Scotland and the Scots, 1707-2007

The main purpose of this volume is to demonstrate, through a variety of texts
covering a vast historical period and from diverse sources (parliamentary
reports, letters, memoirs, excerpts of books, newspaper articles, oral
testimonies, and related materials) that Scotland cannot be reduced to the
traditional images of kilt and bagpipe. The author has often chosen to let
common people speak-those people whose voice is seldom heard in traditional
history books. Any book written about the history of the Scottish nation that
would leave aside such significant events as the Union of Parliaments in 1707,
the Jacobite risings of the first half of the 18th century, the Highland
clearances, or the process of devolution would most definitely be described as
incomplete. But a book about the history of Scotland in which the voices of
the elites would be the only ones to be heard would be just as incomplete. The
author hopes that his “wandering among words written by others” in temples to
knowledge such as the National Archives of Scotland and the National Library
of Scotland will ultimately lend new life to those fragments of the past
without which it is impossible to understand the present.