Debating Britain in Seventeenth Century Scotland

This lecture will explore some of the questions that arise from closer study of the 17th century in which there were repeated attempts by the Scots to re-negotiate a relationship that they saw as increasingly one-sided. Free lecture by Professor Roger Mason.

Speaker: Professor Roger Mason, University of St Andrews

Venue: New King's 10

We are accustomed to thinking that Scotland’s union with England dates from 1707 when the Treaty of Union created a single parliament and a single state under the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.  However, the kingdoms had been united under one monarch since 1603, and amid the turmoil of the intervening century, there were repeated attempts by the Scots to re-negotiate a relationship that they saw as increasingly one-sided. This lecture will explore some of the questions that arise from closer study of this tumultuous era in British history: How did seventeenth-century Scots envisage their place in the Stuart’s multiple monarchy? What were the implications of being in a union with a country that was so much bigger in terms of population and resources?  Why did the union last? Finally, it will consider what, if anything, the experience of Scotland in the seventeenth century has to tell us in the twenty first century.

Free lecture by Roger Mason MA, PhD, FRHistS, Professor of Scottish History and Director of the Institute of Scottish Historical Research, University of St Andrews, joint with the Scottish History Society.

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