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Scotland is one of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK has no single written constitution document. Until the 1707 Acts of Union Scotland was an independent nation state. However, upon these acts coming into effect both Scotland and England's parliaments were dissolved and reconstituted as a parliament for all of Great Britain using the former English parliament's buildings and executive institutions. The Scottish and English crowns were unified in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became James I of England. In 1801 the Kingdom of Great Britain was unified with Ireland.

During the 16th century, Scotland became embroiled in the throes of the Protestant Reformation. John Knox stood out as the primary figure in this battle. A disciple of John Calvin, Knox, waged fierce battles with the forces of Catholic orthodoxy and eventually converted the country to Presbyterianism. Only the most distant parts of the Highlands retained a taste for older forms. Presbyterianism first gained a foothold in 1556 but it didn't really get going until John Knox's firebrand oratory started stirring people up, most notably in Perth, when he roused the townsfolk so much that a mob scoured the countryside for Catholics after one of his sermons, destroying the old abbey at Scone in the process. Within a few years Parliament had legislated for a National Presbyterian church, the Catholic Queen had fled, Scotland had Protestant England rather than Catholic France as its main ally, and firm Presbyterian tutors were in charge of the upbringing of the infant King.

Scotland, in the geographical sense it has retained for nearly a millennium, completed its expansion by the gradual subsumation of the Britons' kingdom of Strathclyde into Alba. In 1034, Duncan I, descended from Irish Ui Neill monastery protectors and appointed to the crown of Strathclyde some years earlier, inherited Alba from his maternal grandfather, Malcolm II. With the exception of Orkney, the Western Isles, Caithness and Sutherland, which had come under the sway of the Norse, Scotland stood unified.

Before 1975 local government in Scotland was organised on the county system. In reforms that took effect from 1975, the Conservative government of Edward Heath introduced a system of two-tier local government in Scotland, divided between large Regional Councils and smaller District Councils. The only exceptions to this were the three Island Councils, Western Isles, Shetland and Orkney which had the combined powers of Regions and Districts. In 1995 the Conservative government of John Major decided to abolish this system and merge their powers into new Unitary Authorities, roughly equivalent to the old counties.

The feudal system lingered on in Scots law on land ownership, so that a landowner still had obligations to a feudal superior including payment of feu duty. In 1974 legislation began a process of redeeming feuduties so that most of these payments were ended, but it was only with the attention of the Scottish Parliament that a series of acts (http://www.ejcl.org/83/art83-5.html) were passed, the first in 2000, for The Abolition of Feudal Tenure on November 28, 2004.

Most Scottish industry and commerce is concentrated in a few large cities on the waterways of the central lowlands. Edinburgh, on the Firth of Forth, is a cultural centre, the capital of Scotland, and one of the the top financial centres in Europe. Glasgow, one of the largest cities in the UK, lies on the Clyde; it is Scotland's leading seaport and was once a centre of shipbuilding and it supports numerous light industries. Although heavy industry has declined, the high-technology Silicon Glen corridor has developed between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Tourism is also very important.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) was formed in the 1930s with the aim of achieving Scottish independence. They are broadly on the left-of-centre and are in the European Social-Democratic mould. They are currently the second most popular party electorally, although their highpoint appears to have been in the 1970s.

Scotland has its own BBC services which include the national radio stations, BBC Radio Scotland and Scottish Gaelic language service, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal. There are also a number of BBC and independent local radio stations throughout the country. In addition to radio, BBC Scotland also runs two national television stations. Much of the output of BBC Scotland Television, such as news and current affairs programmes, and the Glasgow-based soap opera, River City, are intended for broadcast within Scotland, whilst others, such as drama and comedy programmes, aim at audiences throughout the UK and further afield. Sports coverage also differs, reflecting the fact that the country has its own football leagues, separate from those of England.

Church of England broke with Catholicism primarily for political reasons. Thus they replaced very little traditional Catholic theology, except to substitute the Crown for the Pope as the head of the Church. The Scots on the other hand were primarily Presbyterian, a movement which was the result of a strong theological rejection of certain Catholic teachings. In particular they were sceptical of the authority of the Pope and priesthood generally, which they rejected in favour of the priesthood of all believers. This doctrine was seen by both sides as radically undermining the authority not just of the priestly class, but of the aristocracy since it was essentially democratic.

At one stage, Scottish peers were entitled to elect sixteen representative peers to the House of Lords. In 1963, the Peerage Act was passed, allowing every Scottish peer to sit in the House of Lords. However, since the current Labour government's reforms of that house this is no longer the case and hereditary Scottish peers have to stand for election from amongst all eligible peers to sit in the house as part of a group of 92 entitled to do so.

Scotland has many national sporting associations, such as the Scottish Football Association (SFA) or the Scottish Rugby Union (SRU). This gives the country independent representation at many international sporting events such as the football World Cup. Scotland cannot compete in the Olympic Games independently however, and Scottish athletes must compete as part of the Great Britain team if they wish to take part. Scotland does however send its own team to compete in the Commonwealth Games.

From 1652 to 1658, Scotland formed an integral part of the Puritan-governed Commonwealth, under English control but gaining equal trading rights. Upon its collapse, nominal independence returned with the restoration of Charles II to the throne. Scotland regained its parliament, but the English Navigation Acts prevented the Scots from sharing its commercial success to escape impoverishment. A formal frontier between the two countries was re-established, with customs duties which, while they protected Scottish cloth industries from cheap English imports, also denied access to English markets for Scottish cattle on the hoof or Scottish linens (Braudel 1984 p 370).

The written history of Scotland largely begins with the coming of the Roman empire to Britain. Although the pre-Roman inhabitants occasionally used writing for commemorative purpose, these societies favoured a strong oral history. With the loss of the druidic tradition (due to war, famine, and particularly the proscriptions of later Christian missionaries), the people forgot much of this lore. The only surviving pre-Roman account of Scotland originated with the Greek Pytheas of Massalia who circumnavigated the British islands (which he called PretThe British Saint Ninian conducted the first Christian mission in Scotland. From his base, the Candida Casa (present-day Whithorn) on the Solway Firth, he spread the faith in the south and east of Scotland and in the north of England. However, according to the writings of Saint Patrick and Saint Columba, the Picts appear to have renounced Christianity in the century between Ninian's death (432) and the arrival of Saint Columba in 563. The reason is not known. The Gaels re-introduced Christianity into Pictish Scotland, gradually pushing out worship of the older Celtic gods. The most famous evangelist of that period, Saint Columba, came to Scotland in 563 and settled on the island of Iona. Some consider his (possibly apocryphal) conversion of the Pictish King Brude the turning point in the Christianization of Scotland.

Scotland advanced markedly in educational terms during the fifteenth century with the founding of the University of St Andrews in 1413, the University of Glasgow in 1450 and the University of Aberdeen in 1494, and with the passing of the Education Act (1496).