first time as James VI of Scotland and James I of England.
In 1707, after complex bargaining (and buying a few critical votes), England's government persuaded the Scottish Parliament to agree to the union of the two countries under a single parliament. The Scots received trading privileges and retained their independent church and legal system. The decision was unpopular from the start, and the exiled Stuarts promised to repeal it.
Jacobites (Stuart supporters) led two major rebellions, first in 1715 then in 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie failed to extend his support beyond the Catholic Highland clans. The Jacobite cause was finally buried at the Battle of Culloden (1746), after which the English set out to destroy the clans, prohibiting Highland dress, weapons and military service.
In the mid-19th century overpopulation, the collapse of the kelp industry, the 1840s potato famine and the increased grazing of sheep by the lairds (landowning aristocrats) led to the Highland Clearances. After WWI Scotland's ship, steel, coal, cotton and jute industries began to fail, and, though there was a recovery during the Second World War, since the 1960s they have been in terminal decline.
In the 1970s and 80s, North Sea oil -Scottish oil, as many will tell you - gave the economy a boost. Despite the bonanza, Thatcherism failed to impress the Scots. From 1979 to 1997, Scotland was ruled by a Conservative government for which the majority of Scots didn't vote. Following the Labour Party's May 1997 electoral victory, voters in a referendum chose overwhelmingly in favor of the creation of a Scottish Parliament, which began sitting in Edinburgh in 1999.
Language
Scotland's five-million-plus people speak three main languages. Gaelic is spoken by some 80,000 people, mainly in the Highlands and Islands, and is undergoing a revival. Lallans or Lowland Scots is spoken in the south. Then there's English, which the Scottish accent can make almost impenetrable to the Sassenach (the English or Lowland Scots) and other foreigners.
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